A Companion to the Australian Media [1 ed.] 9781922454324, 9781925003055

Citation preview

A COMPANION to the

AUSTRALIAN

MEDIA

Editorial Advisory Board Professor Mark Armstrong Eric Beecher Associate Professor Robert Crawford Mark Day Professor Jock Given Professor Murray Goot FASSA Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley FAHA (Chair) Emeritus Professor Ken Inglis FAHA Dr Rod Kirkpatrick Professor Michael Meadows Emerita Associate Professor Gail Phillips Professor Julianne Schultz AM FAHA Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner FAHA

A COMPANION to the

AUSTRALIAN

MEDIA Edited by

Bridget Griffen-Foley

AU S T R A L I A N S C H O L A R LY

Published with the assistance of Macquarie University

© Edited by Bridget Griffen-Foley 2014, 2015 First published 2014 and republished in this revised edition 2015 by Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd 7 Lt Lothian St Nth, North Melbourne, Vic 3051 tel: 03 9329 6963 fax: 03 9329 5452 email: [email protected] web: scholarly.info All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. The moral right of the author has been asserted. Bridget Griffen-Foley A Companion to the Australian Media ISBN: 978-1-925333-24-4

All Rights Reserved Design and typesetting by Art Rowlands Set in Sabon LT Std 9.75/10.25pt

For my other companion, Craig Munro, with all my love

Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments x Abbreviations xii List of contributors

xiv

Editor’s note

xv

A–Z entries

1

Index 506

Preface At a time of rapid and even revolutionary change in modes of communication, A Companion to the Australian Media is the first comprehensive, contemporary and historical account of our media. An accessible, authoritative guide to the press, radio, television, advertising, public relations and new media, it is a ready reference for media practitioners and policy-makers and a source of in-depth information for scholars, students and general readers. From the first Aboriginal newspaper in 1836 to the advent of social media, from Blue Hills to The Chaser, from astrology to women in the media, this is a book is for everyone who is interested in those who decide what we read, hear and watch every day. Hundreds of interlinked narratives, from brief entries to essays, explore media organisations, genres and regions, along with key players and significant issues. The Companion’s 300 expert contributors include industry practitioners, academics from a range of disciplines, independent scholars and postgraduate researchers. Commissioned exclusively to write for this volume, they draw upon deep reserves of specialist scholarship and present much entirely new research on our media and how it has been made and interpreted. With such unrivalled source material, the Companion will inspire future research. More than a hundred entries are biographical, and some are on families or ‘dynasties’. Individual biographies do not duplicate the contents of the landmark multi-volume Australian Dictionary of Biography but focus rather on each person’s contribution to the media. Unlike the ADB, the Companion also features entries on living Australians. Every effort has been made to include biographical subjects from around Australia, and to achieve as much gender balance as possible. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order. A word in bold within the text indicates a cross-reference to another headword. Since this book was first envisaged several years ago, the foundations of the our media have shifted substantially. Every effort therefore has been made to ensure that entries are accurate and up-to-date. Circulation figures cited in most newspaper and magazine entries are based on Audit Bureau of Circulation results (print, not digital) for August 2013.   My aim has been to create, with all my fellow contributors, a resourcerich, user-friendly work of reference. The reader will discover in the Companion to the Australian Media an extraordinary story of a fascinating industry, a vivid tapestry of past secrets and scandals, dreams and dynasties, and an account of the big challenges facing print and other media on the little screens of the 21st century. Bridget Griffen-Foley August 2014

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Acknowledgments In editing a volume of this magnitude, I have incurred innumerable debts. The project was underwritten by a Discovery Grant and Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship (2008–12) from the Australian Research Council. Macquarie University generously provided a publication subvention. A Companion to the Australian Media was guided by an Editorial Advisory Board drawn from industry and academe. I am grateful to my eleven colleagues for their expertise and support as I chose headwords, allocated word lengths and authors, and edited entries; most of them also acted as referees and, of course, contributors. I must express particular thanks to Dr Rod Kirkpatrick, the country’s foremost newspaper historian, who was an extraordinarily generous board member and referee, as well as the most prolific Companion author, writing some twenty-eight entries. My principal debt is to the many authors, all of them unpaid, whose entries constitute the Companion. A remarkably small number of individuals declined invitations to write for it. The commitment from media practitioners, academics, independent scholars and postgraduate students, from around Australia and from overseas, has been extraordinary. Contributors, in turn, have individual debts to libraries, archives, colleagues, research assistants, and students. Sadly, five contributors—Keith Dunstan, Lloyd Harris, Barbara James, Bill Peach and Chris Watson—died before the book went to press; it is an honour to publish their last works here. I am indebted to my research assistants Dr Matthew Bailey, who helped to lay the foundations of the project, and Dr Michael Austin, who then established the vital Companion database and dispatched nearly all invitations to contributors. Dr Kyle Harvey, who joined me in early 2012, has worked on almost every aspect of the enterprise; he has been a superb project manager, demonstrating calmness and good humour at every turn. Sue Jarvis, who worked with me in 2013–14, has been more than my copy editor. Her knowledge of the field (drawn from her long association with Media International Australia as production editor), combined with her editorial care and flair, have contributed immeasurably to this manuscript. Although we have operated, at times, under considerable pressure, working with Sue and Kyle has never been anything but a pleasure. I am grateful to my colleagues at Macquarie University, particularly in the Centre for Media History and the Department of Media, Music, Communication and Cultural Studies, for their interest and support. I extend my thanks to Nick Walker, the director of Australian Scholarly Publishing, for embracing immediately the concept of the Companion, and for

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his continuing faith in print. Thanks, too, to designer Art Rowlands, and to Diane Carlyle for her extraordinary indexing effort. My family—including my mother Helen, Luke and Edel, and Tim, Simon and Bruce—has been endlessly encouraging and patient. I am only sorry to have disappointed my eight-year-old niece, Aoife, by not writing a children’s book. Rather than wait for my next book, she is writing one herself. In the course of undertaking this Leviathan, I acquired not just 300 contributors, but a husband. Dr Craig Munro is the most precious companion of all, personally and professionally.

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Abbreviations AAP Australian Associated Press AARNet Australian Academic and Research Network AAT Administrative Appeals Tribunal ABA Australian Broadcasting Authority ABC Australian Broadcasting Commission/ Corporation ABCB Australian Broadcasting Control Board ABT Australian Broadcasting Tribunal ACA A Current Affair ACCC Australian Consumer and Competition Commission ACCM Australian Council on Children and the Media ACB Australian Cricket Board ACMA Australian Communications and Media Authority ACP Australian Consolidated Press ACTF Australian Children’s Television Foundation ACTU Australian Council of Trade Unions AES Army Education Service AFA Advertising Federation of Australia AFC Australian Film Commission AFDC Australian Film Development Corporation AFI Australian Film Institute AFL Australian Football League AFR Australian Financial Review AFTRS Australian Film Television and Radio School AGPS Australian Government Publishing Service AICA Australian Indigenous Communications Association AIF Australian Imperial Force AIS Australian Information Service AJA Australian Journalists’ Association ALP Australian Labor Party ALRC Australian Law Reform Commission AMAA Audited Media Association of Australia AMCOS Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society Limited AMPS Advanced Mobile Phone System ANAA Australian Association of National Advertisers ANC Australian Newspapers Conference/ Council ANIB Australian News and Information Bureau ANL Associated Newspapers Ltd ANM Australian Newsprint Mills ANOP Australian Nationwide Opinion Polls ANPA Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association ANZCA Australian and New Zealand Communication Association

ANZWONA Australian and New Zealand Web Offset Newspaper Association AP Associated Press APA Australian Press Association APC Australian Press Council APCA Australian Press Cuttings Agency APOP Australian Public Opinion Polls APPA Australian Provincial Press Association APRA Australasian Performing Right Association ARIA Australian Recording Industry Association ARN Australian Radio Network ASB Advertising Standards Board ASC Advertising Standards Council ATF Australian Television Facilities ATR Advanced Television Research ATSIC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission ATV Associated Television Corporation AUSFTA Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement AWA Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd AWARD Australasian Art Writers and Art Directors Association AWG Australian Writers’ Guild AWU Australian Workers’ Union AWV Amalgamated Wireless Valve Company Ltd B&T Broadcasting & Television BBC British Broadcasting Corporation BBS Bulletin Board Systems BRACS Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme BRW Business Review Weekly BSA Broadcasting Services Act 1992 BSB British Satellite Broadcasting BUGA-UP Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions CAAMA Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association CAB Circulations Audit Board CAMP Campaign Against Moral Persecution Inc CBAA Community Broadcasting Association of Australia CBF Community Broadcasting Foundation CNA Community Newspapers of Australia COMPAC Commonwealth Pacific Cable System CPA Communist Party of Australia CPC Children’s Program Committee CPU Commonwealth Press Union CRA Commercial Radio Australia CRN Community Radio Network CTA Commercial Television Australia CTA Christian Television Associations CTS Children’s Television Standards DBCDE Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

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DOI Department of Information EMI Electric and Musical Industries EMMA Enhanced Media Metrics Australia ENT Examiner & Northern Television Ltd EPU Empire Press Union EWA Eric White Associates FACTS Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations FARB Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters FCA Foreign Correspondents’ Association FFC Film Finance Corporation FIAPF International Federation of Film Producers’ Associations FM Frequency Modulation FOI freedom of information FPC Federal Publishing Company Pty Ltd FPAA Film Production Association of Australia FPPG Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery FSA Farmers and Settlers’ Association FT Financial Times HWT Herald and Weekly Times ICTV Indigenous Community Television IMT In Melbourne Tonight IPTV Internet Protocol Television IRCA Indigenous Remote Communication Association JEAA Journalism Education Association of Australia JWT J. Walter Thompson LOTE languages other than English MCA Media Council of Australia MEAA Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance MIA Media Information/International Australia MPA Magazine Publishers of Australia MWAG Media Women’s Action Group NAIBA National Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting Association NBN National Broadband Network NESB non-English speaking background NFSA National Film and Sound Archive of Australia NGOs non-government organisations NIMAA National Indigenous Media Association of Australia NINS National Indigenous News Service NIRS National Indigenous Radio Service NIT National Indigenous Times NITV National Indigenous Television

NLA NM NMLS NRL NRN

National Library of Australia New Matilda National Media Liaison Service National Rugby League National Radio News

NSWCPA NSW Country Press Association OAAA Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia OLO On Line Opinion OMA Outdoor Media Association PANPA Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association PSB public sector broadcaster OTC Overseas Telecommunications Commission P2P peer-to-peer PBL Publishing and Broadcasting Limited PMG Postmaster-General’s Department PNQ Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd PPCA Phonographic Performance Company of Australia PR public relations QT Queensland Times RA Radio Australia RABS Remote Area Broadcast Scheme RCA Radio Corporation of America RCTS Remote Commercial Television Service RDA Regional Dailies of Australia Ltd RIBS Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services RIMO Remote Indigenous Media Organisation RN Radio National RPH Radio for Print Handicapped SBS Special Broadcasting Service SLNSW State Library of New South Wales SLSA State Library of South Australia SLV State Library of Victoria SLWA State Library of Western Australia SMH Sydney Morning Herald SPAA Screen Producers Association of Australia SPASM Singleton, Palmer, Strauss and McAllan TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol TDT This Day Tonight TPC Trade Practices Commission UCA United Cable Association UCB United Christian Broadcasters of Australia UNAA United Nations Association of Australia VAST Viewer Access Satellite Television VCR video-cassette recorder VDT visual display terminal VFL Victorian Football League WAN West Australian Newspapers Limited WSC World Series Cricket WIA Wireless Institute of Australia

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List of contributors Ahern, Steve Aitken, Richard Albert, Jane Albury, Kath Ames, Kate Anderson, Fay Armstrong, Mark Arnold, John Arrow, Michelle Bacon, Wendy Barnes, Peter Beecher, Eric Begbie, Richard Bell, Philip Bell, Wendy Belshaw, Jim Berryman, Bruce Bester, Damian Blair, Sandy Blundell, Graeme Bolton, Geoffrey Bonner, Frances Bowden, Tim Bowman, David Brady, Linda Broadbent, Harvey Bromley, Michael Brown, Nicholas Bruns, Axel Buckland, Jenny Buckridge, Patrick Burgess, Jean Burns, Maureen Burrows, Elizabeth Burton, Jenny Bye, Susan Carment, David Carmody, John Carson, Andrea Carty, Bruce Cass, Philip Cassin, Ray Cinque, Toija Clark, Andrew Clarke, Patricia Clifford, Katrina Cokley, John Cole-Adams, Peter Coleman, Peter Collins, Diane Cook, Jackie Cormack, Phillip Courvisanos, Jerry Crawford, Kate Crawford, Robert Criticos, Harry Cryle, Denis Cunningham, Stuart Darian-Smith, Kate Davey, Philip Davidson, Ron Davies, Anne Davies, Margaret Davies, Paul Day, Mark Dempster, Quentin Dodd, Andrew Dore, Johanna Dowling, Peter Dunstan, David Dunstan, Keith Dwyer, Tim Edmonson, Ray Elder, Bruce Elliott, Geoff

Ellis, Katie Este, Jonathan Ester, Helen Faulkner, John FitzSimons, Trish Fleming, Deborah Fletcher, Mark Flew, Terry Forde, Susan Foyle, Lindsay Frances, Raelene Freudenberg, Graham Gibson, Mark Gittins, Ross Given, Jock Goggin, Gerard Goldsmith, Ben Goot, Murray Gordon-Smith, Michael Gould, Liz Graham, Vernon Green, Kerry Green, Lelia Gregory, Peter Griffen-Foley, Bridget Groves, Derham Hadlow, Martin Haigh, Gideon Hall, Sandra Hamilton, Stephen Hammon, Milton Hanson, Stephanie Harper, Melissa Harris, Lloyd Harvey, Gareth Hauser, Don Healey, Alison Hearn, Mark Heenan, Tom Henningham, John Herd, Nick Herman, Jack Hess, Kristy Hilvert, John Holland, Kate Holt, Chris Homan, Shane Horsfield, Peter Hughes, Anthony Hughes, Sue Hutchings, Karen Ihde, Erin Isaacs, Victor Jakubowicz, Andrew James, Andy Lloyd James, Barbara Johnson-Woods, Toni Johnson, Lesley Johnston, Jane Johnston, Owen Jones, Hugh Keating, Chris Kelham, Megg Kent, Jacqueline Kenyon, Andrew T. Kirkpatrick, Peter Kirkpatrick, Rod Kitchener, Jennifer Langdon, John Laube, Anthony Laughren, Pat Lawe Davies, Chris Lawson, Sylvia Lawson, Valerie Le Masurier, Megan

Lee, Carolyne Lee, Christopher Leiboff, Marett Lester, Libby Lewis, Steve Light, Jeremy Lindesay, Vane Little, Janine Lloyd, Justine Lockwood, Kim Lumby, Catharine Lynch, Jake MacFie, Peter MacGregor, Tony Macklin, Robert Macnamara, Jim Madsen, Virginia Maguire, David Manning, Peter Marcato, Peter Marjoribanks, Tim Martin, Fiona Mason, Andrew May, Harvey McCardell, Wayne McCutcheon, Marion McDonnell, Mark McKay, Peter McKay, Susan McKee, Alan McKnight, David McNair, Brian McNaught, Janet E. McQueen, Humphrey Meadows, Michael Mendelssohn, Joanna Milliken, Robert Minehan, Mike Mitchell, Alex Mitchell, Glenn Moore, Tony Moran, Albert Morrison, Elizabeth Morrison, Ian Morrow, Guy Moyal, Ann Moylan, Siobhán Muller, Denis Munro, Craig Murphy, Wayne Murray, Robert Nash, Kate Nicholls, Rob Nolan, Sybil Noonan, Gerard North, Louise O’Brien, Philip O’Donnell, Penelope O’Neill, Ward Oakham, Mandy Olds, David Osborne, Roger Patrick, Kevin Payne, Trish Peach, Bill Pearce, Sharyn Pearson, Mark Perlgut, Don Phiddian, Robert Phillips, Gail Pierce, Peter Podkalicka, Aneta Poland, Louise Poletti, Anna Potts, John

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Prest, Elizabeth Jean Prisk, Judy Prisk, Max Pullan, Robert Putnis, Peter Ray, Greg Redshaw, Sarah Rendell, Anthony Rennie, Ellie Richards, Ian Richardson, Nick Ricketson, Matthew Rigg, Julie Riley, Margot Roberts, Tom D.C. Rolls, Mitchell Roncoli, Gina Rothwell, Nicolas Rutherford, Leonie Salter, David Schultz, Julianne Scully, Richard Shannon, Mary Sheehan, Mark Sheridan, Susan Sherman, Brad Shirley, Graham Shoesmith, Brian Simons, Margaret Sinclair, John Sleight, Simon Spearritt, Peter Spennemann, Dirk Sprod, Michael Starck, Nigel Stoddart, Brian Stone, Gerald Stone, Grant Symons, Michael Tabakoff, Jenny Tanner, Stephen J. Tebbutt, John Thomas, Julian Thompson, Elaine Thornley, Phoebe Tidey, John Tiffen, Rodney Torsh, Daniela Trembath, Richard Turnbull, Sue Turner, Graeme Turner, Madeleine Ubayasiri, Kasun Usher, Jim Van Heekeren, Margaret Vered, Karen Walker, Stephanie Waller, Lisa Walsh, Richard Ward, Ian Waterford, Jack Waterhouse, Richard Watson, Chris Weerakkody, Niranjala Westfield, Mark Whitaker, Richard Whitehead, Anne Williams, Kathleen Williams, Rebecca Willis, Ian Wilson, Chris Wotherspoon, Garry Young, Sally

Editor’s Note All entries in A Companion to the Australian Media have been peer reviewed. Every contributor provided a list of references, which assisted in the editing process, and selected the key source or sources that had informed their research for inclusion in a short bibliography. A small number of entries appear without a bibliography: this is usually because sources are referred to in the entry, or because no source could be singled out for mention. Due to pressures of space, useful generic sources— such as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Who’s Who in Australia, Audit Bureau of Circulations data, annual reports and yearbooks—have not been cited in these bibliographies.

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A A CURRENT AFFAIR A Current Affair (ACA) is Australia’s longest running television current affairs program. It commenced in 1971 as the Nine Network’s response to the ratings success of the ABC’s pioneering This Day Tonight (TDT). Its producer and presenter, Mike Willesee—who had been poached from TDT—was regarded as one of Australia’s best television reporters and interviewers, so his presence was seen as a guarantee of quality coverage of politics and social issues on ACA. After Willesee left the program in 1974, ACA was hosted by a number of different presenters until 1978 when it was replaced by the wartime soap opera The Sullivans. ACA was revived in 1988, when Willesee’s company, Transmedia, sold the rights to Nine. It was presented by Jana Wendt until the end of 1992, when she resigned in protest over a story—reputedly involving topless women. Willesee returned for the next year, when his celebrated interview with the federal opposition leader, John Hewson, took place; the interview is reputed to have lost Hewson the election. Less salutary was ACA’s intervention into a police siege in Cangai in rural New South Wales, where two children were being held hostage, in 1993. ACA broke a police blockade to secure helicopter footage and telephone access to the gunmen holding the children. Willesee interviewed them on air. Police were outraged and the incident became a notorious example of media irresponsibility, even turning up as the plotline for an episode of Frontline some years later. Ray Martin took over the presenter’s role in 1994 and the next four years saw the program involved in several public controversies in which its ethical standards were questioned. The most sustained of these involved a family of unemployed youths, the Paxtons, in a series of ‘dole bludger’ stories. Critics accused the program of victimising the Paxtons and setting them up for public abuse, while exploiting them to improve the ratings. The frequent use of hidden cameras and chequebook journalism over this period also exposed ACA to accusations of unethical behaviour. Mike Munro replaced Martin in 1998, but Martin returned in 2003 before hand-

ing over to Tracy Grimshaw, the current host, in 2006. Current affairs television lost considerable numbers of viewers over the 1990s, and has yet to regain them. Partly this is a consequence of an overall decline in the size of the audience in the 6.30–7.30 p.m. timeslot. Commercial producers responded by heading down-market in their choice of stories. As a result, commercial television current affairs programs retreated to a limited menu of tabloid infotainment topics— bad neighbours, cosmetic surgery, confidence tricksters, welfare cheats, fad diets and the latest treatments for cellulite. Despite its considerable contribution to the best of Australian television over its long history, the current version of ACA is part of this trend. REF: G. Turner, Ending the Affair (2005). GRAEME TURNER

A BORIGINA L BROA DCA S T ING see Indigenous

broadcasting

A BORIGINA L NE W S PA PE RS see Indigenous

newspapers

A CT ORS ’ A ND A NNOUNCE RS ’ E QUIT Y see Media,

Entertainment and Arts Alliance

AD AM S, P H ILLIP (1939– ) A distinguished broadcaster and columnist well known for his left-wing politics, Phillip Adams has had an extensive media career and made a significant impact on Australia’s film and advertising industries. Adams began work at Melbourne advertising agency Briggs and James at the age of 15 and, despite being a Communist Party member, moved up advertising’s creative ranks. In 1968 he became the creative director of his own agency, Monahan Dayman Adams, which expanded rapidly. He created campaigns such as ‘Life. Be in it’ and ‘Slip, Slop, Slap’. Following a collaboration on the ‘Celebration of a Nation’ Bicentenary campaign in 1988, his agency merged with Mojo and Adams soon departed. Producing ads stimulated Adams’ interest in film. The award-winning Jack and Jill: A

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adelaide review

Pearson joined the magazine from the third issue and, when it looked like closing in 1985, took over ownership, keeping it alive with the help of generous friends. Publication of the Review varied from fortnightly to monthly at various times, but in its current iteration it is a monthly news magazine that aims to cover ‘social, political and lifestyle issues with integrity, independence, heart and intelligence’. The Adelaide Review experienced a second major crisis when Pearson ran out of funds early in the new millennium and was forced to sell the magazine to Spanish publisher Javier Moll, owner of the publishing firm Editorial Prensa Ibérica, although he continued to work with and influence the magazine. On Pearson’s death in July 2013, the Adelaide Review ran a lengthy tribute to him that included the following statement from Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who had been a contributing columnist to the magazine for a decade: ‘To know Christopher well was to have a grandstand seat at the clash of mighty emotions as well as to have the benefit of a fine mind and a good heart.’ The Adelaide Review operates out of an Adelaide CBD address, and has a dozen full-time staff and a long list of contributing writers. The managing director is Manuel Ortigosa, the general manager is Luke Stegemann and the editor is David Knight. Its parent company is Global Intertrade. Readers of the Adelaide Review are mostly from Adelaide’s city centre and inner suburbs, although the magazine also attracts readers from ‘key regional centres’; it appeals to mostly well-off and well educated magazine buyers, which also means they are older (30-plus) than the typical Adelaide news audience. The magazine’s audited print circulation is 28,648 and it lists 15,000 unique website visitors a month. In addition to its website, it also maintains Facebook and Twitter social media sites.

Postscript (1970) marked his directing debut. Notable productions included The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), Don’s Party (1976) and The Getting of Wisdom (1977). He was also key to persuading the Commonwealth government to support the creation of what would become the Australian Film Commission. Adams’ first journalistic forays were as a freelancer for the Communist newspaper the Guardian. In the 1960s, he began writing for the Bulletin before becoming the Australian’s television critic. Sacked in 1969 for being a ‘satirist’, he moved on to Nation Review. After another stint at the Australian, he shifted to the Age, where his column was nationally syndicated in the 1980s. He later went back to the Australian, where his weekly column continues to appear. Adams has also written numerous books on topics such as atheism and politics, including Talkback: Emperors of the Air, with Lee Burton (1997), and a number of joke books, with partner Patrice Newell. Adams’ broadcasting career began at 2UE Sydney in 1988. However, he was unwilling to adopt a populist approach, and left 2UE in 1990. The following year he took over Late Night Live on the ABC’s Radio National, where his blend of interviews, commentary and reports on current affairs has established a devoted national audience, and also won him a Walkley Award (with Chris Bullock, Mary Louise O’Callaghan and Paul Gough) in 2004. He was awarded an AM in 1987 and an AO in 1992. Other awards include the Human Rights Medal (2006), the Raymond Longford Award (1981) and the United Nations Media Award (2005). Adams has won multiple Australian Film Institute Awards and holds honorary doctorates from several universities. REFs: R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); P. Luker, Phillip Adams (2000); http://www.theaustralian.com.au. ROBERT CRAWFORD

REF: http://www.adelaidereview.com.au. KERRY GREEN

ADEL A I D E M E D I A C LU B see South Australian

AD VER TISER (AD ELAID E) The principal leader-writer of the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (est. 1836), Rev. John Henry Barrow (1817–74), became the founding editor of the Adelaide Advertiser, launched on 12 July 1858. He and Henry Ayers, G.C. Hawker, J.  Hannah Kearn and Captain William Scott promoted the South Australian Advertiser and Weekly Chronicle Company Limited. Shares were offered to the public at £25 each, with a capitalisation of £10,000, and a public company was formed with Barrow as managing director and holding editorial control. The first six years were particularly difficult, but with the company’s first capital issue, a steam printing machine was purchased and the battle for readers begun against the Register and the afternoon Daily Telegraph (1862–66).

Press Club

A D E L A I DE REVI E W The history of the Adelaide Review, a magazine for the ‘thinking Adelaidean’, is inextricably bound up with that of Christopher Pearson (1951–2013). The publication, which aims to provide South Australia with an ‘independent source of social, cultural and political analysis and review’, was born in March 1984 when Mark Jamieson produced a monthly magazine, staffed largely by unemployed writers, that reflected ‘the intensive motivation and enthusiasm of innovative people who believe in freedom of speech and the public’s right to alternative news sources’.

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advertising risen to £12 million, circulation to 208,000 and staff numbers to 1500. On News Limited’s acquisition of the Herald and Weekly Times in 1987, it also acquired the remaining shares of the Advertiser. Due to media ownership restrictions, the News was sold; its closure in 1992 meant the Advertiser became Adelaide’s only daily newspaper. The Advertiser adopted a tabloid format in 1997, and in 2013 the weekday edition had a circulation of 155,635, with 208,624 on Saturdays.

In May 1864, Barrow moved to have the company dissolved, in order to operate as a private company. In August 1864, all the assets of the Advertiser were put up for sale. Barrow and seven others who had formed a syndicate eventually bought them, and Barrow was engaged as editor for a further five years. By August 1874, the paper’s finances had improved, and a year later, a new two-feeder press was bought. New premises were built on the corner of King William and Waymouth Streets. Barrow’s Congregational faith and the appointment of men like William Harcus, Dr James Jefferis and Jefferson Stow clearly distinguished the paper from the Register. Barrow also trained John Langdon Bonython when he joined the paper in 1864. Bonython had to wait until 1880 to buy into the paper, his first attempt having been refused following Barrow’s death. By 1879, Frederick Britten Burden was admitted to a partnership. Both head accountant Thomas King and editor Jefferson Stow cut their ties with the paper, leaving Bonython free to assume the editorship, which continued for 45 years. Bonython reduced the price of the paper to one penny, and by 1886 his company’s stable of three papers (the Chronicle, the Advertiser and the Adelaide Express) had all doubled the circulation of their rivals. Larger and better advertisements appeared. The paper remained at eight pages during the 1880s. There were few headings and even editorials did not proclaim what they were about to discuss. Type was small and copy was crowded. During World War I, anti-German journalism had no place in the Advertiser. Bonython’s wife was of German descent and his daughters were loyal friends of German families. Always loyal to the British empire and all it stood for, the paper consistently carried news from ‘home’. Bonython sold the Adelaide Express in 1923 to James Edward Davidson, who established the afternoon tabloid, the News. Upon Davidson’s early death, Sir Keith Murdoch acquired it. In 1926, a syndicate that included W.L. Baillieu and W.S. Robinson, together with Murdoch, bought the West Australian. In 1929, Bonython sold the Advertiser for £1.25 million; two years later, the Register was subsumed into its old rival. Murdoch became chairman of Advertiser Newspapers Ltd, appointing Sir Lloyd Dumas as managing editor. Throughout the Depression, Dumas’s relationship with Labor Premier Lionel Hill was very close. The Advertiser established radio station 5AD (in 1930), as well as the television station ADS7 (1959); the small job-printing office at the Advertiser developed into the Griffin Press. From 1942, news replaced advertisements on the front page. The Sunday Advertiser appeared from 1953 to 1955, when it was merged with News Limited’s Sunday Mail. When Dumas retired as chairman of Advertiser Newspapers in 1967, the issued capital had

REFs: P. Lord, One Hundred and Twenty Five Years of the Advertiser (1983); E.J. Prest, Sir John Langdon Bonython (2011). E.J. PREST

AD VER TISIN G It is advertising that gives the commercial media their characteristic look and sound, and directs their content towards the audiences advertisers want to reach. The revenue from advertising provides the major source of income for media companies, whether large or small, and motivates their business strategies. They stand or fall on their capacity to provide the right kind of content to attract a certain kind of audience, for whose attention advertisers will pay. Thus it is advertisers that ultimately determine the direction and character of media development. Between the media and the advertisers lies an intermediary role for advertising agencies, which are dealers in media time and space, as well as the creators of advertising campaigns. What is referred to in everyday language as ‘advertising’ is usually this assemblage of media, advertisers and agencies that form the institutional foundation of commercial culture. In an age in which our cultural environment is energised by images of all kinds—especially those of advertising, carried by both ‘old’ media such as television, and ‘new’ media such as social networks—it may be hard to imagine that media advertising began with text only. In Australia, the first advertising medium was the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, which carried advertising on its front page from its first issue in 1803. The technology of letterpress printing limited advertising to text, and the advertisements themselves appeared in columns, like the classified advertising so dominant before the internet. Nevertheless, even though they had the character of public announcements (the original meaning of the word, ‘advertising’), they could still exhibit the colourful and persuasive language associated with advertising today. By the second half of the 19th century, newspaper technology had advanced to allow for display advertising, incorporating graphics and eventually photographs, which facilitated the expansion of newspaper readership and the commercialisation of the medium. Meanwhile,

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advertising a basic transition in the history of advertising, from information to persuasion. The era after World War I saw the advertising industry take an interest in psychology. In Australia, this was associated with George Elton Mayo, who went on to do most of his life’s work in the United States, symptomatic of the international character and breadth of a movement in which commerce sought to exploit the insights and methods of the social sciences. Post-war expansion of manufacturing and retailing, the intensive commercialisation of the press and the advent of radio all laid out the ground for the nascent consumer society, and provided fertile ground in which the innovations of media and market research could flourish. The offer of such apparently scientific services helped to associate advertising with contemporary values of professionalism and faith in modernity. The Great Depression meant that the 1930s was a decade of contraction and thrift rather than burgeoning consumption, but it nevertheless saw commercial radio come into its own as an advertising medium, with advertisers—through their agencies—providing programs that were quickly absorbed into popular culture. In the urban environment, this was the era of distinctive, hand-painted pub mirrors, and halcyon days for cinema, railway and travel posters. Australia’s involvement in World War II saw the advertising industry once more pressed into the service of the nation, formally integrated with the government’s war effort. In the decade following the end of the war, with war bonds campaign signs still on lamp-posts throughout the expanding suburbs, advertising revelled in newfound consumer prosperity, and commercial radio enjoyed its golden age. However, the advent of television in 1956 tended to favour larger advertisers and agencies, and this in turn attracted foreign companies—especially from the United States—thus marking the beginning of the thoroughgoing internationalisation of the industry. Ongoing social critique of advertising also stems from this era. Organised consumer demands for regulation to curb advertising’s perceived power to manipulate the masses became fused in public debate with a wider unease about ‘Americanisation’. By the 1970s, actual advertising campaigns had assumed a vigorously Australian character, belatedly undergoing the ‘creative revolution’ experienced in the United States and Britain during the previous decade. Some of the most notable examples came in the form of political advertising, as in the case of the ‘It’s Time’ campaign, credited with having a major impact on the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972; or of ‘social marketing’—that is, government-sponsored public service advertising, such as the ‘Life. Be in it’ public health campaign launched in 1975. Other memorable campaigns from this era drew upon the everyday vernacular of Australians to coin slogans or jingles, which

lithograph-printing technology favoured the development of the poster. In an age in which there were no private cars, and people travelled by train, advertising hoardings that lined railway station platforms were an important medium. Today, outdoor or ‘out-of-home’ is a still prevalent but minor form of advertising, relative to expenditure on communication media, but before radio and even the spread of the popular press, the poster was a major part of the urban landscape. The faded remnants of large mural advertisements painted directly on the walls of Victorian buildings can still be seen in the inner suburbs of Australia’s older cities. Early photographs of urban streetscapes tell us that commercial signage was an established feature of 19th-century towns and cities. While we may consider our contemporary media environment as saturated with advertising, it is easy to underestimate the very many forms, and the creative variety, that advertising assumed in previous centuries. The poster was of particular significance in the history of advertising development because it lent itself to more elaborate, varied and aesthetic forms of presentation than graphics in newspapers—not least through the use of colour. This gave rise to the concept of ‘commercial art’, and enhanced the role of the graphic artist as a complement to the copywriter. Artistic creativity was manifested not just in more obvious cultural forms like theatre posters, but applied to the advertising of products and services, laying the basis for what today we would recognise as branding. This was the era in which formerly generic products like tea or soap were being transformed into brands like Bushells or Sunlight. The availability of creativity for commercial purposes helped to show both manufacturers and retailers the usefulness of advertising. The period from Federation to World War I saw the beginnings of an advertising industry. This was when the first advertising agencies were set up, trade journals appeared and industry associations were formed, as imperial and other international clients such as British American Tobacco arrived to join Australian advertisers like MacRobertson’s Steam Confectionery Works to take advantage of urbanisation and the spread of the popular press in Australia. However, the incipient industry was dogged by the fact that so many other clients were purveyors of patent medicines. World War I was a blessing for the advertising industry, in the sense that it provided an opportunity to demonstrate the social benefits of advertising. These came in the form of military recruitment advertisements, and also in assuming a propaganda role—or ‘commercial patriotism’. A memorable example is the well-known poster series by Norman Lindsay in which the Germans are portrayed as bloodstained barbarians. The obvious emotional appeals made by this advertising have led several observers to argue that it represented

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advertising dustry, the effects of globalisation, deregulation and the economic downturn at the beginning of the decade all combined to make the industry more competitive, which in practice meant greater concentration and corporatisation. The beginning of the end of the dominance of television and the press as the preferred media of advertisers was already apparent before the end of the 1990s, but has since become a major challenge, both for those media and the advertising industry. With the advent of pay television, and especially the mass adoption of the internet, the new century has seen not ‘the end of mass media’, as some prophets would have it, but rather a desperate casting about for new business models by means of which the traditional media can achieve a transition to the online world. The advertising industry is necessarily caught up in this same process, seeking ways to connect to the ever more fragmented audience that once, almost as a nation, assembled before the television set. Free-to-air television continues to attract those advertisers who want access to large, undifferentiated audiences, but newspapers have lost their once-lucrative classified advertising to the internet, and are looking to facilitate online, paid delivery of their news and information content. The extraordinary rise of ‘search’ advertising on the internet, and its domination by Google, has posed a particular challenge for the advertising industry. Although they still can provide clients with specialised services for digital media, advertising agencies are in fear of being ‘disintermediated’—that is, advertisers can now place their ads directly with Google. The phenomenal growth of social media such as Facebook and Twitter is part of the problem, as the big-spending brands have been slow to embrace social networking. Although there have been some successful viral campaigns on the scale of Carlton & United’s ‘Big Ad’ in 2005, and the 2012 ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ campaign for Melbourne Metro Trains, advertisers are nervous about the damage that can be done to their brands by the same interactive process on media over which they have no control. In these circumstances, there has been something of a drift to ‘below the line’ marketing— that is, non-media forms of promotion—and to the commercial exploitation of traditional media in new ways, as with public relations, thus blurring the line between media content and the advertising it carries. In particular, sponsorship and product placement have been assuming ever more subtle forms, though the latter is clearly seen in reality television programs like Big Brother and any number of home renovation and cooking shows. Meanwhile, on the internet, traditional advertising has been adapted in the form of display ads and online video. Beyond the internet, outdoor advertising now extends to the use of huge video screens in downtown areas. Traces of the poster as a cultural form

then were absorbed back into it, such as ‘C’mon Aussie C’mon’ to promote World Series Cricket for the Nine Network. However, another catchphrase of the era, ‘Anyhow, have a Winfield’, popularised by comedian Paul Hogan, was destined to disappear from television. Winfield was a cigarette brand, and the banning of tobacco advertising from television was successfully pursued by both the Whitlam and Fraser governments despite organised protests from not only the tobacco lobby, but the advertising industry. Another celebrated regulatory cause of the era was ‘sexism’ in advertising, in which the legacy of ‘permissiveness’ from the 1960s collided with the feminist movement of the 1970s. As advertisements became bolder in their use of women’s bodies, women’s organisations became more sharply critical. Despite self-regulatory responses from the industry, most formal complaints about advertising continue to focus on representations of gender and sexuality today. In the 1980s, objections to both tobacco advertising and sexism took on an activist edge. In particular, anonymous members of BUGA-UP (Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) literally took aim at outdoor advertising billboards across the nation with paint bombs and ‘creative defacement’. Media attention to this helped strengthen the arm of state governments to implement bans on all forms of tobacco advertising by the end of the decade. Once again, similar ‘culture jamming’ by women activists has taken place without much result. The representation of homosexuality in advertising became another issue of the 1980s, in this case prompted by a television commercial, ‘The Grim Reaper’, part of a public health advertising campaign to raise awareness about HIV-AIDS. The gay community was concerned that the dramatic ad gave the impression that it was gays who were a health threat to society. Less socially sensitive—but still controversial—public service advertising dating from the same era showed graphic traffic accident and hospital scenes in the interests of improving road safety. The advertising industry became more globalised during the 1980s, and by the end of the decade attention turned to the regulation of Australian content in television commercials. The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal had maintained a rule going back to television’s early days that at least 80 per cent of every television commercial shown had to be Australian made. This was challenged by global advertisers and agencies, and in the more deregulatory climate of the 1990s the regulation was relaxed to allow television channels to show up to 20 per cent of imported commercials. This did not result in the devastation the local production industry had feared, but it did mean that Australians would hear American accents in the commercial breaks as well as in the programs. In the advertising in-

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advertising agencies instigation of the press, a standard commission and accreditation system was introduced, while the advertisers set up a board to audit newspaper circulation. These developments meant the press could determine which agencies could be paid commission, and how much, while the advertisers were able to check on the newspapers’ claims to circulation. The 1930s was also the decade in which radio became a viable commercial medium, and with it came radio audience measurement, as well as public opinion research. A key figure here was W.A. McNair, who worked for JWT and later was to found a major ratings measurement company. JWT was a great influence in propagating commercialised social science, including an empirical approach to market as well as media research. JWT also brought a new business model for commercialising radio, in which agencies assumed the role of program producers on behalf of advertisers as sponsors. Embraced by Lintas from the United Kingdom as well as the larger Australian agencies, this sponsorship model was to endure until the television era. Especially after 1941, as the advertising industry joined the war effort, the Colgate-Palmolive Radio Production Unit, the radio production division of the largest Australian agency, George Patterson, distinguished itself by producing popular patriotic radio programs to sell war bonds, while JWT made propaganda films for the government. However, the agencies’ experience at the hands of government during the war led to the formation of the Australian Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) in 1946. Advertising agencies thrived in the post-war boom and in the lead-up to the introduction of television in 1956, but the advent of the new medium brought with it an unprecedented internationalisation of the business. Television had proven its commercial potential in the United States, so Australian agencies were receptive to the incursion of US agencies; this began in 1959, when McCann Erickson arrived to buy out Hansen Rubensohn in Sydney. As well as the US agencies’ experience with television, Australian agencies were well disposed to mergers because the newcomers brought their big clients with them. Indeed, some US agencies came to Australia in order to keep the business of clients they served in America, or even to capture those clients back from Australian agencies. This was the case when Ted Bates bought a majority share in George Patterson in 1964. Later in the 1960s, Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam opened up wholly owned offices in Australia, while BBDO made a more subtle entry by taking up a minority share in Melbourne-based John Clemenger in 1972. British agencies also joined the influx, notably with Masius Wynne-Williams acquiring Goldberg Advertising in Sydney and Paton Advertising in Melbourne.

can be found in such advertising, and posters themselves have survived—such as those seen on inner-city walls for clubs, concerts and other events. Also on the street, high rates of mobile phone penetration with the latest generation of smartphones, and the access they give to entertainment and news content, have made mobile advertising the current frontier, particularly for ‘location-based’ targeting. The advent of internet advertising has given rise to new regulatory issues, notably that of ‘behavioural targeting’—that is, how advertisers might use the information users surrender about themselves, knowingly or not, in the course of their online interaction. Other contemporary issues of public concern to consumers include the role attributed to television advertising of unhealthy food and drink as a cause in the growth of obesity, especially in children, and more generally, advertising’s implication in the encouragement of over-consumption and the consequent degradation of the environment. These are issues that put the advertising industry on the defensive, not only against government, but also against the community, advocacy and professional groups that have mobilised, along with consumer activists and critics of commercialised culture in general. REFs: R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); J. Sinclair, Advertising, the Media and Globalisation (2012) and Images Incorporated (1987). JOHN SINCLAIR

A D V ERT I S I NG AGENCIES The first advertising agencies appeared in Australia just after Federation. Whereas agents had sold newspaper space on commission to advertisers for most of the 19th century, agencies such as Thomas Miller in Sydney and Paton Advertising Service in Melbourne now offered advertisers ‘full service’ by creating advertisements with copy and images as well as placing them in the press. These remain the two classic functions of advertising agencies: ‘creative’ and ‘media-buying’. By World War I, advertising had its own industry associations and trade press, and advertising’s role in military recruitment helped establish its credentials as a social institution. By 1923, there were an estimated 2000 ‘advertising agents’ in Australia, but the decade saw an increasing concentration of national advertising expenditure going into the hands of the larger agencies in Sydney and Melbourne, including Catts-Patterson and Berry Price. By the end of the decade, they were joined by Goldberg Advertising from New Zealand, and the first international agencies, Samson Clark from the United Kingdom, and Campbell Ewald and J. Walter Thompson (JWT) from the United States. Despite the Great Depression, the industry became consolidated in important ways: at the

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advertising agency organisations accounts of the global brands. By the end of 2010, with the sale of Mitchell & Partners to the global media-buying group Aegis Media, and the majority buyout of Clemenger by BBDO (Omnicom Group), the last two enduring bastions of participation by Australian principals and staff at the upper end of the advertising agency business had surrendered. We can expect that small agencies will continue to emerge, however—both in response to such consolidation, and in order to take advantage of the new specialisations and more fluid marketing practices being opened up by the digital age. Significantly, the agencies’ peak body, the Advertising Federation of Australia, renamed itself the Communications Council in 2009 to better reflect the absorption of advertising into the broad range of integrated marketing communications.

Not all Australian agencies welcomed this transformation. An Australian-owned Advertising Agencies Council (Austac) was formed in 1972, in opposition to the international agencies’ dominance of the 4As, but within a few years the division was largely healed by the creation of a new peak body, the Advertising Federation of Australia. There were larger changes to come, as the internationalisation of the 1960s and 1970s gave way to the globalisation of the 1980s. This was characterised by two main developments in the ownership and management of advertising agencies. First, certain UK, US and French agencies achieved an immense increase in the capital they had for expansion by floating themselves on the stock exchange—traditionally, agencies had been owned by their principals. Second, this capital enabled huge buyouts of agencies on a global scale, and a fundamental reorganisation of how they were managed. Notably, there was the formation of global ‘mega-groups’ of agencies. The British agency Saatchi & Saatchi set the pace in these changes, and when it bought the US-based international agency network Ted Bates in 1986, George Patterson and The Campaign Palace were brought into the Saatchi & Saatchi stable. Accompanying this process, and becoming consolidated into the deregulated and less profitable era of the 1990s, was the organisational division of agency functions into those that offered creative and related services, and those that specialised in media-buying and planning alone. There had been Australian agencies that had anticipated this trend in the 1970s—Dennis Merchant’s in Sydney and Harold Mitchell’s in Melbourne—but it was established on a global scale by the British and French-based mega-groups. Similarly, there were some distinguished creative ‘hot-shops’ in Australia prior to the era of globalisation that had achieved a strong resonance with Australian popular culture, notably SPASM (Singleton, Palmer, Strauss and McAllan) and Mojo in Sydney and MDA in Melbourne; however, like The Campaign Palace, these ultimately were absorbed by one or the other of the global groups. Such incorporation of Australian-owned agencies into the global holding companies is the principal effect of globalisation in the advertising agency business, but it is important to appreciate how much the process is driven by the globalisation of the advertisers. In particular, it is the global advertisers’ strong preference for ‘global alignment’—that is, having the same agency act for them in all the markets where they do business—and their equally powerful resolve not to deal with any agency that handles a competitor’s account that largely determine the pattern of local–global relations in the advertising industry. While a host of smaller agencies can survive with their small- to medium-enterprise clients, the larger agencies are constantly transforming themselves to attract and hold the high-profile

REFs: K. Cousins, ‘What Lured Them to Australia?’, in Advertising News (1978); R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); J. Sinclair, Images Incorporated (1987). JOHN SINCLAIR

AD VER TISIN G AG EN C Y O R G AN ISATIO N S The range of organisations that have represented the interests of advertising agencies reflect the agencies’ changing status. ‘Full-service’ agencies only emerged in Australia at the beginning of the 20th century, with the first successful moves to form an organisation to serve advertising agency interests occurring in 1914. The Victorian Ad Men’s Club provided a forum to discuss issues affecting the industry. Similar state-based institutes followed nationally in the inter-war period alongside a loose federal organisation, the Advertising Association of Australia. While these organisations staged advertising conventions throughout the 1920s, their diverse membership saw the growing number of agencies form their own organisations to protect their unique interests. Agencies that had been accredited by the assorted state press organisations simultaneously sought to protect their hard-earned status and to enhance their interests by forming their own exclusive associations. Advertising students also formed their own organisations and produced their own publications, while social organisations such as the Sydney Publicity Club (est. 1929) provided a similar networking and socialising forum for advertising professionals. During World War II, government regulations on advertising imagery, newsprint rationing and acute human resources shortages underscored the need for a national body to represent the agencies’ interests. Uniting the states’ accredited agency organisations, the Australian Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) was formed in 1946. The 4As actively promoted

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advertising periodicals advertisements from agencies initially, but lasted less than a year. Newspaper News, a monthly launched in 1928, was another of the early independent journals. It was founded by David Yaffa (1893– 1947), who had started Yaffa Syndicate in 1925 to provide comic strips, syndicated articles and photographs to publishers, and contained specialist information targeted at the four main sectors of the advertising industry: advertisers (manufacturers and distributors), agencies, the media and services. It helped put buyers in touch with sellers, which in turn generated advertising revenue—particularly from the media, keen to influence where advertisers and agencies placed their advertising. Within two years, Yaffa had eliminated two potential rivals, reflecting a broader consolidation of the mainstream press. Advertising in Australia was purchased and closed down, with William Mitchell becoming the Victorian correspondent of Newspaper News, and its premises becoming the Melbourne office of Yaffa Syndicate. The Advertisers’ Monthly was purchased and closed down in 1930. Despite its title, Newspaper News reported on all forms of media, including radio and outdoor advertising (posters, hoardings and billboards). However, the imminent arrival of television saw a real competitor appear in 1950, in the form of the weekly Broadcasting & Television, which soon shortened its name to B&T. Published by Greater Publications and founded by Eric Solomon, B&T also reported on advertisers, agencies and the media. It soon became known as the bible of the radio and television industries, in the same way that Newspaper News was the bible of the publishing industry. Newspaper News tried a number of tactics to counteract the threat. In 1957, it became a fortnightly publication and launched a sister title, Radio Television News. With the two publishing on alternate fortnights, it had a weekly presence to match that of B&T. In 1964, Radio Television News was dropped and Advertising in Australia was revived as a supplement to Newspaper News, but lasted only two years. Newspaper News became Advertising & Newspaper News in 1969 and Advertising News in 1971. B&T consolidated its position through this period, while Newspaper News experimented with coverage of fringe areas such as printing and graphic arts. Both publications benefited from the post-war economic boom. The rise of consumerism, followed by the advent of television in 1956—and especially colour television in 1973—led to large increases in advertising expenditure. Through the 1970s and 1980s, advertising agencies made huge profits and stunning advertisements, with agencies like The Campaign Palace and Mojo achieving worldwide recognition. B&T and Advertising News rode the bandwagon and switched their focus to greater emphasis on agencies. Advertising

agency interests through lobbying, publications and conventions. However, growing concerns about the larger agencies’ perceived dominance and their foreign ownership status led to the creation of the Australian-owned Advertising Agencies Council (Austac) in 1972. The ensuing civil war left all agencies exposed, and in 1974 the Advertising Federation of Australia (AFA) was created to bring both sides together. In addition to uniting the nation’s agencies, the AFA worked to protect agency interests from government, advertisers and consumerist organisations by championing self-regulation. It also supported the Media Council of Australia’s accreditation system. However, the void caused by the abandonment of accreditation system in 1996 required the AFA to refocus its energies on enhancing advertising’s reputation through various Codes of Practice, educational programs and awards. Industry fragmentation and the rapid expansion of new media outlets in the 2000s changed the advertising landscape. Concerned that such diversification was creating a divided industry, the AFA joined forces with the Australasian Art Writers and Art Directors Association (AWARD), the Account Planning Group and the Australasian Promotional Marketing Association in 2010 to form the Communications Council. REFs: R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); http://www.communicationscouncil.org.au. ROBERT CRAWFORD

A D V ERT I S I NG PERI O DICALS The earliest advertising industry publications in Australia were Good Advertising: A Journal for Advertisers (1906) and Reason Why (1908–09), both published in Sydney, and Ad Writer (1909), published in Melbourne. Trade publications such as the Draper of Australasia (1901–66) also featured regular advertising columns, as well as articles from the leading US advertising publication, Printer’s Ink. It would take some time for more enduring advertising periodicals to emerge in Australia. The Waddy: For Driving Home Club Facts, the official organ of the Ad Men’s Institute of New South Wales, was launched in 1919. Advertising in Australia was established by the Victorian Advertising Club in 1921, and taken over by William Mitchell in 1926. They promoted the benefits of advertising to retailers, distributors and manufacturers, and carried news about advertising agencies and new techniques in copywriting and art direction. The 1920s were boom years for the Australian print media, and also saw the establishment of radio broadcasting; this growth was paralleled in the advertising industry. In 1925, Sydney printing company Deaton & Spencer launched the monthly Type & Talk: A Journal on Advertising and Selling. It was well supported by

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advice columns Advisory Authority was established in 1973 as a response to a perceived rise in consumer dissatisfaction. Renamed the Advertising Standards Council (ASC) shortly afterwards, it received public and industry complaints about advertisements, and determined whether the offending advertisements breached the MCA’s Advertising Code of Ethics. Councillors were evenly divided between representatives from industry and the community. The ASC was nevertheless criticised for its dismissal of complaints. However, its collapse in 1996 followed the MCA’s decision to disband itself in the face of an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) created the Advertising Standards Bureau to fill this gap. It would be governed by the AANA’s Code of Ethics. From January 1998, public complaints were handled by the Advertising Standards Board (ASB), while the Advertising Claims Board handled industry grievances. The ASB’s composition was more representative of the community than that of its predecessor, while periodic advertising campaigns actively encouraged audiences to take a stance on offensive advertisements. Its public presence was further enhanced by the launch of a website that clearly outlined the ASB’s remit and the complaints procedure, and provided access to each case report. In its first decade, the ASB received an average of 2388 complaints per annum. The primary issues attracting complaint have been discrimination/ vilification, sex/sexuality/nudity, health and safety, and violence. Decisions concerning controversial advertisements frequently attract media attention and debate.

agencies became shops, creative leaders became gurus and clients became accounts. Competition between the two publications grew more intense as both joined the Audit Bureau of Circulations and were independently audited. In 1984, Advertising News became AdNews, overtaking B&T in paid circulation in 1990. By 1999 it was almost 50 per cent ahead. B&T then dropped its paid circulation audit, started sending out numerous free copies and switched to a distribution audit through the Circulations Audit Board (CAB), enabling it to claim higher circulation. The battle was won by AdNews after advertisers preferred the value of paid (solicited) circulation versus free (unsolicited) distribution. In 2005, B&T attempted to fight back by reapplying for an Audit Bureau of Circulations audit. Yaffa Publishing successfully challenged the application in the NSW Supreme Court. That success was short-lived, however, with AdNews withdrawing from the ABC in 2010 and, like B&T, converting to a CAB audit. While the Sydney-based AdNews and B&T continued to fight it out, a third contender emerged from the west. Campaign Brief: Western Australia’s Advertising and Media Magazine started in 1985 as a monthly, launching an Australasian edition in 1987. It focused on the creative rather than the business or media-buying aspects of advertising, and is now published in print six times a year. Meanwhile, B&T continued to reduce frequency, changing to fortnightly in 2008, monthly in 2013, and bi-monthly in 2014. B&T was the first advertising journal to establish its own website and daily email newsletter, in 2003. AdNews followed in 2004. Campaign Brief took a different approach, establishing only a blog. The online publication Mumbrella (‘everything under Australia’s media and marketing umbrella’) was launched by Tim Burrowes, formerly group editor at B&T, in 2008, achieving high traffic levels and reader interaction. With advertising revenue as well as eyeballs now shifting steadily from print to online, competition in the field has never been stronger.

REF: R. Crawford and R. Spence-Stone, ‘Upholding Whose Values? Australia’s Advertising Standards Bodies, 1974–2009’, Jnl of Historical Research in Marketing, 4(2) (2012). ROBERT CRAWFORD

AD VIC E C O LU M N S Advice columns in newspapers and magazines offer readers an opportunity to write in for advice on their personal concerns and receive a response. The columnists are promoted as experts, offering commonsense advice. While some believe that the dilemmas posed are fabricated, many columnists claim they are overwhelmed with readers’ questions. Contributors are identified with a name or initials, and an epithet like ‘Desperate’, or just ‘Name Supplied’. Increasingly, responses to letters are accompanied by contact details for support groups. The success of the columns relies on the regular columnists, many of whom have become household names. Occasionally, columns have needed to survive multiple authorships as individuals retired or were replaced, and have maintained their continuity through a specific language register and a consistent approach.

REFs: R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); Yaffa Publishing Group Records (Sydney). JEREMY LIGHT

ADVERT I S I NG STANDARDS BOARD Until the 1970s, the regulation of Australian advertising standards regulation was conducted on an ad hoc basis. The creation of Advertising Standards Council, and later the Advertising Standards Board, demonstrated a formal commitment to establishing and maintaining community standards in advertising that remained self-governed. Funded by the Media Council of Australia (MCA), the Australian Advertising Standards

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advocate

(burnie) problems. The Australian Women’s Weekly’s ‘Dear Berry’ started in 1993. Woman’s Day has drawn on actor Georgie Parker, as well as clairvoyant Fiona McCallum, to answer readers’ problems. Nene King joined New Idea as a columnist in 2011. In contrast to the feminised realm of women’s magazines, Fairfax Media has used Danny Katz, writing as ‘Modern Guru’ in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend, to solve ethics and etiquette dilemmas. Online columns offer users more chances to receive advice, post comments and interact with others. New Idea through Yahoo!7 asks readers to email experts for advice on personal life, money, medical matters, nutrition and cooking. Some columns with origins in traditional media have online versions, but others are found only in cyberspace. News.com.au has been inviting its readers to ‘Ask Bossy’ (Kate de Brito) for ‘the advice your friends and relatives are probably too polite to give’ since 2007. Australian journalist Samantha Brett produced an online blog on dating and relationships, ‘Ask Sam’, which was also available on the Age and Sydney Morning Herald websites for six years until 2012. She has also written advice columns for Cosmopolitan and FHM.

The earliest precursor to the agony column appeared in John Dunton’s Athenian Mercury, first published in 1691 in England, where readers could direct questions on a range of topics, including ethical conduct, to a panel of experts. Other early English publications offering advice included Female Spectator in the 18th century and Annie Swan’s column, ‘Over the Teacups’, in Woman at Home in the late 1890s. Nineteenth-century Australian newspapers published ladies’ columns offering advice on domestic concerns as well as personal issues like how wives could make themselves indispensable. They included homilies directed to ‘young ladies who are engaged’ or to ‘marriageable girls’ on topics like social conduct or choosing the best marriage partner. They also responded directly to letters. In the early 1900s, the Weekly Times (often referred to as the ‘Bible of the Bush’) offered a variety of advice on topics relating to legal issues, medical matters and farm management. From the 1920s, the Sunday Sun included a Dorothy Dix column, syndicated from America, which answered queries and offered advice on personal issues and etiquette. In 1926, the Daily Telegraph appointed Millicent Preston Stanley, the first female MLA in New South Wales, as women’s editor to contribute articles and answer correspondents. The Labor Daily dedicated a section to report on organisations of particular interest to women, among the home hints and fashion, and by 1938 included Kathleen Carson’s columns answering readers’ personal problems. Advice programs, such as Norman Banks’ Husbands and Wives and Frank Sturge Harty’s Between Ourselves, began to appear on (principally) commercial radio. The first version of the panel program Beauty and the Beast, with Eric Baume as the ‘Beast’, appeared on the Seven Network in 1963; the show has returned a number of times. There have been several long-running columns in Australian women’s magazines, notably a version of the ‘Dorothy Dix’ column in Woman’s Day in the 1950s and 1960s. Prominent magazine advice columns have included Dorothy Drain’s ‘It Seems to Me’ (1947–62) in the Australian Women’s Weekly. Louise Hunter answered letters in ‘Here’s Your Answer’ in the ‘Teenagers’ Weekly’ insert in the Australian Women’s Weekly from 1959. In 1956, visiting marriage guidance expert, Dr David Mace, addressed Weekly readers’ problems on love and marriage. Kate Samperi made much of the fact she was a social worker in the ‘Dear Kate’ feature (1970–93) in Woman’s Day. Further expertise was apparent in Dolly, which included a ‘Dear Dolly Doctor’ column from the 1970s. Advice columns were a source of coded sex education before this was widely available elsewhere. New Idea published Dulcie Boling’s ‘Let’s Talk’ in the 1990s, using readers to solve

REFs: S. Sheridan et al., Who Was That Woman? (2002); R.B. Walker, Yesterday’s News (1980). SUSAN McKAY

AD VO C ATE (B U R N IE) Robert Harris, formerly a machinist at the Melbourne Argus, joined his two sons, Charles and Robert Jr, in Burnie to publish the twice-weekly Wellington Times from 1 October 1890. In 1897, the paper’s name was changed to the Emu Bay Times and North West and West Coast Advocate. In January 1899, Charles launched the North Western Advocate, published daily in Devonport. After only 11 months of separate publication, the two papers were combined under the masthead the North Western Advocate and Emu Bay Times and published tri-weekly. On 2 December 1918, the Times was renamed the Advocate, and published daily. Robert died in 1904 and Charles died in 1913, having nominated third son Russell as his successor as chairman and managing director of Harris and Company Ltd, and second son Len as deputy. Third son Selby was given responsibility for commercial printing. Russell nursed the company through the difficult war years, and by 1920 the Advocate was the sole daily newspaper in the north-west and west coast region of Tasmania. In 1928, the company purchased a four-unit Battle Creek, Michigan rotary press. The establishment of a newsprint mill in Burnie in the late 1930s stimulated the growth of the Advocate’s circulation to around 10,000.

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afternoon newspapers Australian newspaper scene, and particularly to Melbourne readers. From 1988 unti 1992, what is often referred to as ‘death in the afternoon’ resulted in the closure or merger of newspapers in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. The Adelaide News was the last stand-alone, paid afternoon newspaper in Australia when it was closed in March 1992. The main factors behind this trend were the growth of evening television news and current affairs programs, and changing transport trends. Changes in newspaper reading habits also meant that morning newspapers were being read much later in the day. The trend was the same around the English-speaking world, with sharp declines in the United States and the United Kingdom. Oddly, several afternoon provincial daily newspapers in New Zealand survived well into the 21st century. Although morning publications have dominated the newspaper industry in Australia, afternoon dailies have made a significant contribution dating back to the mid-19th century. Sydney’s first afternoon paper, the Daily News and Evening Chronicle, appeared in 1848 but lasted only a short time. The Evening News (1867–1931) was more enduring. The Sydney Morning Herald briefly published the Afternoon Telegram in 1870. In Melbourne, 1867 saw the launch of the Evening Star (1867–69), the first Australian newspaper printed on Australian-made paper with Australian-made ink. In 1869, the Herald moved to afternoon publication in Melbourne; it was the oldest surviving afternoon newspaper in Australia when it merged with the Sun News-Pictorial in 1990. The Herald saw off what turned out to be a brief challenge in 1969 when David Syme & Co. Ltd, publisher of the Age, launched the tabloid Newsday. Not only was Newsday up against a fierce and respected competitor, it appeared at a time when afternoon daily circulations were peaking and about to begin their rapid decline. That same year, John Fairfax & Sons launched an evening daily, the Canberra News, which closed in 1974. The fiercest newspaper contest came in Sydney in the closing decades of the afternoon daily in Australia. The participants were the Daily Mirror, established by the legendary Ezra Norton in 1941 and subsequently sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, and the Sun, founded in 1910 and owned by the John Fairfax Group when it closed in 1988 after a disastrous privatisation of the company the previous year. In a sign of what was to come, both papers had killed off their Saturday editions in 1974. The last Saturday evening issue in Australia was the Herald in Melbourne on 20 December 1986, and Sydney ceased to have afternoon dailies after News Limited amalgamated its two Melbourne papers as the Herald-Sun and its Sydney papers as the Daily Telegraph Mirror

Len’s son, Ian, and Selby’s son, Geoff, joined the company in the mid-1930s, and in 1957 the Advocate was the first paper in Tasmania to use spot colour and photographic film in photo-engraving. The company installed a photo-engraving plant in 1951. In 1968, the Advocate became the first daily newspaper in Australia to convert to lithograph (web offset) printing. The fourth generation of the Harris family took the helm in 1964 when Len and Selby retired—Geoff took the chair and Lloyd became the newspaper manager. Ian was manager in Devonport and Geoff in commercial printing. The remaining member of the fourth generation, Jim, joined the company as circulation manager. The company converted to phototypesetting in 1976 and in 1981, with all operations computerised. By the early 2000s, the majority of news and advertising photos in the Advocate were in full colour. The Advocate was an industry leader for many years in its role as a regional daily newspaper. It won five regional newspaper industry awards for excellence and led the way in terms of technical change—among other innovations, it was the first paper in Tasmania to use facsimile transmission of classifieds. The Advocate’s circulation peaked at almost 27,000 in the 1980s. Lloyd’s fifth-generation son, Nigel, was appointed manager of the Advocate in 1994 and served until his retirement in 1999. Geoff’s son Paul joined the company as secretary in 1975 and served as managing director from 1991 until his retirement in 2000. By 2003, with no family member working in the company and some shareholders wanting to convert their shares to cash, the board decided to sell the company as a going concern to Rural Press Limited. In 2009, when printing was centralised in Launceston, the Advocate’s press was dismantled and sent to New Zealand. In 2013, the newspaper’s weekday circulation was 18,865. REF: K. Pink, And Wealth for Toil (1990). LLOYD HARRIS

AFT ERNOON NEWSPAPERS There is no more striking example of the rise and fall of the afternoon daily newspaper in Australia than the Melbourne Herald. It was founded as a semi-weekly in 1840, but for most of its life the paper was an afternoon broadsheet. By the early 1970s, its audited daily circulation had passed 500,000, after which it began a steady decline. In October 1990, the Herald ceased publication but its name (and some of its character) were merged with its sister newspaper, a morning tabloid, the Sun News-Pictorial. That paper is now called the Herald Sun. It appears six mornings a week and also has a Sunday edition. The Herald, noted for its foreign news and commentary, reporting of federal politics, and comprehensive local and sporting coverage, was a major loss to the 11

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reverted to afternoon publication. From 1991, the NT News was once again a morning paper. At the end of 2013, Australia had 10 metropolitan and 36 provincial dailies, all of them morning publications. Free commuter dailies, aimed at 18–24-year-old readers, are the last link with the once vigorous afternoon daily newspaper scene. They are published in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on weekdays.

from 8 October 1990. They were relaunched as 24-hour newspapers, but before long reverted to morning publication only, as well as a return, in the case of the Sydney publication, to the Daily Telegraph masthead. In Brisbane, the Telegraph was an afternoon newspaper first published in 1872. It began as a broadsheet, switching to tabloid in 1948 and ceasing publication in 1988. The Brisbane Sun stepped into the vacant spot, moving from morning to afternoon publication to do so, but it too had folded by the end of 1991. In Perth, the Daily News was published as an afternoon paper from 1882 to 1990, and traced its origins back to the 1840s. In a sense, the most historic of Australia’s afternoon newspapers was the News in Adelaide. It was launched in 1923 and was the last of the metropolitan afternoon dailies to close, in March 1992. A young Rupert Murdoch inherited control of the paper when his father died in 1952. From these frail roots, he built News Corp, one of the largest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world. Afternoon dailies in Australia were not confined to the major cities. They were scattered throughout provincial centres as well. In Victoria, the gold mining cities of Bendigo and Ballarat got their first afternoon papers in the early 1860s: the Evening News (Bendigo, 1862–93) and the Evening Post (Ballarat, 1863–94), followed by the Evening Echo (1895–1929). Between 1888 and 1897, there was an afternoon paper in the port city of Geelong. At the other end of the country, in Charters Towers, North Queensland, the Evening News appeared briefly in the early 1890s and the Evening Telegraph from 1901–21. Afternoon dailies were published in centres such as Rockhampton (until 1941), Griffith (1971) and Innisfail (1973). In Toowoomba, the Darling Downs Star was launched as an afternoon paper in 1955, against the morning Toowoomba Chronicle (1858– ), but it ceased daily publication in 1959. The Newcastle Sun (est. 1918), an afternoon daily, closed in 1980. Some provincial afternoon papers switched from afternoon to morning publication—for example, in Dubbo (1984), Goulburn (1987) and Maitland (1989). In 1972, the Shepparton News switched from tri-weekly to daily (afternoon) publication and then, as the last afternoon provincial daily in Australia, moved to morning publication in 1990. Historian Rod Kirkpatrick notes that while the Northern Territory News is one of the handful of Australian dailies that have changed from afternoon to morning publication, it is probably the only one that has done this twice. The NT News started life as a weekly in 1952 and became an afternoon daily in 1964. Between 1968 and 1974 it was a morning daily, but in February 1975, in a move to overcome distribution and other problems following Cyclone Tracy, it

REFs: H. Mayer, The Press in Australia (1968); R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Afternoon Newspapers’, PANPA Bulletin (June 2006); R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Press Timeline, 1951–2008’, compiled for Australian Newspaper History Group (2008). JOHN TIDEY

AG E The Age was founded in Melbourne during the Victorian gold rush, first appearing on 17 October 1854. Its founders were Francis and Henry Cooke, merchants and non-conformist Protestants who came to Victoria from New Zealand. The new morning daily was a creature of its times, a paper of politics concerned with liberal rights and animated by social questions. Its early tone owed much to editors David Blair, a teetotal Irish Protestant, and Ebenezer Syme, a one-time Unitarian minister. Its religiosity soon faded, but its interest in politics and social reform endured, as did its sense that it was an independent voice in Victorian affairs. However, the new paper had been rushed into print provisionally funded at a time when gold yields had faltered. It struggled to compete with the established Argus and Melbourne Morning Herald, and its future was not secured until Syme’s brother, David, took control in 1860. David Syme was a post-Millian liberal and canny capitalist who advocated reform and responsible development. Assisted by able editors such as James Harrison, A.L. Windsor and (Gottlieb) Frederick Schuler, he cemented the Age’s influence partly through his friendship with Alfred Deakin, the liberal politician and erstwhile Age journalist who became prime minister in 1903. At the heart of Syme’s program was protectionism, a policy that tied tariffs and subsidies for local industry to fair pay and working conditions, and formed part of the ‘Australian settlement’ after Federation. Geoffrey Syme succeeded his father as editorial manager in 1908, continuing the paper’s commitment to social liberal causes. L.V. Biggs followed Schuler as editor in 1926. Circulation peaked at more than 150,000 between 1915 and 1919, falling to 123,500 by 1928 as the revitalised Herald and Weekly Times gained ascendancy and economic depression loomed. Until World War II, the Age’s language and look remained old-fashioned; on 29 December 1941, news finally pushed classified advertising off the front page. Yet inter-war politicians who dismissed the Age did so at their peril. In the 1920s, the paper encouraged Victorian rebel liberals and supported Labor 12

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its new parent’s ownership turmoil after 1987. Age staff responded robustly, intermittently reviving a public campaign to ‘Maintain Your Age’. For almost two decades, there had been a comfortable alignment between the progressive values of the Age and successive Liberal and Labor state governments. But the paper’s failure to define Victorian Labor’s unravelling economic management in the late 1980s contributed to its conflict with combative Liberal leader Jeff Kennett. Within a month of Kennett’s landslide election victory in October 1992, the paper changed editors; under Alan Kohler, it became a site of struggle between neo-liberal reformers and supporters of the paper’s traditional meliorism. The Age ran through three editors (Michael Smith, Kohler and Bruce Guthrie) between 1989 and 1997. The paper’s last significant circulation milestones were achieved during this period of editorial instability. The Sunday Age was launched in August 1989 with Steve Harris as editor, and thrived. It produced two women editors, Jill Baker (1995–98) and Gay Alcorn (2008–12). Harris was publisher and editor-in-chief of the Age and the Sunday Age from 1997 to 2001. He was succeeded as editor-in-chief by Greg Hywood (2001–03), then Michael Gawenda (Age editor and associate publisher since 1997), Andrew Jaspan (2004–08), Paul Ramadge (2008–12) and Andrew Holden (2012– ). In 1995, the Age became the first major Australian newspaper to put news online. In 1999, plans for a state-of-the-art printing plant at Tullamarine were unveiled. Its landmark site at 250 Spencer Street was put up for sale, and in December 2009 the newspaper’s offices moved to Media House at 655 Collins Street. By this time, the media battlefield was being redrawn by the ascendancy of digital media and the global financial crisis. In 2011, Hywood—who had re-emerged as Fairfax Media’s chief executive—signalled that the publisher was focused on a digital future. In June 2012, the company announced 1900 voluntary redundancies and the planned closure of its Tullamarine and Chullora printing plants. On one dramatic day, Paul Ramadge and his Sydney counterparts resigned. Many distinguished journalists subsequently left the Age, including its long-time political editor Michelle Grattan, but the newspaper continued its strong commitment to investigative journalism. As Fairfax rationalised its marketing and distribution of print editions, driving readers towards digital versions, average sales of the printed Age plummeted to 144,277 (Monday–Friday, March 2013). As predicted, digital sales rose dramatically after the introduction of a paywall, but by December 2013 not even 131,000 paid-for print editions were reaching readers (Monday–Friday).

premier Edmond (Ned) Hogan. It also bitterly and effectively opposed the Bruce Coalition government’s plans to abolish the federal machinery of industrial arbitration. The paper was an early supporter of Victorian conservative (Sir) Robert Menzies, particularly under H.A.M. Campbell, editor from 1939. Geoffrey’s passing in 1942 extinguished the tone of indignant zeal synonymous with the Syme name. The Age’s transformation was completed by post-war commercial reform that turned the business into a public company. Campbell served as deputy chairman as well as editor until his death in 1959. He was a personal admirer of both Menzies and Labor’s John Curtin, and placed great store on fair journalism. His Age supported Menzies’ 1951 referendum to ban the Communist Party, but also launched the left-wing historian Manning Clark as a commentator in the mainstream press. When Menzies described the Age as his favourite newspaper, it merely confirmed for some observers that editorial sclerosis had set in. David Syme’s great-grandson, Ranald Macdonald, became managing director in 1964. He installed Graham Perkin as editor in place of Campbell’s successor, Keith Sinclair, guaranteeing him editorial independence. The result was a journalistic renaissance that became a touchstone of the Age’s identity. The paper undid its Liberal Party entanglements and returned to its crusading roots. It became a natural home for cartoonists of a social and political bent, including Les Tanner, Bruce Petty, Michael Leunig, Ron Tandberg and John Spooner. Circulation surged. After Perkin’s untimely death in 1975, a series of editors followed in quick succession: Les Carlyon, Greg Taylor, and distinguished British journalist Michael Davie. Most notable was Creighton Burns, who had added intellectual gloss to Perkin’s Age. As editor (1981–89), Burns campaigned for the introduction of freedom of information legislation, and ignited one of the biggest political and legal controversies of the late 20th century by publishing the ‘Age Tapes’, transcripts of illegal phone taps by NSW police. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Age evolved into an urbane paper in which women writers figured significantly. At its best, it was a mirror of the world and of Melbourne’s distinctive politics, culture, sport and humour. Its large sections, including Green Guide, Epicure and Accent, contributed much to its lively, prosperous character. In September 1981, the paper’s average daily circulation (Monday–Saturday) peaked at 251,178. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Age was battered by ownership changes, financial recession, circulation pressures, and severe tensions between management, editors and journalists. John Fairfax & Sons’ friendly takeover of the paper in 1983 led gradually to increased sharing of resources with the Sydney Morning Herald and also exposed the Melbourne daily to

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aggregation Queensland, northern and southern New South Wales, and Victoria; this was in contrast to only two services under supplementary licences. Competition policy was also influential: greater benefits were expected for viewers from competitive services under the aggregation model, while the supplementary licence scheme would entrench the existing regional commercial television monopolies then in place. However, a form of the supplementary licence scheme did continue in some smaller markets, such as Broken Hill, Griffith/the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area and regional South Australia, where two commercial television services are provided by the same operator. Another more recent variant arose where a third service was operated by two licensees in a joint venture—such as in Mildura/ Sunraysia, Darwin and Tasmania, and remote markets such as Mt Isa, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. These areas were considered too small in population terms to support three services on a competitive commercial basis. Regional commercial television aggregation was styled ‘equalisation’, as it provided for the same number of commercial television services in the largest regional markets that were available in the capital cities. The most important practical consequence of the scheme was for each regional commercial television service in an aggregated market to affiliate with one of the three metropolitan commercial television networks—Seven, Nine and Ten. Effectively, the affiliations meant that each regional service was re-branded to align with a city network, and previous ‘cherry picking’ (or sourcing programs selectively from each of the three metropolitan networks) was replaced with program schedules that largely mirrored the schedules in the state capital cities. In nearly all cases, the affiliated regional stations continued as separate commercial entities, since the ownership and control provisions of the Broadcasting and Television Act 1942 (and the current Broadcasting Services Act 1992) limit commercial television licensees to a maximum of 75 per cent of the population. This prevents metropolitan networks from acquiring their regional affiliates if they would breach the 75 per cent threshold by doing so (since 75 per cent is broadly equivalent to the combined population of the five largest capital cities). The result is an industry structure where the main commercial television networks remain city based, with limited direct ownership of regional stations—for example, the Nine Network currently owns stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Newcastle, while the Seven Network also has stations in the five mainland capital cities and in regional Queensland. In early 2014, the Australian government canvassed industry views on whether the 75 per cent ownership restrictions should be relaxed or abolished.

In Canberra, the paper ceased to be available for home delivery on the day of publication. This, along with dramatically increased sharing of Fairfax copy and editorial resources, and integration of the metropolitan print and online operations, blurred the once-distinct outlines of the Age’s editorial identity. From 4 March 2013, the weekday editions of the Age were converted to ‘compact’ (tabloid) format. A month later, the company announced that it was integrating the Age and other newspapers into a new division, Australian Publishing Media. The reorganisation confirmed the ascendancy of the Fairfax brand at the expense of its once talismanic mastheads. The weekend editions of the Age went tabloid a year later. By May 2014, the Age’s presses at Tullamarine were silenced, and the paper was being printed at Ballarat. REFs: S. Nolan, ‘The Age and the Young Menzies: A Chapter in Victorian Liberalism’ (PhD thesis, 2010); J. Tidey, The Last Syme (1998). SYBIL NOLAN

A G G RE GATI ON The first formal proposal for the amalgamation of adjoining licensed service areas of regional commercial television services was contained in an appendix to the report of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) into satellite broadcasting services in 1984, which was authored by two of the ABT’s public inquiry staff, Mark McDonnell and John Quigg. The proposal contained a financial and economic analysis establishing the probability that three commercial television services could compete successfully in the main east coast regional television markets if the licensed service area was enlarged by being aggregated with the adjoining service areas. The analysis relied on a case study methodology, based on regional services in Queensland (excluding Mt Isa), demonstrating that if treated as a single market, three competing services could, in the language of the Broadcasting and Television Act 1942, be ‘commercially viable’. By implication, similar outcomes could be achieved in other relatively populous non-metropolitan areas—particularly regional New South Wales and Victoria. At the time, there was only one regional commercial television service in each licensed service area. Government policy had grappled with the problem of how to extend the number of commercial television services in regional areas, and legislation had been enacted for a ‘supplementary licence’ to be awarded to the existing licensee. After further reviews, this legislation was amended in 1987 to include a scheme for regional commercial television aggregation. The policy basis for adopting regional commercial television aggregation was the opportunity it created for three commercial television services in the four main regional markets of 14

agricultural reporting (1888–90), relied on advertising and reprints. Most developed their own content in more expansive literary styles, adopting modern formats for features ranging from breeding stock and the cultivation of crops, to the combat of diseases and efficient ‘domestic economy’. Frequently, their coverage included the impact of government policy on farmers, with Adelaide’s Pasquin: Pastoral, Mineral and Agricultural Advocate (1867–70) drawing readers to a clever, sustained satirical analysis of South Australia’s land-settlement schemes. Among the more prominent journalists and editors developing specialisation in agricultural reporting were Queensland’s William Boyd (1842–1928), who combined writing with his own experimentation in crops; South Australia’s Albert Molineux (1832–1909), gaining influence as an advocate for fertilisers and insecticides; and in Western Australia, William Grasby (1859–1930), who wrote agricultural columns for many newspapers in conjunction with work on educational reform. Advice was often consolidated in annuals and handbooks, such as Angus Mackay’s Australian Agriculturalist (1875). The creation of departments of agriculture (the first in Victoria in 1872, and in all colonies by 1900) and agricultural colleges led to the regular publication of official gazettes. By 1899 Queensland’s department was pioneering documentary film to promote settlement and improved farming practice. Journalism reflected the transformation of agricultural production through state-sponsored research and outreach, combined with advances in techniques, crop varieties and railway construction. The Sugar Journal and Tropical Cultivator (Mackay, 1892–1905) pledged to follow ‘the stern law of commerce’ in increasingly competitive international markets, while calling for import bounties. The Rural Australian (1875–98) was re-launched in 1892, offering reports on conferences and ‘correspondence’ with ‘learned’ societies alongside columns directed to a farming ‘household’ conceived as a family business. Even in market gardening, it declared, the entrepreneurial ‘white man’ could now compete with the Chinese in producing food for metropolitan consumers. From 1870, the Sydney-based weekly Australian Town and Country Journal fused these two identities, drawing on weekly reports from a wide network of correspondents. In Victoria, the Weekly Times (1869– ) thrived on a similar model. At the same time, farmers were developing a more organised political identity. The Pastoralist’s Review (Melbourne, 1891–1977) combined news on the wool clip and overseas prices with campaigns against the ‘aggressive and arbitrary’ rise of ‘new unionism’. The Australian Tropiculturalist and Stockbreeder (1895–1900), renamed Queensland Country Life (1900–10), repeatedly condemned the ‘sorry bargain’ of Federation, which had left the

Critics of aggregation and equalisation have claimed that there has been a loss of local content as affiliated regional stations have increased their reliance on capital city programs. Some regional commercial television operators also complained that aggregation reduced their profitability. Given the costs of local content, these two issues are directly linked, as confirmed by the ABT’s successor, the Australian Broadcasting Authority, in its 2004 inquiry. REFs: ABA, Adequacy of Local News and Information Programs on Commercial Television Broadcasting Services in Regional and Rural Australia (2004); ABT, Satellite Program Services (1984). MARK McDONNELL

AGRI CULT URAL REPORTING As settler colonists dependent on primary production, Australians early developed a print media that promoted the interests of farmers. By the end of the 19th century, a profusion of journalism, digests, published reports and proceedings reflected a literate if dispersed readership. Whether as technical advice, market reports, accounts of policy and politics or expressions of solidarity, these publications registered the dynamics of industries at local through to colonial, national and international scales. They served the phases of Australian farming: from adaptation, expansion and closer settlement, to intensification and specialisation. As print was joined by electronic media in the 20th century, agricultural journalism advocated for the sector but also reflected its increasing strains, in declining economic returns, marketing pressures, heightened social marginalisation and the impetus for innovation in response to environmental impacts. Advice on the adaptation of farming practices to unfamiliar conditions was central to almanacs compiled from the earliest days of each colony, and tailored to specific regions. Initially informed by imported astrology and folklore, these marked transitions in awareness of Australian seasons, climate, soils and animal husbandry. The proceedings of early agricultural and horticultural societies were similarly concerned with adaptations to a new land. Rapid population growth in the 1850s boosted readership. The Victorian Agricultural and Horticultural Gazette (1857–61), for example, undertook the systematic coverage of the ‘science of agriculture’, calling for experimental farms, the provision of roads, bridges and railways in rural areas, reformed land laws, and improved processing industries. From the 1860s, policies of distributing the land more widely among settlers were accompanied by an expansion in subscription-based journals and newspapers, promoting yeoman-based models of farming. Some, such as Webster’s Tasmanian Agriculturist and Machinery Gazette

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agricultural reporting readers on trends in prices and markets, legislation and representations to government. Rural journalism refined its own sense of professionalism, reflected in the formation of state-based rural press clubs, beginning with Victoria and New South Wales in 1966. By the 1970s, as markets and prices became less assured, a series of regular ABC national television programs, including A Big Country (1968–91), Landline (1975– ) and Countrywide (est. 1979, and later a radio program) adopted ‘human-interest’ perspectives and more investigative journalism, covering the pace of change and adaptation in rural areas. The Cattlemen’s Union of Australia’s Cattleman (Rockhampton, 1976–97) sought a fusion of populist and expert commentary in debating agendas of industrial deregulation and political representation. The National Farmer (Perth, 1977–89), edited by Julian Cribb, offered a fresh, expansive, critical, economically and politically informed perspective on topics such as innovation in production, aggressive marketing and environmental awareness. The formation of the National Farmers’ Federation in 1979 confirmed the need for high-level, coordinated and often controversy-seeking political lobbying, just as government agencies directly targeted long-term restructuring in many rural industries. Agricultural media turned more to questions of adjustment and viability than themes of community and solidarity. Several publications reflected emerging interests in conservation, but also tensions within that trend. Acres Australia: A Journal of Sustainable Farming emerged in Hindmarsh, South Australia as a technical journal, but soon adopted a newspaper format appealing more to ‘health and well-being’ interests. The Australian Journal of Soil and Water Conservation (1988– 97) sought an equal representation of research, government and landholder-informed features, but ‘science’ dominated ‘practice’. Sustainable Agriculture (1996–97), appearing in association with Australian Farm Journal (1991–2012, one of several successors to National Farmer, and sponsored by the Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation), lasted a year as a voice for ‘profitable’, environmentally aware farming before becoming Australian Landcare (1998– ). Opportunities for new ‘niche’ industries were canvassed by Alternate Farmer (1996–2002), and adaptation and diversification featured prominently in the format of ABC Radio National’s weekday Bush Telegraph. The sector continued to produce dedicated and creative journalism, represented by figures such as Sue Neales, and recognised nationally since 1984 by the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists. Several much-publicised awards highlight individual achievement in rural industries and communities. But farmers increasingly turned to official research and industry bodies for expert

state’s farmers prey to ‘the greed and caprice’ of the south. Such agendas increasingly characterised agricultural publications into the 20th century, formulating and popularising an ideology of ‘country-mindedness’. The Farmer and Dairyman (Perth, 1909–67) was the ‘official organ’ of seven state-based growers’ associations. The Land (1911– ) began similarly. From 1926, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and the growth of extension services further professionalised agricultural research, while a new phase of closer settlement and the formation of the Country Party enhanced the political influence of rural interests. In 1927, the Bulletin launched its regular ‘Man on the Land’ page, reflecting the same trends. The development of radio broadcasting through the 1920s highlighted the appetite for a full range of programs—news, weather and entertainment—beyond the cities, but also the limitations in its provision. By the mid-1930s, metropolitan and regional stations, such as 2UE (Sydney) and 2GZ (Orange), were offered agricultural and veterinary advice and talk segments. The NSW Department of Agriculture established a ‘women’s section’. But often poor transmission and relay services meant that that there were far fewer radio licences and listeners in the country than in the cities. In the 1930s, economic strains began to sharpen an awareness of social needs beyond the cities. In 1945, the ABC introduced the first national daily rural radio program, The Country Hour, to address such issues. From 1951, the ABC’s Rural Department had its own network of ‘extension officers’, who became advocates for the development of new agricultural industries and communities. The 1950s also saw campaigns to increase ‘community service’ programming from non-metropolitan radio stations. With the advent of television, the ABC’s Rural Department developed programs ranging from advice for rural ‘housewives’ (To Market, To Market, est. 1957) to a short film magazine format (Australia Unlimited, est. 1956) and, in 1963, Country Call, featuring updates on production and marketing news. Through the 1950s and 1960s, agricultural publications served a fresh phase of agricultural expansion, spurred by mechanisation and pasture improvement. The Queensland Agricultural Journal (1895–1989) was supplemented by field days, school programs and its own official radio features. Even Radio Australia instituted agricultural programs in the 1960s, providing commodity reports in Japanese, talks for producers in under-developed countries and stories reflecting the initiative of Australia’s ‘democratic’ farmers. At the local level, the Gippsland Farmer (1958–62) promoted a sense of regional interests and specialisation. The South Australian Dairymen’s Journal (1962–2001) was ‘purely industrial’ in its coverage, informing

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and ultimately created a radio network of commercial stations in Brisbane and regional Queensland (4BC, 4RO, 4MB and 4GR), Canberra (2CC and KIX-FM), Melbourne (3TT, later TT-101.1 FM) and Sydney (2UW, later MIX 106.5 FM). From 1987, it became known as the Australian Radio Network. It remained in family hands until it was sold to APN News and Media in 1995. In 1954, Frank’s son Alexis became a founding director (and Alberts a shareholder) in Amalgamated Television Services, the licensee of ATN7 (Sydney), remaining on the board for 33 years. Alexis’s son Ted (1936–90) joined the business in 1959, and focused on discovering Australian bands. He established Albert Productions, an independent music production arm of J. Albert & Son, in 1964, signing Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, the Easybeats, the Ted Mulry Gang, AC/DC, the Angels and Rose Tattoo. Ted became known as one of the best producers and talent spotters in the business, in partnership with Harry Vanda and George Young. Ted collaborated with a young Baz Luhrmann to adapt his stage play Strictly Ballroom for the screen in 1988, though he died suddenly in 1990 before filming was complete. Alexis’s other sons Robert (1934– ) and Tony (1939–2000) joined the board in 1984. Today, Alberts remains in family hands, led by Robert as chair and his son David (1971– ) as managing director. Alberts continues to be a leading independent music rights management company, providing a creative hub for songwriters, artists, composers and producers including Megan Washington and Gotye.

guidance on production and management, and processes of syndication narrowed opportunities to hear a ‘local voice’ in rural media. Australia’s rural press has become dominated by large-circulation papers published by Fairfax Regional Media. Progress in addressing the ‘rural digital divide’ might assist agriculturalists to make effective use of online media, and popular programs such as Radio National’s Australia All Over, as it has evolved since 1969, encourage expression of the ‘lived experience’ of rural Australians. Yet there remains little to redress the transition away from the profusion of media that characterised the sector up to the 1970s. REFs: D. Aitkin, ‘Countrymindedness: The Spread of an Idea’, in S.L. Goldberg and F.B. Smith (eds), Australian Cultural History (1988); J. Black, The Country’s Finest Hour (2005); E. Morrison, Engines of Influence (2005). NICHOLAS BROWN

AL BERT S Alberts has played a vital role in the evolution of Australia’s media and popular culture since the early days of sheet music and music publishing. Started in 1885 in Newtown, Sydney by immigrant Swiss watchmaker and musician Jacques Albert (1850–1914), the business was originally a watch and clock repair shop. In 1894, the business became J. Albert & Son when Jacques’ son Frank (1874–1962) joined him. Alberts quickly expanded to sell musical instruments and sheet music. It was soon known for its Boomerang mouth organs and Boomerang Songsters. In 1902, Jacques travelled to the United States and began competing with other Australian publishers for the Australian sub-publishing rights to the hits of the day, securing the rights to international catalogues and composers including Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. and Irving Berlin. Frank began expanding Alberts’ publishing catalogue in 1904. In 1929, Frank’s son Alexis (1904–96) joined the firm and Frank co-founded and became an inaugural director of the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA). Over the next 80 years, Alexis, his son Ted and grandson David Albert would become board members. Also in 1929, Frank, Benjamin Fuller and Stuart Doyle won a tender for a three-year contract to run the government’s national broadcasting service. The trio called themselves the Australian Broadcasting Company. In 1932, the government took over the national network under the newly established Australian Broadcasting Commission, maintaining the acronym ‘ABC’. Albert, Doyle and Fuller’s ABC acquired the licence for commercial radio station 2UW in Sydney in 1933. By 1956, the Albert family had acquired 100 per cent of the trio’s ABC,

REF: J. Albert, House of Hits (2010). JANE ALBERT

ALB U RY B AN N ER The Albury Banner and Wodonga Advertiser was founded by Samuel Fry Blackmore on 1 July 1860. Albury, population 700, was served by the Border Post (1856–1902). The Albury Banner proved not to be viable under Blackmore, or its next owner, Alfred Banfield. Printer George Adams acquired the Albury Banner on 26 April 1862, and refocused the paper as a public voice for local selectors. He also established a land agency, co-located with his editorial offices and a solicitor’s office, that helped budding landholders navigate the legal maze—and built up a loyal readership. In the early days, the Albury Banner catered for the emerging German settler community in the southern Riverina by printing advertisements and some articles in German. To complement the Banner and to potentially develop the north-east Victorian market, Adams acquired the ailing Murray and Hume Times (Wodonga) in 1874, and for a while used it as his mid-week

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allan, stella may (1871–1962) advertising revue. Allan was a pioneer of the technique of involving readers by inviting and publishing their opinions and responding with authoritative advice to their requests for help. Tapping into a previously almost silent readership, she generated an avalanche of letters. Her pages covered domestic topics and community welfare issues. Although she avoided controversial social issues, her choice of subjects had wide appeal to her predominantly middle-class, stay-at-home readers. Through her involvement in many community organisations and social initiatives for women and children, Allan became a prominent figure in Melbourne public life. In 1924, she was a substitute delegate to the League of Nations and in 1930 a delegate to the Pan-Pacific Women’s Conference in Hawaii. In 1938, to mark the end of her third decade on the Argus, representatives of more than 30 Victorian women’s organisations gathered in the Melbourne Town Hall for a remarkable tribute.

offering. It was absorbed into the Albury Banner in 1880. Particularly in the late 1870s and early 1880s, the Albury Banner wielded considerable political clout, becoming known as the ‘Cockeys’ Bible’. It consolidated its role as a major regional paper in February 1874 when it moved to a weekly 24-page format. The demand for advertising space and news, and a printing plant upgrade in 1882, enabled it to expand to 32 and then 40 pages—making it, by 1886, the largest provincial weekly newspaper in Australia. Adams tried to emulate Melbourne’s Australasian and Sydney’s Australian Town and Country Journal. He developed a network of local correspondents, ensuring the Albury Banner remained relevant to local communities. By the 1890s, it had a 250 kilometre catchment radius. The Albury Banner regularly carried short fiction and verse, and from 1869 pioneered the serialisation of novels. Most of the novels ran for 34 weeks, but one was dragged out for 66 weeks. Fully aware of his own strengths as a printer and businessman and his weaknesses as a journalist and editor, Adams hired capable editors, including Henry A. Brooks, W.T. Deverell and Foster A. Cooper, who remained editor (and later co-owner) for 50 years until retiring in 1922. After Adams’ death, the Banner was managed by Cooper and Adams’ children until April 1940, when it was bought by the Victoria-based Elliott Rural Newspaper Group. Following Elliott’s sudden death in 1950, the newspaper folded on 26 May 1950.

REF: P. Clarke: ‘The Transformation of Stella Allan: Soox Socialist to Conservative Women’s Page Editor’, Australian Journalism Review, 33(2) (2011). PATRICIA CLARKE

ALM AN AC S At their simplest, almanacs were calendars: regularly (usually but not necessarily annually) published tabulations of days, weeks and months. Even the simplest calendars, however, do more than name and number days—at the very least, they mark out public holidays and other significant events. At their most sophisticated, almanacs went much further, to the point where the conventional calendar was a relatively minor element. Late 19th- and early 20th-century almanacs, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, were substantial compendia of ‘useful information’—directories of the civil and ecclesiastical establishments, tabulations of postal and transport fares and timetables, advertisements, the full text of significant laws and regulations, historical and geographical information (often in the form of substantial essays) and, most importantly, tide tables and climate data that offered a basis for weather prediction. Until the development of scientific meteorology in the late 19th century, almanacs delivered forecasts built on traditional astrology overlaid with scraps of data from previous years. Limited as it was, the value of such basic information in a remote and alien environment, with a heavy reliance on sea transport, cannot be overstated. A calendar that marks significant days— whether recording anniversaries of past events or advertising forthcoming ones—speaks volumes about what its compiler and its readers regard as significant. Many almanacs provided abundant blank space to enable readers to record their

REF: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000). DIRK SPENNEMANN

A L L A N, S TEL L A MAY (1871–1962) New Zealand-born Stella Allan was the first female parliamentary reporter in Australasia, and in 1910 became one of three female foundation members of the Australian Journalists’ Association (later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance). As editor of the women’s pages of the Melbourne Argus for three decades from 1908, she was one of Australia’s most influential and revered women journalists. Born Stella May Henderson in 1871 at Kaiapoi near Christchurch, she was a brilliant student who campaigned for gender equality and socialist ideals. At 26, she survived a ban by the all-male Parliamentary Press Gallery in Wellington to report the national parliament for the Lyttelton Times (Christchurch). In 1903, after moving to Melbourne with her journalist husband, Edwin Allan, she was a regular contributor to the Argus. In 1908, the mother of four daughters, she was appointed to the journalistic staff to write and edit the Argus women’s pages. Under the heading ‘Women to Women’ and signed ‘Vesta’, her section began as a single weekly column, but expanded rapidly to cover several pages daily, due to greatly increased readership and 18

alternative media and Sydney) continued until 1941 under various titles, and were unusual in attempting to appeal to a nationwide market. Sheet almanacs, designed for hanging or wall display, were usually published as newspaper supplements. Like their book-format counterparts, they were so pervasive that their effects on popular culture are incalculable. One iconic newspaper image, the Australasian Sketcher’s depiction of the battle between the Kelly Gang and Victorian police at Glenrowan (17 July 1880), features amongst other mundane domestic details a sheet almanac attached to a wall. The evidence for edition sizes is sketchy, largely reliant on the claims of advertisements and prospectuses, and moderated by the evidence for other contemporaneous publications. Early Sydney and Hobart almanacs—constrained, apart from anything else, by the availability of paper—may have been published in editions as small as a few dozen. By the 1860s, publishers in the major centres were claiming circulations of 10,000 or more. By the early 20th century, a number of factors were lessening the importance of the almanac to everyday life. In particular, the radio and the telephone directory were meeting commonplace information needs in new and much more timely ways. Official yearbooks were supplying authoritative statistical data. The few new titles published during the 1930s (such as The ‘Aspro’ Year Book, 1933–40) were promotional tools for particular companies or products. University calendars, a specialised sub-set produced for a niche market, have persisted into the 21st century, moving to electronic publication. Of the great mass-market 19th-century almanacs, only Walch’s continued beyond World War II. In his introduction to the 1962 ‘centenary’ issue, R.F. Walch presented his almanac as integral to ‘the life of the community … truly Tasmanian’, and expressed his hopes for ‘the achievement of the bi-centenary if the lessons learned to date can be preserved and respected in the future’, but acknowledged the ‘tremendous amount of work and cooperation’ involved in its production. The commitment became increasingly difficult to justify as other sources of information proliferated, and Walch’s ceased publication at the end of the following decade.

own observations, with the result that many of the surviving copies have a manuscript element that transforms them into unique collaborative works, standing at the intersection of the printed book and the private diary. A 21st-century reader who imagines approaching an almanac as a 19th-century one enters an alien landscape, in which communication is slower, information more sparse and supply lines more fragile. The first book-length non-government publication in Australia was George Howe’s New South Wales Pocket Almanack (1806). Howe took an innovative approach to defining Antipodean seasons: instead of the astrological methods in use in English almanacs of the time, which identified the beginning of a season as the precise moment when the sun entered the appropriate zodiac sign, Howe simply nominated three months for each season, so that Spring ran from September to November, Summer from December to February, and so on. This approach did not gain immediate general acceptance, and Howe soon reverted to the comforting familiarity of the zodiac. By the 1830s, however, astrological content was becoming muted, and it is generally true that, in contrast to most of their British and American counterparts, colonial Australasian almanacs were more inclined to promote an empirical, scientific world-view than to indulge popular superstitions, and influenced such rationalistic British publishers as Charles Knight and Joseph Whitaker. With their annual publication pattern, almanacs had little direct engagement with current affairs. They nonetheless played a critical role in developing a sense of community and shared identity, and arguably in solidifying the authority of key social institutions. Many of the earliest and most influential were issued by newspaper proprietors, including Howe and the Hobart publishers Andrew Bent and James Ross, and their successors. The original essays and illustrations published in these early almanacs remain important primary sources. In most of the colonies, one or two book almanacs dominated the market and became standard quasi-official reference sources: Walch’s Tasmanian Almanac (1862–1979) was by far the longest running. Pugh’s Queensland Almanac (1859–1927) and Moore’s Almanack and Hand Book (Sydney, 1852–1940) were the dominant publications in their respective markets. The longest running South Australian almanac was the German-language Australischer Volks–Kalender (1866–1914). The two leading Melbourne publications—the Victorian Almanac (1859–1927) and Clarson, Shallard & Co.’s (later A.H. Massina & Co.’s) Weather Almanac (1864–1940)—served as templates for a host of regional almanacs, mostly issued by local newspapers or business owners as promotional exercises. J. Harcourt Giddons’ meteorological almanacs (commenced in Port Adelaide, 1899, later published in Adelaide

REFs: I. Morrison, M. Perkins and T. Caulfield, Australian Almanacs 1806–1930 (2003); M. Perkins, Visions of the Future (1996). IAN MORRISON

ALTER N ATIVE M ED IA The alternative media in Australia have a long history, emerging around the same time as other media aimed at a broad mass audience. In their earliest forms, alternative media existed as community-based newspapers for disenfran19

alternative media chised groups, and as the socialist and labour press. As time progressed, new alternative media developed—such as ethnic community newspapers in the post-war migration period, the counter-culture press, gay and lesbian media, and community radio. The ‘heyday’ of alternative media to Australia was the late 1960s and 1970s. This was also a time when radical publications attached to marginalised political groups, such as the land rights press and associated black action publications, began to make some impact on public sphere debate. Alternative media in contemporary Australia take the form of community radio, independently owned news publications, the radical press and online publications of varying persuasions that are not attached to major media groups. Other discussions of alternative media—such as Chris Atton’s Alternative Media (2002)—include all forms of expression from subcultures, such as graffiti, fanzines and public artworks, along with more traditional and online media forms. Here discussion is limited to those outlets dealing specifically with alternative content and alternative processes for producing that content—in this context, alternative media are inexorably connected to notions of the public sphere and enhancing democracy. Journalists who work in alternative media practise a form of journalism that is based on strong notions of social responsibility and a strong commitment to the idealistic norms of journalism. They are distinguished by their drive to motivate people to participate in public activity, rather than to simply provide ‘fair and balanced’ information to the public. The radical working-class press of the early 20th century was continuing 19th-century anti-capitalist traditions from around the globe, while the Aboriginal print media—an early form of what we now know as ‘community media’—was even further advanced with the emergence of the first Aboriginal newspaper, a weekly newsletter called the Flinders Island Weekly Chronicle, as early as 1836. Australia’s first ethnic community newspaper (a German publication) appeared in 1848, but the proper development of such a strong ethnic press did not occur in Australia until the post-World War II immigration boom. The development of a strong ethnic press in Australia is certainly evidence of the mainstream media’s inability to accurately represent the interests of minority communities, and the willingness of participants to create their own community of voices. So while the alternative media industry in the early 20th century was dominated by the working-class/socialist/labour political press, it also featured a developing Indigenous press and an ethnic press designed specifically to serve unrepresented migrant groups. Across time, alternative media have responded consistently to their environment and their contemporary context. The counter-culture

publications of the 1960s and 1970s, for example, were a direct response to the ultra-conservatism of the post-war 1950s, and emerged along with a diverse range of socially conscious music, fiction and political activity. In the same vein, the working-class socialist publications of the early 20th century arose as the trade union movement gained momentum, when workers’ consciousness and identity were building, as the Industrial Workers of the World appeared as a political force and at moments when capitalism was in crisis (such as the Great Depression or World War I). Alternative media experienced a lull after World War II, during a conservative era marked by anti-communist and anti-socialist sentiments and the Cold War—perhaps the reason for the ultimate rebellion against accepted values throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The ‘underground’ or ‘counter-culture’ press—accompanied in Australia by the emergence of community radio—represented an important stage in the development of an alternative media industry. Rather than present a unified socialist or working-class view of politics, the underground publications set out to present the new counter-culture movement. Their primary aim was to challenge and shock conservative moral and social values. The Australian OZ magazine (1963) was one of the first true counter-culture publications, closely followed by (among others) Revolution, High Times, Brown Paper, the Digger, Source, Loose Licks, the slick Living Daylights (Richard Neville’s venture upon his return from London OZ magazine), and later Nation Review. Alternative media of this 1970s era were bolstered by the establishment of the Alternative News Service by the Australian Union of Students, which served to distribute content to a network of alternative publications. During this fertile period, the land rights movement also launched a number of titles, Identity, Black Action and the Koorier, among others, while ethnic communities joined together as one of the major driving forces behind the establishment of the community radio sector. It is important to note that the groundwork for the emergence and occasional success of many counter-culture publications had already been laid a decade earlier. In Sydney in 1958, Tom Fitzgerald, the financial editor of the mainstream and reasonably conservative broadsheet the Sydney Morning Herald, established Nation, a fortnightly opinion publication dealing with issues of major national and international significance. From 1958 until 1972 (when it merged with Sunday Review to become the widely read Nation Review), Nation gave voice to a number of important writers. Outside these boom periods of alternative media in Australia, a number of outlets have struggled against the odds to bring their alternative media content and community to the public. Throughout the 1980s, for example, community

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am

and pm

costs and non-domestic reception. Radio was uniquely placed to extend audiences through portable, transistor and car radios, displacing the ‘wireless’ console sets of earlier decades. In both production and broadcasting terms, the AM/PM initiative extended the ABC’s range by utilising new technologies and international communications facilities. The groundbreaking television current affairs program This Day Tonight launched on 10 April 1967. Like it, AM reflected post-war Australia’s increasing cultural sophistication, internationalisation and tertiary education. The ABC sought to honour its charter to distribute information programs nationally to general audiences in both television and radio, and developed a sophisticated Audience Research Department, headed by Ray Newell. AM’s format moved beyond the BBC forerunners that inspired it, such as Today. As head of public affairs radio, and from 1961 federal talks supervisor (news talks), Selwyn (Dan) Speight introduced radio current affairs formats, including News Review, Notes on the News and News Commentary. He urged ‘highly topical’ initiatives that would feature ‘analysis, explanation and commentary, eye-witness descriptions and “actuality” sound’. Speight designed AM to report complex political and social events more deeply than was possible in short news bulletins. AM immediately began covering the causes and consequences of local and international issues, such as the Vietnam War. The first program featured a location piece with recorded sound about threats to the native lyrebird. An item labelled ‘hard news’ anticipated the program’s future agenda: Philip Koch reported from South Vietnam on that country’s imminent election. Russell Warner was executive producer and Robert Peach presenter. AM utilised inter-continental cables, such as COMPAC (Europe and North America, from 1963) and SEACOM (Southeast Asia, 1967). It could break international stories that arrived during the early hours after morning newspapers had gone to press. In this way, AM enabled the ABC to compete with the metropolitan broadsheets. Journalists wrote and presented their own reports of up to four minutes’ duration. Among the early recruits were Paul Murphy, Richard Carleton and Allan Hogan, and presenters included many journalists who went on to distinguished media careers: Hamish Robertson (1976), Steve Cosser (1979–80), Ellen Fanning (1994–96), Peter Cave (1997–2001), Linda Mottram (2001–03), Tony Eastley (2004–13) and Chris Uhlmann, who has anchored the program since 2014. Audience reach increased when AM moved to Radio One in 1971. When the Whitlam Labor government was elected in 1972, one in five of Melbourne’s radios was regularly tuned in. AM’s

radio continued to develop, while publications such as Australian Society (later Modern Times), the Independent Monthly (with some arm’slength backing from the John Fairfax Group), Green Left Weekly, the first national Indigenous newspaper the Koori Mail and various socialist publications continued to make some headway in the mainstream public sphere. They paved the way for later ventures—the relatively short-lived Republican Weekly, Eric Beecher’s the Eye, and Jesuit Publications’ Eureka Street. Alongside all these periods, student newspapers formed an important part of the alternative media sector, featuring a range of long-term respected publications such as Honi Soit, Semper Floreat, Tharunka, Farrago and Lot’s Wife. The Australian alternative media scene today boasts a number of successful online publications, although many involved in their production may twitch when the term ‘alternative’ is applied to their work. The term ‘independent media’ is therefore preferred by many outlets that sit outside the mainstream today, including Crikey, the Monthly, Online Opinion, New Matilda, various Indymedia sites and a plethora of other blogs, commentary sites and online publications. The internet has provided something of a boon for alternative media due to its low production costs and ease of distribution. Alongside this boom in internet-based alternative media, community broadcasting in Australia has enjoyed enormous growth. The sector has developed from an informal consortium of ethnic, fine music, radical left and educational institutions to a sector that now has more outlets than the commercial radio sector, with 519 licensed independent community owned radio stations and five licensed community television stations by 2013. While not all community radio stations would consider themselves ‘alternative’, stations such as 2XX in Canberra, 2SER FM in Sydney, 3CR and 3RRR in Melbourne, 4ZZZ in Brisbane and 5UV in Adelaide have formed the backbone of the alternative broadcast media in Australia since the early 1970s. Across a range of print, broadcast and online ventures, alternative media continue to expand the media landscape in Australia and in doing so, continue in their endeavours to activate public debate and civic life. REFs: P.H. Cock, ‘Australia’s Alternative Media’, MIA, 6 (1977); S. Forde, Challenging the News (2011); P.F. Perry, ‘Alternative Magazines and the Growth of the Counter Culture’, MIA, 6 (1977). SUSAN FORDE

AM A ND PM AM first broadcast on the morning of 4 September 1967 on the ABC’s Second Radio Network (Radio Two). On 7 July 1969, AM’s evening counterpart, PM, went to air. Both sought to exploit radio’s natural advantages—of immediacy, low production 21

amalgamated wireless (australasia) ltd Initially, the company supplied wireless equipment and operators to shipping companies. It expanded into manufacturing, and services and equipment for aircraft and motor vehicles. After demonstrating direct communication between Britain and Australia in 1918, AWA proposed commercial wireless telegraph services over the same route. Led by Prime Minister William Hughes, the federal government invested a half-share in a recapitalised AWA in 1922. Hughes joined the board in 1923, remaining a director until his death in 1952. Commercial services with Britain opened in 1927 and with North America the following year. Cheaper than the submarine cable services operating since 1872, wireless forced the restructuring of British international telecommunications. International wireless telephone services were launched in 1930. While developing long-distance wireless telecommunications, AWA was also helping to establish broadcasting. From the early 1920s, receivers were manufactured for listeners and transmitters for broadcasters. AWA’s patents were made freely available to other manufacturers after a 1927 Royal Commission criticised the company’s tough terms and conduct, but AWA secured a guaranteed share of listener licence fees until 1934. A network of commercial radio stations was assembled, mainly in country areas. The flagship, Sydney’s 2CH, occupied studios in the AWA Tower, Sydney’s tallest building until the 1960s. The growth of broadcasting and tariff protection encouraged AWA to expand electrical manufacturing, despite the Depression. The Scullin Labor government approved AWA’s establishment of Amalgamated Wireless Valve Company Ltd (AWV), a subsidiary with overseas shareholders including the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), whose ‘Radiotron’ trademark was used for AWV’s valves. An ambitious plan to reorganise local wireless, broadcasting and music manufacturing into a single company, owned by AWA and major English and American music and consumer electrical companies, was rejected by the Lyons conservative government. Fisk’s long-term deputy, (Sir) Lionel Hooke, took over as managing director in 1945. The next year, AWA’s international wireless services were nationalised; the company became primarily an electronics manufacturing and services organisation. Revenue soon surpassed the marks achieved during the war-time booms in overseas communications and defence production. The Menzies Coalition government sold the Commonwealth’s half-share of AWA in 1951, ending three decades of joint public/ private ownership. AWA was a shareholder in the company that was awarded one of Sydney’s first commercial television licences, then the major shareholder in the winner of the third licence. A microelectronics business was also formed in the 1960s.

consistent quality has ensured that it continues to rate very highly for its timeslot. When PM began in 1969, Australia lacked quality afternoon newspapers and no broadcaster provided evening commentary on state and federal parliaments, business and commerce, or international affairs. PM took advantage of the time difference between Australia and Washington. It could cover parliament, including Question Time, and ran for 55  minutes. It introduced daily stock exchange reports and ‘broke’ business news stories. PM was produced by Tim Bowden and presented by John Highfield. Its distinguished voices have included Huw Evans (1970–83), Paul Murphy (1983–92), Monica Attard (1994–97) and, for more than 15 years, the highly respected Mark Colvin, whose dignified professionalism many see as responsible for much of PM’s continuing appeal. As both programs are investigative and adversarial, AM and PM have been scrutinised intensively by the major political parties and allied ‘think-tanks’, such as the Institute of Public Affairs. This has resulted in persistent accusations of bias. AM and PM (and their stablemate The World Today, 1983– ) highlight searching interviews by senior journalists. Their reporters regularly expose political hypocrisy, corporate corruption and governments’ policy embarrassments. Tenacious investigations of the asbestos manufacturer James Hardie (by Matt Peacock and colleagues) and exposés of tobacco industry duplicity exemplify the programs’ continuing ability to hold power to account. AM and PM have earned several Walkley Awards for reports from international war-zones and for coverage of police corruption, superannuation and industrial relations. REFs: P. Bell and T. van Leeuwen, The Media Interview (1994); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983) and Whose ABC? (2006). PHILIP BELL

A MA LGAMATED W I RELESS (AUSTRALASIA) LTD Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) was formed in July 1913 by merging the Australasian wireless businesses of the German Telefunken and British-based Marconi. Telefunken had licensed local rights to a company whose shareholders included (Sir) Hugh Denison, the Bulletin’s William Macleod and retailers Anthony and Samuel Hordern. Marconi employed agents, then sent a full-time representative, (Sir) Ernest Fisk, to Australia in 1911. Denison negotiated a merger of the businesses in 1912 as part of a global deal between Telefunken and Marconi. He became AWA’s first managing director and chairman. Fisk took over as managing director in 1916 when Denison resigned.

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archibald, jules françois (1856–1919) from News’s takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) and other subsequent dealings. The Irish interests convinced the Foreign Investment Review Board that Australian interests would remain in control, but seven months after taking control they installed Liam Padraig Healy, a senior executive of the Irish group, as chief executive officer. Haswell took control of PNQ on 26 July 1988 and renamed it Australian Provincial Newspapers Ltd on 2 November 1988; it became Australian Provincial Newspapers Holdings Ltd when listed on the Stock Exchange in March 1992 and was renamed APN News & Media Ltd on 21  April 1998. APN acquired its tenth Queensland regional daily, the Gympie Times, on 6 August 1999 and acquired the remaining 50 per cent interest in the Toowoomba Chronicle in July 2007. Since 2001, APN has held significant trans-Tasman interests. For $730  million, it acquired the New Zealand newspaper publisher, Wilson & Horton, which had been owned by APN’s parent company, Independent News & Media Plc, since 1998. The NZ company owned nine daily newspapers, including Auckland’s New Zealand Herald, as well as 32 non-daily titles and a handful of special-interest magazines. In October 2004, APN launched the Herald on Sunday in Auckland in opposition to Fairfax’s NZ national title, the Sunday Star Times. By 2014, more than 50 per cent of its earnings were coming from non-publishing assets (radio, digital media and outdoors), even though it owned 20 daily and more than 100 non-daily newspapers across Australia and New Zealand. It also owned or part-owned 12 metropolitan radio stations in Australia and seven ‘core’ radio stations in New Zealand that supply the programming for 126 local stations. The Irish shareholding in APN was 18.6 per cent in 2014 and the Irish no longer controlled the APN board.

Anticipating the launch of colour television, a joint venture with Europe’s largest colour television receiver manufacturer, Thorn Electrical Industries, commenced in 1973–74, but competition—especially from Japanese manufacturers—was intense. The newly elected Whitlam Labor government cut tariff rates sharply in 1973. Hooke, chairman for 29 AGMs, died in 1974, aged 78. His son, John, took over as chairman. Tariffs were cut further in the 1980s and AWA-Thorn was sold to Mitsubishi. AWA lost around $50 million in a foreign exchange trading scandal in the mid-1980s, although some of the losses were recovered from auditors Deloitte. Most of AWA’s radio stations were sold after changes to media ownership rules in the 1980s; TEN10 Sydney had already been sold to News Limited. John Singleton’s Macquarie Radio Network acquired 2CH in 1994. Renamed AWA Limited in 1988, the old wireless company launched Club Keno in New South Wales in 1990 in a joint venture with registered clubs. The defence, marine, aviation and microelectronics businesses were sold and in 2000, now primarily a gaming enterprise, AWA was bought by Jupiters Casino. The company now trading as AWA is the information technology services business, founded by AWA in 1982. It was acquired from Jupiters’ new owner, Tabcorp, in 2004 in a management buy-out led by former AWA managing director John Dougall. REFs: Radio Waves, AWA Centenary Issue, 125 (2013); J. Given, ‘Transit of Empires’ (PhD thesis, 2007). JOCK GIVEN

A N TI - S I P H O N I N G L AWS see sports broadcasting

rights

APN NEW S AND M EDIA When Irish newspaper magnate Tony O’Reilly (1936– ) found a way around Australia’s foreign media ownership laws in 1988, he was able to take control of a chain of 13 regional daily newspapers stretching from Coffs Harbour in New South Wales, to Mackay in Queensland. O’Reilly was married to an Australian and had six sons with Australian passports. A family trust formed for the O’Reilly children’s benefit was the majority (85.1 per cent) shareholder in Haswell Pty Ltd, the takeover vehicle that led to the end of Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd (PNQ). O’Reilly was also the principal shareholder of Independent Newspapers Plc of Ireland, which held 14.9 per cent of Haswell. Haswell bought the combined News Limited/ Rupert Murdoch interest of 48.6 per cent in PNQ and made a successful offer for the remaining shares. PNQ was sold for $130 million. The Trade Practices Commission instructed Murdoch and News to divest themselves of the controlling interest in PNQ that had arisen

REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Ghost of Caution Haunts House of Dunn’ (PhD thesis, 1995). ROD KIRKPATRICK

AR C H IB ALD , JU LES FR AN Ç O IS (1856–1919) J.F. Archibald, who with John Haynes founded the Bulletin in 1880, is better remembered for his bequests than for his remarkable work as an editor. His most substantial legacy was to the Australian Journalists’ Association (later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance); he also endowed the Archibald Prize for portraiture, and left money for a grand public fountain in Hyde Park. His French names were assumed—he was born John Feltham Archibald in Warrnambool, where he learned his craft in the provincial press. Through an interlude in a North Queensland mining community, he developed a romantic admiration for the toiling solitary bushman, ‘the lone hand’. In Sydney, he joined the Evening 23

argus

afternoon tabloid (1933–36). In 1937, the owners belatedly introduced news to the Argus front page, instead of classified advertisements, and floated a public company, The Argus and Australasian Limited. The unwieldy page size was later halved to a longish tabloid. Though the company usually made a profit, financial results remained unsatisfactory. Most of the new shares were classified as preferential, and these were paid a regular dividend. However, payments on the ordinary shares—mostly held by trust family members—were meagre. The tight finances discouraged badly needed spending on development, a critical issue as the printing machinery aged. In addition to the paper, the company owned some country commercial radio stations, and the Australasian (later Australasian Post) magazine, and used its plant for job printing. These operations were generally profitable. A bold move after World War II to purchase state-of-the-art printing presses, with capacity for an innovative reader-friendly size and colour for photographs and advertisements, split the directors. In 1949, they sold the business to London’s Mirror Newspapers, publishers of the cheeky Fleet Street tabloid, the Daily Mirror. Led by strong-minded chief executives, the two companies were uneasy marital partners. The Argus’s Sir Errol Knox had unnerved his board with his visionary expansion plans; the judgement of the Mirror’s H.G. Bartholomew, editor between the wars, became erratic as he aged. He bought the Argus without normal commercial scrutiny, and put Sydney Elliott, an inexperienced favourite from the Mirror, in charge of the Argus. Elliott clashed angrily with Knox—both had the title of joint managing director. Suddenly Knox died of a heart attack in October 1949, just three months after the sale. Now in charge, Elliott began turning the Argus into a pro-Labor tabloid. Most of the presale directors resigned, alarmed at the seeming recklessness of change. The new regime lost the confidence of Melbourne business and advertisers, made other enemies and, in the difficult post-war business conditions, incurred huge losses. The paper moved editorially and politically away from flirting with the ALP towards the middle ground, but during the erratic sudden changes had lost many of its financially better off A- and B-class readers, the most attractive to advertising. Overall circulation gradually increased, but was more widely spread around the community, and still only about a third that of the rival Sun News-Pictorial, though comparable with that of the Age. In 1951, the London board dismissed both Bartholomew and Elliott. The paper continued as a lively mid-market, politically unaligned competitor to both the Age and the Sun News-Pictorial. Full colour was introduced in 1952—the first run-of-the-press newspaper

News, and there, with Haynes, he determined to establish a new weekly. The result was the Bulletin, which attained enormous popularity and influence. During the period of his major editorship (1886–1902), Archibald practised a radically democratic open-pages policy. He believed that everyone had a story to tell, and that every reader should have the chance to write. Most contributions would be cut down to their essential points, perhaps only two or three lines, before finding their places in the paper’s endless columns, cheek-by-jowl with vigorous illustration. Through the later 1880s and 1890s, the Bulletin was a major example of print journalism at the peak of its cultural power; Archibald’s gifts of wit and irony were central to it. It is also true that the journal’s darker strains—its racism, frequent misogyny and anti-Semitism—were all evident on Archibald’s watch. They coexisted with a lively cosmopolitanism, anti-imperialism and pursuit of social justice. For 20 years, Archibald worked with obsessive energy, at great cost to his marriage and his health; he suffered a nervous collapse before he turned 50. He handed over the editorship of the Bulletin to James Edmond in 1902, then worked to set up monthly magazine to be called the Lone Hand, becoming increasingly manic in the process. His business partner, William Macleod, committed him to an asylum; though considered incurably mad, he made a full recovery. The Lone Hand, under Frank Fox’s editorship, was eventually published in May 1907. In 1914, Archibald sold out of the Bulletin, a much more conservative journal by then. He was working happily for the new Smith’s Weekly when he collapsed suddenly and died in September 1919. Archibald had never sought personal prominence; instead, he disappeared into his work and his legacies. REF: S. Lawson, The Archibald Paradox (2006). SYLVIA LAWSON

ARGON A U TS ’ C LU B see children and the media

A R G US The Argus was launched in Melbourne in June 1846, incorporating earlier papers. Though at first an anti-government populist paper, the Argus was by mid-century the voice of Victorian conservatism. Its editorials could be biting but it strove for fairness and accuracy in its news reporting. For years, the Argus charged more per copy than its great morning rival, the Age. For decades, the proprietor was the Wilson and Mackinnon Trust, representing the families of early owners. Establishment of the tabloid Sun News-Pictorial in 1922 squeezed the paper in a newly crowded market. The firm lost financially by establishing the Star, a short-lived

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armed forces media a popular official magazine, the Kia-ora Coo-ee, in 1918. On the Western Front, a range of Allied soldier trench literature was published, such as the Wipers Times (1916–18). Australian troops produced Rising Sun (formerly Honk), Digger (1918–19) and others, and the AIF’s official Aussie: The Soldiers’ Magazine (1918–31). Many Australian soldiers documented their experiences with Bullet Kodak (‘hits the mark every time’) cameras. Official Army photographers were also active while, on the home front, Australasian Gazette cinema newsreels supported military recruitment drives. The audio-visual dimension became more important during World War II. The military developed a cinema section and Damien Parer, of the Official Photographic Unit (later to win an Academy Award for his 1943 documentary Kokoda Frontline), sailed with the first convoy of the Second AIF to the Middle East (1940), while the ABC travelled with the next, producing a radio series, At Sea with the AIF. The ABC established a field radio unit and studios in Gaza, Palestine, and also provided printed news material for soldiers. The 6th Division’s Ammunition Sub-Park newspaper, Ammo Daily (1940), claimed it was the first officially published by the Army during World War II. In Palestine, The AIF News (1940–45) grew to a circulation of 40,000 copies throughout the Middle East. SALT: Authorised Education Journal of the Australian Military Forces and Royal Australian Air Force was launched by the Army Education Service (AES) on 24  September 1941 and distributed ‘one copy to each three soldiers or airmen’; it continued until 1946. The RAAF published Air Force News weekly in 1941; it reappeared as Wings in 1943. The Current Affairs Bulletin, an AES weekly designed to provide ‘knowledge of current events to build morale’, was published from 1942–46; it was taken over by the Commonwealth Office of Education in 1947. Convoy ships and individual regiments continued the tradition of publishing their own—often enduring—newspapers, such as Mud and Blood (2/23 Battalion), Muzzle Blast (2/2 Machine Gun Battalion) and the Ack Ack (2nd Anti-Aircraft Regiment). In 1941, troops in North Africa established a ‘noble roneo-ed effort’, the daily Tobruk Truth. Pacific theatre operations brought concentrations of Allied troops to Australia and New Guinea. In Darwin, the Army News was published from 1941 to 1946. In Port Moresby in early 1942, soldiers established Kitbags, a single-sheet paper, followed by the weekly Moresby Army News Sheet. An official Army newspaper, Guinea Gold, started in Port Moresby in November 1942, circulating widely into the South-West Pacific from 1942–46, with up to 64,000 copies printed daily. In North Queensland on 17 May 1943, the Atherton premises of the Tableland

colour in the world—but it had initial technical problems, which limited its advantage. Circulation continued to increase, but was not enough to bring financial stability. Though the company returned to a modest profit in 1955, London sold it to the rival Herald and Weekly Times, provided the paper was closed down. The Argus closed on 19 January 1957. Both sales, but particularly the requirement for closure, have remained controversial, but Argus and Australasian company records have vanished. The Argus Index (1846–58, 1870–79 and 1910–49) provided a ready guide to thousands of events over many decades, invaluable to researchers until the Argus was digitised by the National Library of Australia’s Trove. The Argus building, constructed in 1926 on the corner of La Trobe and Elizabeth Streets in Melbourne, is classified by the National Trust of Australia. REF: J. Usher (ed.), The Argus (2008). ROBERT MURRAY and JIM USHER

ARME D F ORCE S M EDIA The Australian colonies contributed military contingents to the New Zealand Wars (1860– 66), Sudan (1885), the Boer War (1899–1902) and the Boxer Uprising in China (1900–01). Regimental newspapers, such as the Cyclone or Austral-Englishmen and the A I Register, were printed on troopships bound for the Boer War, while in South Africa, various colonial military contingents and personalities had their own journals. At home, patriotism ran high and postcards primarily designed to encourage military enlistment were popular, as were artworks such as Norman Lindsay’s Giving Him a Hand (1899). Early cinematography (the biograph) gave public showings, under titles such as The March Down Queen Street (1899) and Two Hours in South Africa with the Troops (1900), to enthusiastic Australian audiences. In December 1914, coinciding with the Australian occupation of Rabaul in German New Guinea, the Namanula Times (to become the Rabaul Record, 1916–18), possibly the first Australian Army newspaper, was published there. When troopship convoys left Australia for the Middle East from late 1914, many informal soldiers’ newspapers and information sheets, such as Honk: The Voice of the Benzine Lancers (HMAT Ceramic), the Coo-ee (HMAT Suevic), and the Osteralia (RMS Osterley) were published on board. In 1915, Australian soldiers at Gallipoli received copies of the Peninsula Press, the daily news sheet of the General HQ, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, but also devised their own irreverent publications, such as Snipers Shots and Dinkum Oil, both edited by 6th Battalion Sergeant Frank Noonan. The Australian and New Zealand military headquarters in Egypt, Palestine, Salonica and Mesopotamia produced 25

art magazines and reviewing Examiner were occupied by the Army, which then produced its own daily newspaper, Table Tops. Later published in Morotai (Netherlands East Indies), Table Tops closed in 1946. After Prime Minister John Curtin and General Sir Thomas Blamey criticised its efforts for the troops, the ABC created a national Forces Programme (which began on 5 July 1943), broadcast six days a week. In February 1944, radio station 9PA was established jointly by the ABC and Army in Port Moresby, to be followed by RAAF stations in Madang and Milne Bay (the Voice of the Islands). In 1945–46, Australian Army Amenities Service radio stations started elsewhere in New Guinea, including Torokina, Lae and Jacquinot Bay. These services were extended to Australian bases in Borneo, Sabah, Morotai and, eventually, Japan with the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces. More than 20,000 radio receivers, designed specifically for tropical conditions, were produced and distributed. In the Korean War (1950–53), Radio Commonwealth was established near the Imjin River, close to the truce line with North Korea. During the Malayan Emergency (1948–60) and Indonesian Confrontation (1963–66), the RAAF, building an airfield at Butterworth, established a radio system (1956) using camp loudspeakers. This evolved into RAAF Radio Butterworth, which broadcast to thousands of RAAF base personnel from 1960–87. Radio broadcasting was also a feature of armed forces media in the Vietnam conflict (1962–72). In 1966, the 1st Australian Logistic Support Group developed its own low-powered station, Radio DJ Vietnam, at Vung Tau, South Vietnam. From 1969 to 1972, the Australian Army operated its own Australian Forces Radio Vietnam, also from Vung Tau. A small, unofficial station, with studios and transmitter, was developed by the RAAF unit at Phan Rang airbase. The electronic media and the internet took precedence in the armed forces media arena during Australian military operations in the First Gulf War (1990–91), East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq, and in peacekeeping roles. In 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Radio Australia commenced a daily program for Australians held hostage. A political debate about Radio Australia’s role ensued, and it later—under sufferance—broadcast a program produced by the Royal Australian Navy for sailors during the Gulf War. Today the main print media organs of the individual Australian Defence Force services remain the Navy News (RAN, 1958– ), Army: The Soldiers’ Newspaper (Australian Army, 1980– ) and Air Force News (RAAF, 1997– ). In addition, the internet and social media afford Australian military personnel worldwide the opportunity to access news and information from home.

REFs: K. Fewster (ed.), Gallipoli Correspondent (1983); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983); R.L. Wallace, The Australians at the Boer War (1976). MARTIN HADLOW

AR T M AG AZIN ES AN D R EVIEW IN G The first published reviews of exhibitions of Australian art were anonymous notices by reporters in colonial newspapers. In 1854 the journalist and editor James Smith—an art, literature and theatre reviewer—arrived in Melbourne, where he began writing for the Age before being appointed to the Argus in 1856. Such was this journeyman writer’s dominance of the critical climate that his furious Ruskin-inspired attack on the 1889 9 x 5 Impression exhibition is still remembered. Dedicated publications on Australian art began to appear at the end of the 19th century. The first was the Sydney-based artist George Collingridge’s Australian Art: A Monthly Magazine and Journal, which began in January 1888 and ran until March that year. The next venture, the Australasian Art Review: A Monthly Journal of Music, Art and Drama, also based in Sydney, lasted from March 1899 until February 1900. This substantial publication can be credited with publishing the first overview of Australian art with James Green (J.G. De Libra)’s serialised ‘The Fine Arts in Australasia’. The November issue included Green’s essay on the 1899 Society of Artists’ exhibition, ‘The Poetry of Our Painting’, which is still one of the best analyses of Australian fin de siècle decoration. Feature articles on Australian art were regularly published from 1904 to 1911, when D.H. Souter was art editor of Art and Architecture, the journal of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales. In Melbourne in 1906, William Moore published Studio Sketches: Glimpses of Melbourne Studio Life and also wrote articles on interesting works from Australian exhibitions for the English art magazine, the Studio. From 1908 to 1918 the Victorian Artists’ Society Journal was effectively an inhouse journal supporting its members’ work, a stance that was also followed by the Queensland Art Society. Art in Australia, the most significant and enduring 20th-century publication on Australian art, was made possible by a combination of factors. The publisher, Sydney Ure Smith (1887–1949), was also the senior partner in Sydney’s leading advertising agency, Smith & Julius. His close working relationship with the photo engravers Hartland & Hyde resulted in superb high-quality colour reproductions for advertising, which led him to believe it was possible to also reproduce images of Australian art. In 1916, when the painter J.J. Hilder died, Ure Smith collaborated with the critic Bertram Stevens to produce The Art of J.J. Hilder (1918), with tipped-in, full-colour illustrations. This

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arthur norman smith memorial lecture in journalism targeted Australia Council support has enabled the publication of a broad spectrum of art magazines. In the 1980s Art & Text (1981–2002) provided a publishing base for an essentially postmodernist approach to art, while Artlink (edited by Stephanie Britton since 1981), which started as an information sheet for South Australia, has evolved into a national quarterly with a focus on ideas and issues that impact on Australia’s cultural life. As a result, it enjoys significant international exposure. Artlink was the first Australian art magazine to have issues dedicated to Aboriginal art, and these are now guest edited by Indigenous writers. In 1987, the UK-based Art Monthly supported an Antipodean incarnation that has evolved into a topically based publication housed at the Australian National University in Canberra. In July 2008, the cover image of Polexeni Papapetrou’s daughter as Lewis Carroll’s Olympia led to shortlived notoriety and the cancellation of embassy subscriptions. Some of the liveliest discussion of this and other recent visual arts issues has been on the web on some of the art blogs that have mushroomed over recent years. The most influential of these is Artlife.com, which has also led to its main writer, Andrew Frost, hosting a television series of the same name, and making regular appearances on ABC Radio National. While art criticism has tended towards the blogosphere, the Australian Art Collector, a glossy magazine totally funded by advertising, was founded in Sydney in 1997. Many of the writers who appear in Australia Council-funded publications and on blogs also write in a more muted fashion for the general public. The standing of current art critics in the mainstream media has seen them overshadowed by soft journalism guided by media releases. In 1988, the Pascall Prize for critic of the year was established in memory of the journalist and critic Geraldine Pascall (1944–83). Only two visual arts critics (Joanna Mendelssohn, the Bulletin, 1991 and Robert Nelson, the Age, 2000) have been awarded the Pascall Prize. However, Sebastian Smee, who writes for both the Boston Globe and the Melbourne-based the Monthly, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2011.

project led Smith and Stevens to create the quarterly Art in Australia (1916–42). Leon Gellert was appointed editor after Stevens’ death in 1922. Art in Australia actively fostered an interest in Australian art, and its success led to other publishers—notably Angus & Robertson—to produce books on the subject. Although it paid some attention to activities by other groups, it tended to reflect the activities and ideas of Sydney’s Society of Artists, of which Sydney Ure Smith was president. It is nevertheless the main source for published information on Australian art of this period. Art in Australia did not run at a profit, but was supported by (Sir) Charles Lloyd Jones, artist and department store proprietor. The Art in Australia imprint also produced the very stylish the Home (1920–42), which published articles on design and art, as well as fashion and high society. In 1934, at the height of the Great Depression, both the Home and Art in Australia were bought by John Fairfax & Sons. Smith was forcibly retired in 1938, and in 1940 Peter Bellew, who was also the Sydney Morning Herald’s art critic, edited Art in Australia until wartime restrictions led to its closure. After the war, Fairfax refused to transfer copyright on the title. In May 1963, Smith’s son, Sam Ure Smith, with Mervyn Horton, revived the publication with a new conjunction as Art & Australia. Supported by extensive advertising, Art & Australia has become the most significant continuing publication on Australian art. It has often been the first published source of information and research on Australian artists, and has a long-standing practice of reviewing books on Australian art and major exhibitions. Art & Australia was acquired by Eleonora Triguboff in 2003, and rebadged as ARTAND Australia in 2013. Until the Australia Council for the Arts transformed arts funding in 1973, other magazines were launched but did not survive. Max Harris’s Angry Penguins (1940–46) published some articles on artists associated with the group. A number of university student newspapers combined literary criticism with art appreciation. Modern Art News (Melbourne, 1959) ran for two issues. In 1970, Terry Smith and Paul McGillick produced three issues of the glossy Other Voices before it closed. Publications associated with art societies were more successful, with the NSW Contemporary Art Society Broadsheet in particular publishing lively critiques of current issues from the 1950s until the mid-1970s. Imprint, the magazine of the Print Council of Australia, began in 1966 and is still in production. The Whitlam Labor government’s generous funding of the arts led to a significant rise in the number of art magazines in the 1970s, but many of these were short-lived, and did not survive the 1976 Budget cuts or the 1980s recession. However they did help to create a climate of pluralist discourse on art, and continuing

REFs: W. Moore, The Story of Australian Art (1934); G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). JOANNA MENDELSSOHN

AR TH U R N O R M AN SM ITH M EM O R IAL LEC TU R E IN JO U R N ALISM Arthur Norman Smith (1862–1935) was a founder of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance), serving as its first full-term president in 1911–12. Smith ran his own press agency, specialising in political and industrial reporting, in the early years of the Australian Federation. He was also the author of Thirty Years: The Commonwealth of Australia 1901– 27

ashbolt, allan campbell (1921–2005) began in 1936, and is available through the National Library of Australia.

1930 (1933). For his service to the AJA, Smith received the association’s two highest awards: the Gold Honor Badge (1913) and honorary life membership (1927). After Smith’s death, members of his family endowed the Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism at the University of Melbourne, to honour his achievements and to examine important aspects of journalism. The first lecture was presented in 1936, and today the Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism is the most prestigious and respected in its field in Australia. Often provocative, it was originally devoted to newspaper issues, but the range of topics broadened to include developments in radio and television, training and professional development, politics and the press, privacy and public-interest questions. In fact, the 2010 lecture by Annabel Crabb, the ABC’s online chief political writer, was entitled ‘The End of Journalism as We Know It—and Other Good News Stories’. The lecture is open to the public and has been delivered by many distinguished speakers, among them journalists and broadcasters, academics, politicians, newspaper editors and media executives. The first lecture was presented in 1936, by Sir Edward Cunningham, a former editor of the Melbourne Argus. His topic was ‘A Survey of the Press in Victoria’. Other newspaper editors (or former editors when they gave the lecture) have included Leonard Vivian Biggs, the Age (1938); Adrian Deamer, the Australian (1971); Graham Perkin, the Age (1974); Sir Larry Lamb, the Sun and the Daily Express (London) and the Australian (1982); and Pichai Chuensuksawadi, the Bangkok Post (1998). In 1966, American journalism academic W. Sprague Holden drew particular attention in ‘to the low regard in which formal university training was held by many, if not most, Australian journalists’. Rupert Murdoch spoke on ‘Publishing Newspapers in the Seventies’ (1972) and Sir Frank Kitto’s subject was ‘The Press Council and the Future’ (1978). Several political figures have been invited to deliver the lecture, including Arthur Calwell, Bob Hawke, and Peter Beattie. Working journalists, reporters and broadcasters have been well represented over the long life of the Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture. They have included John Hetherington, whose topic was ‘The War Correspondent’s Craft’ (1943); E.W. (Bill) Tipping, on ‘The Nieman Experiment and Trends in American Journalism’ (1952); Douglas Gillison, on ‘A Reporter Looks at his Trade’ (1964); Michelle Grattan, on ‘Reporting Federal Politics’ (1988); and Jon Faine, who chose the subject of ‘Defending Talkback Radio’ (2003). The lecture has been published in periodical form by the University of Melbourne since it

REFs: C.J. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist (1985); G.E. Sparrow, Crusade for Journalism (1960). JOHN TIDEY

ASH B O LT, ALLAN C AM P B ELL (1921–2005) As a senior officer of the ABC, Allan Ashbolt was a radical voice in a conservative institution. He served in the AIF from 1942, marrying journalist Jeanne Liddy in 1944. Following the war, he founded the Mercury Theatre in Sydney with Peter Finch and John Kay. In 1954, he became a producer with the ABC. From that time until his departure from the national broadcaster in 1978, Ashbolt’s career was marked by furious controversies that spilled into federal parliament, newspaper cartoons and headlines, and management attempts to contain him. He became known as the most censored man in the ABC, later as the ABC’s conscience-in-residence and ultimately (in the words of journalist Graham Williams) as the ‘Lion of the ABC’. He survived by his talent for broadcasting and his moral courage. Six years as elected president of the Senior Officers’ Association (1964–70) testified to his standing among his peers. Ashbolt judged the ABC to be an undemocratic institution that represented the values of the ruling class and the aspirations of the middle class. The ABC had been reduced to that state largely by pressures and interference from the long-serving Menzies Coalition government and the weakness of its own Commissioners. He also believed it was too close to political society and to key institutions in civil society—something illustrated in 1963 when, as executive producer of Four Corners, he angered leaders of the RSL. They complained to Menzies, and Ashbolt was removed from the program. His very public stance as a protester against the Vietnam War in 1966 saw him relegated to a television backwater. After three years, he returned to radio, as head of special projects, to resume his aim of democratisation. Lateline, which he established in 1973, was openly radical. He was the author of two books: An American Experience (1966), based on his years as the ABC’s first US correspondent from 1958 to 1961, and Words from the Vietnam Years (1974). K.S. Inglis’s This is the ABC (1983) rates Ashbolt as one of the ABC’s intellectuals of his day. His hopes included a collective responsibility for standards built up by the staff union; more power for producers; a global approach to politics; and fostering the growth of a national consciousness. In 1976, recognising signs of political censorship, Ashbolt refused to hand over to a superior officer that year’s Boyer Lectures, prepared by Professor Manning Clark, a scathing critic of 28

associated newspapers ltd the two companies formed Consolidated Press Ltd, majority-owned by Packer and Theodore, but with ANL representation on the board, to publish the Daily Telegraph and the Women’s Weekly. Agreements to contain competition protected the Sun and Sunday Sun on one side, and the Women’s Weekly on the other. Sun Newspapers was liquidated and its assets were transferred to ANL. There were other consolidations. In 1936, the United Cable Service (run by the Sun and the Melbourne Herald) and the Australian Press Association merged to create Australian Associated Press. In 1936, ANL sold the Newcastle Sun to the publishers of the Newcastle Herald. Two years later, ANL launched Pix. On Denison’s death in 1940, he was succeeded as chairman by an engineer, Sir John Butters. ANL’s advertising manager, Eric Kennedy, was promoted to CEO in 1942. Two of Denison’s sons were involved with ANL: Reginald Ernest as a director and Leslie Arthur as production manager. The company also had interests in 2UE Sydney and Australian Newsprint Mills Pty Ltd. ANL’s refusal of the request from the Sun chapel for a 40-hour week and four weeks’ annual leave triggered a Sydney newspaper strike in October 1944. The industrial demands were resolved in agreements in 1945 and 1947. When Consolidated Press converted to a public company in 1948, it acquired ANL’s shares for £170,000. The following year, ANL formed a subsidiary, Sungravure Limited, to take over rotogravure printing. People was launched in 1950, and merged with Pix in 1972. By the 1950s, ANL was short of liquid capital, partly because the Sun had been overtaken by Ezra Norton’s Daily Mirror (est. 1941). In 1951, it lost court cases against cartoonist Jimmie Bancks, creator of ‘Ginger Meggs’. Two years later, both Consolidated Press and John Fairfax & Sons offered to buy the ordinary shares in ANL. Each company wanted to be in a position to utilise idle printing capacity by publishing an afternoon as well as a morning newspaper. ANL’s board, remembering how two generations of the Packer family had exploited their fears about competition in the 1930s, accepted the Fairfax offer. Frank Packer spent three years unsuccessfully challenging the validity of the merger. R.A.G. Henderson displaced Kennedy at the helm of ANL, and retrenchments were made. The fledgling Sunday Herald was merged with the Sunday Sun in October 1953, producing the popular Sun-Herald. ANL’s investment in 2UE, and its keenness to move into television, helped to propel the formation of Amalgamated Television Services Pty Ltd, which in 1956 was awarded one of Australia’s first commercial television licences (for ATN7). As part of a public company floatation by John Fairfax & Sons in 1956, Fairfax rapidly increased its holding of ordinary shares in ANL

the Whitlam Labor government’s Dismissal. The Commissioners backed Ashbolt, decreeing that Clark’s lectures were not to be tampered with. When Ashbolt retired in 1978, he left behind a band of young producers known as Ashbolt’s Kindergarten, guaranteed to make their mark. REF: D. Bowman, ‘Radical giant of Australian broadcasting’, SMH, 15 June 2005. DAVID BOWMAN

ASSOCI ATED NEWSPAPERS LTD On 1 October 1929, S. Bennett Ltd merged with Sun Newspapers Ltd to form Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL). The former company contributed the Evening News, the Sunday News, Woman’s Budget and Sporting and Dramatic News; the latter contributed the Sun, the Sunday Sun, the Daily Telegraph Pictorial, the Sunday Pictorial, the Newcastle Sun, World’s News and Wireless Weekly. The tobacco manufacturer (Sir) Hugh Denison (1865–1940), who had founded Sun Newspapers, was to chair ANL until his death. In January 1930, the rapacious Sydney-based chain purchased the Daily and Sunday Guardians from the proprietors of Smith’s Weekly. In return, Smith’s Newspapers Ltd contracted not to publish a morning, afternoon or Sunday newspaper for 21 years. But ANL itself published competing titles, a near-catastrophic business model coinciding with the Great Depression. A rise in cover prices for the daily newspapers could not arrest the slide. By December 1930, the £1 preference shares of ANL were worth just 10 shillings. In 1931, the Evening News and the Sunday Pictorial were discontinued; the Daily Guardian and Daily Telegraph Pictorial were merged into a new Daily Telegraph; and the Sunday Guardian was merged with the Sunday Sun. Controversy dogged the group. To protect his shareholding in ANL, R.C. Packer moved from Smith’s Newspapers to become managing editor of ANL’s remaining papers. In 1932, Premier J.T. Lang introduced a Bill—ostensibly designed to protect preference shareholders in Smith’s Newspapers—that would, if pursued, have bankrupted Packer. That same year, Packer authorised ANL to pay £86,500 to his son, (Sir) Frank, and E.G. Theodore not to publish an afternoon newspaper for three years. The extraordinary manoeuvre preserved the Sydney monopoly of the Sun, the jewel in ANL’s crown, but provided Frank Packer and Theodore with the capital to launch the Australian Women’s Weekly. In 1935, as the end of the agreement with ANL approached, the pair’s company, Sydney Newspapers Ltd, began to consider producing a daily newspaper. Alarmed, Denison’s empire— aptly described in a 1949 book on Theodore as a ‘tame and copious milch cow’—again came to the aid of Packer and Theodore. In early 1936, 29

astrology the United States. In 1957, Garden and his son Harcourt were charged with the offence of fortune-telling after a reader complained about paying for, but not receiving, a personal horoscope. Fortune-telling was illegal in most Australian states for most of the 20th century until the laws were repealed. However, the legal situation appears to have had little impact on astrological material in the media. The Review was purchased in 1979 by astrologer Ray Webb and later renamed the Astrological Monthly Review; it is the longest-running astrological periodical in the world. Despite astrology’s growing popularity during the 1930s, there were many sceptics. In the 1940s, Smith’s Weekly published exposés of the veracity of horoscope predictions. On ABC Radio, writer Dymphna Cusack and zoologist Professor William Dakin were among those who expressed concern about astrological readings in newspapers and on the radio. Following World War II, Sydney Piddington and his wife Leslie Pope performed a telepathic act on 2UE Sydney and 3KZ Melbourne. Piddington was a vaudeville artist who refined his mental powers while a prisoner of war in Changi. In 1949, the Piddingtons went to London, where they had a successful mind-reading program on BBC Radio. In 1949, the first national astrologers’ convention was held in Melbourne, but astrology in Australia did not regain its pre-World War II mass popularity for two decades. There were almost no new Australian books on astrology until Human Destiny: The Psychology of Astrology (1969) by Gwyn Turner, who also wrote for the Australian Women’s Weekly. Despite the decline in public interest, horoscope predications had become a standard, and somewhat unremarkable, feature of the media. In the 1970s, there was an explosion of interest in the New Age and astrology, reflected in increasing print space and broadcast time, including on television. Arthur Bowman issued a series of personal horoscope booklets in 1973, heralding a new wave of popular texts and a new generation of celebrity astrologers. These included Doris Greaves, columnist for New Idea, and Milton Black, an astrologer-numerologist who regularly appeared on the Mike Walsh Show for the Nine Network. Uri Geller, Doris Stokes and broadcaster Kevin Arnett regularly appeared on The Don Lane Show, and at one point host Lane even evicted sceptic James Randi from the set. Ray Webb scripted Your Day by the Stars for Independent Radio Services and Grace Gibson Productions from 1981 until 2007, making it the longest continuously running astrology program on radio. Melbourne-born Athena Starwoman gained global recognition as an astrologer for numerous newspapers and magazines, including Woman’s Day and Vogue. Her niece,

to 98 per cent. In 1957, all directors other than Henderson and Sir Warwick Fairfax resigned, with vacancies filled from within John Fairfax Ltd. ANL, which for more than two decades had played such an important role in the fortunes of Australia’s major media groups, was henceforth primarily an investment company, owning shares in Australian Newsprint Mills, Sungravure (which went into partnership with London’s International Publishing Corporation Limited in 1970–78) and the Sun (which ceased publication in 1988), and a one-third interest in the Sun-Herald. REFs: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981); R.B. Walker, Yesterday’s News (1980). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

A S T R OL OGY Astrological predictions in the media became popular in Australia from the 1920s, following similar trends in the United States and Britain. This coincided with the post-World War  I expansion of popular culture and increasing social receptivity to alternative forms of spiritualism and pseudo-scientific explanations for global and everyday events. In 1925, the Australian Astrological Association was formed, soon followed by the Sydney Lodge of the International College of Astrology. Specialist booksellers opened, and local predication annuals were produced, complete with astrological charts for the southern hemisphere. Maurice Champion is credited with giving the first radio lecture on astrology on 2BL Sydney in 1927. The Australian Theosophical movement, at its most vibrant in Sydney during the interwar years, supported discussion of astrology through its publications, lectures and own radio station, Sydney’s 2GB. In Melbourne between 1936 and 1944, well-known Theosophist John Farquharson organised the Jadasa program on 3AK. The increasing professionalisation of astrology during the 1930s resulted in dedicated astrology programs on radio, newspaper columns and media advertisements for clairvoyant and horoscope readings. Astrology’s capacity for guidance meant it was targeted particularly at women. For example, on 2UW, the Personal Service Bureau featured advice from astrologer Jean Hull from 1931, and the Women’s Magazine of the Air ran an astrology segment from 1937. In 1935, the Australian Women’s Weekly introduced its ‘Written in the Stars’ column by June Marsden—perhaps Australia’s first celebrity astrologer—who had studied astrology in North America and was president of the Astrological Research Society of Australia. In 1939, NSW trade union leader and politician Jock Garden began publishing the weekly Today’s Astrology, changing the magazine’s name to Review in 1942. Much of the magazine’s content was syndicated from 30

audience research JWT, and by the late 1940s surveys were being conducted in all mainland capitals. Surveys were infrequent; in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, they were no more than twice yearly. And the method, ‘aided recall’, assumed that respondents could remember the household’s listening patterns the day before. In 1952, McNair became independent of JWT. Once television arrived, it widened its focus from ‘yesterday’s listening’ to ‘yesterday’s viewing’. Though clients bought both surveys, McNair’s biggest competitor was the Anderson Analysis of Broadcasting, established by George Anderson (1897–1974) in 1944. Daily, for two weeks, Anderson Analysis interviewed 22 different respondents in each of 12 Sydney ‘zones’. Using aided recall, Anderson graphed the proportion of sets in use every 15 minutes, from 6 a.m. to midnight by day of week. The graphs were accompanied by data on the ‘leading’ sponsored programs, which enabled advertisers to calculate their expenditure on a cost-per-thousand-radio homes basis. In 1947, Anderson switched to diaries. These were left with, completed by and collected from what was supposed to be a representative sample of listeners (and, later, viewers). Eventually, diaries would show the frequency with which individuals listened to particular programs— though, until survey periods were extended, only for programs that went to air more than once a week—and the number of listeners a station reached over a week (the ‘cumulative audience’, especially important to assessing the appeal of the ABC and SBS). Initially, diaries simply reported how many men, women and children under 16 listened to a station at home for at least five minutes in any quarter-hour. The system allowed for no more than one radio per home. Later, diaries would cover listening done in cars, at work and elsewhere; with the introduction of television, they were extended to viewing as well. In the mid-1960s, under industry pressure, McNair switched to diaries, despite concerns about the reliability of diary-keepers. In 1973, Anderson and McNair merged, sample sizes were increased to 400 in Sydney and in Melbourne, and diaries extended to two weeks; however, demographic data remained restricted to sex and age. In 1980, the majority of McNair Anderson was acquired by AGB, with the US ratings conglomerate ACNielsen (later Nielsen) acquiring AGB McNair in 1994. Introduced by Roy Morgan Research in 1979, and later trialled by both AGB McNair and ACNielsen, ‘PeopleMeters’ became the industry standard for measuring audiences after ACNielsen won the commercial television industry tender to install them across the capital cities in 1991. A way of recording the station to which the television was tuned and, less reliably, the presence of individual viewers, meters enabled viewing data to be transmitted

Astrogirl, has also carved out an international career. The expanding interest from the 1990s in psychic readings and personal guidance has supplemented and even supplanted conventional horoscope columns in much print media. Talkback psychic radio programs have attracted high ratings around the nation. Television has also been important in bolstering the careers of professional psychics, who regularly give media advice as well as running private consulting practices. Broadcast media has also focused on the ‘truth’ of psychic knowledge. The Seven Network’s The One was developed in association with the Australian Psychics’ Association with the aim of locating Australia’s most accurate psychic. Its first season in 2008 attracted considerable controversy when it featured a hunt for the body of murder victim Peter Falconio; a second season did not appear until 2011. Despite being a ubiquitous presence in the media for almost a century, astrology and New Age content has attracted little comment from media scholars, with the exception of an essay by Theodor Adorno on the irrational in culture. However, it is clear that astrology and psychic content in the Australian media have a long and vigorous history. REFs: FAA Jnl, vols 2–3, 1972–73; B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009). KATE DARIAN-SMITH

AUDI E NCE RE SEARCH Most immediately identified with regular, largescale, industry-sponsored sample surveys of radio listeners and television viewers (known as the ‘ratings’), audience research helps determine what programs go to air, when and how much advertisers pay. Similar surveys cover newspaper and magazine readers. These surveys, organised by the commercial stations and paid for principally by them, are designed to provide advertisers, media buyers and media managers —commercial and non-commercial—with data about the size and composition of various audiences. Stations or networks that top the ratings overall can charge a premium for access to their audience. However, what the ratings measure and how well they do it is contentious. Ratings surveys have a long history. From 1934 to 1936, W.A. McNair (1902–79) from the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson (JWT) attempted to establish who—by age, sex and breadwinner’s occupation—was listening to what, each quarter-hour of every selected day, mainly in Sydney. After trialling various methods—interviewing by telephone (only 15 per cent of households had landlines), having children answer questionnaires in schools, distributing survey forms to offices and factories—McNair settled on face-to-face interviews, predominantly with housewives. In 1944, McNair established McNair Survey Pty Ltd within 31

audience research even on advertisers. For many years, figures published by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, also at six-monthly intervals, were regarded as a more credible measure by many advertisers. One problem was that readership data were not linked to a wide enough range of consumption data. Another was the lack of detail about where newspaper buyers actually lived; a large proportion of readers were commuters who bought their papers from vendors distant from their homes. News Limited commissioned its own research to tackle this. Studies of advertising readership and brand recognition were also undertaken by Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) as early as the 1960s. Syndicated surveys in the 1960s were conducted by Anderson Analysis, using diaries, with readers classified in terms ‘such as occupations, home-owners, car-owners, smokers, and beauty-conscious women’, and by McNair, using aided recall, with additional items related to shopping. From 1970, this enabled McNair to approach advertisers with its single source Prime Prospect Profiles. In 1968, John Braithwaite’s Survey Research Centre, using larger samples, developed an approach that captured a wider range of data on income, life cycle, company purchases and product use. From the early 1970s, readership figures were also supplied to the industry on a quarterly basis by the Roy Morgan Research Centre. Morgan, which had begun its readership surveys in 1968, interviewed 1000 people over 14 years of age almost every weekend. By generating more conservative and, it was felt, more credible levels of readership, Morgan’s survey became the first to be endorsed as the industry standard. Respondents were asked whether they had ‘read or looked into’ particular dailies ‘at least three times a week’, ‘any issue’ of any of the weeklies ‘in the last seven days’ and any monthly ‘in the last month’—later shifting to specific issues of each monthly in the last 10–12 weeks, prompting respondents with miniaturised covers reproduced in black and white to remove the ‘prestige’ effect of colour. Disparities between Morgan’s figures and those of McNair Anderson, which also gathered its data face to face, were highlighted in 1983 after the Australian Women’s Weekly switched from a weekly to a monthly. McNair Anderson argued that Morgan’s measures were affected by its failure to call back when respondents were not available, and for monthlies by ‘memory loss’. Later, Morgan switched to diaries. These tracked print and online newspaper readership day by day, asked respondents to indicate the sections they ‘usually read or look into’, and readers’ reports of the most useful newspaper for information about different products. They also tracked weekly magazines ‘read or looked into’ in the last two weeks, fortnightlies and advertising catalogues over the last four weeks, monthlies in the last two months, and other mag-

by telephone (now owned by 95 per cent of households) and processed overnight. Second by second, they tracked when viewers turned on, switched off or changed channels. Meters appealed to the industry because they suggested that diarists generally under-reported viewing times, especially ABC viewers, viewers on weekday afternoons and after 7.30 p.m., viewers on Saturdays and teenagers on weekends. Meters also allowed for visitors in homes. Given access to sophisticated software, and data over periods longer than a week, industry players developed databases to model programming. In 1999, OzTAM (owned by the Seven, Nine and Ten Networks) was established to manage and market television audience measurement (TAM). In 2001, its first contract was won by ATR (Advanced Television Research) Australia, a subsidiary of AGB Italia, later Nielsen TAM. Using 3000 meters across the five mainland capitals, it was to measure audiences for the free-toair channels. Subsequently, its remit expanded to cover the national pay television service, digital terrestrial television and—recognising the importance of personal video recorders—the viewing of recorded content played back within seven days of the original broadcast. It does not include television viewing on mobile and portable media: personal computers, laptops, phones and tablets. Differences in the early results produced by OzTAM, which owned the data, and ACNielsen, which operated independently of the industry, generated controversy—particularly as both used meters. Regional television (dominated by Prime Television, Southern Cross Television and WIN Television) remained ACNielsen’s domain, but small samples and wobbly numbers displeased its clients. Radio ratings, once organised by the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (now Commercial Radio Australia), have also changed. With eight survey periods, compared with four for Melbourne and Sydney and two or three in other mainland capitals in the mid1970s under McNair Anderson, their frequency has increased. Roughly 60,000 individuals aged 10 or over—one per household—complete a diary each year. Under Gfk, the German firm that replaced Nielsen in 2014, one-in-five diary-keepers are recruited online and keep an e-diary. Results from Newcastle, Canberra and the Gold Coast are released three times a year. Elsewhere, including Hobart, stations continue to commission research ad hoc. The ABC supplements ratings data with its own audience research. The impact of research on the editorial direction of newspapers and magazines has been much less marked than the impact of the ratings on the programming of radio and television stations, where even small shifts in audience numbers can have real consequences. Until the late 1960s, readership surveys, published at six-monthly intervals, had limited impact

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audience research 1990s had substantial budgets for confidential research. However, surveys undertaken by opinion pollsters and academics, or for media regulators and public broadcasters, are generally available. Henry Mayer et al. (1983) listed over 500 items derived from the major opinion polls and national academic surveys, conducted between 1942 and 1980, as well as from regulatory and industry bodies. Excluded because of small samples or limited populations, but important because data from the immediate post-war years are scarce, are A.P. Elkin’s Our Opinions and the National Effort (1941), with its information about radio and questions on the readership, credibility and impact of newspapers; Alan Walker’s anthropological study of Coaltown (Cessnock) in New South Wales (1945); and both A.J. and J.J. McIntyre’s Country Towns in Victoria (1944) and A.J. McIntyre’s survey of Sunraysia (Mildura) (1948), which consider radio listening along with other forms of leisure. Mayer notes other surveys in The Press in Australia (1964). An updated compendium of questions and answers might include items from: the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ ‘Time Use Survey’ (1992– ); several reports commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) and its successor the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), most notably, Sources of News and Current Affairs (2001), Media and Communications in Australian Families 2007 (2007), and Community Attitudes to the Presentation of Factual Material and Viewpoints in Commercial Current Affairs Programs (2009); and the Morgan series (1976– ) on the perceived ‘ethics and honesty’ of journalists. It might document surveys commissioned by the ABC for The ABC in Review (1981), again in 1990 and, more regularly and recently, from Newspoll. It might encompass studies of the audience for ethnic broadcasting—those noted, for example, in the SBS annual reports. It might cover studies like A Report on Migrant Education Television in Australia (1979), for the Commonwealth Department of Education, or those commissioned on Multicultural Television (1986) by the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs. It might also include surveys with Indigenous respondents, such as Lelia Green’s Television and Other Frills (1988). And it might cover surveys like Kevin Durkin and Kate Aisbett’s Computer Games and Australians Today (1999), published by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), and that on Community Perceptions of Sex, Sexuality and Nudity in Advertising (2010) produced for the Advertising Standards Bureau. There is also work funded by academic bodies. Attitudes to newspapers, radio and television, based on surveys conducted in 1966 and 1979, are reported in J.S. Western and C.A. Hughes, The Mass Media in Australia (2nd edn, 1983). Data on the use of these media, and the

azines in the last six months’. And they tracked radio listening and television viewing, half-hour by half-hour; preferred media—including cinema and the internet—by time of day; and the medium respondents found most useful when making purchases. The diaries were incorporated into Morgan’s omnibus survey, the basis of its unrivalled single-source database that would eventually cover ‘lifestyle and attitudes, media consumption habits, brand and product usage, purchase intentions, retail visitation, service provider preferences, financial information and even recreation and leisure activities’, as well as ‘values segments’. Diaries defrayed costs. But the extraordinary length of the omnibus raised questions about how many respondents actually completed its surveys, and how representative they were of the original sample. The biggest newspaper companies (APN News and Media, Fairfax Media, News Limited and Seven West Media) had long criticised Morgan’s reports for being ‘too infrequent, lacking depth and transparency, and generating confusing results’—readership and circulation numbers sometimes moving in opposite directions. In 2006, these companies formed Newspaper Works (subsuming the Newspaper Publishers’ Association) to promote the press and to provide new measures of readership. From November 2013, EMMA (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) provided monthly readership data on individual sections, across print, websites, smartphones and tablets, linked to Nielsen Online Ratings data. Morgan, which had collected detailed sectional reading in a form not sanctioned by the newspaper industry, had already moved to publish data on individual sections, including readers’ ‘engagement’. Now it started releasing data on a monthly basis. But the old story about audience surveys hadn’t changed: the figures generated by EMMA—generally higher, especially for magazines—proved difficult to reconcile with the Morgan numbers. Even if valid and reliable, ratings and readership data are inherently limited. Apart from focusing on English-speakers and demographics of interest to advertisers (regional, ethnic and Indigenous audiences, as well as audiences for community media, are under-sampled), they don’t measure affect, media effects or what the audience actually accepts; audiences are ‘consumers’, but other metaphors might fit better. There are alternative approaches, including the use of distant ‘memories’, as in Martyn Lyons and Lucy Taksa’s Australian Readers Remember (1992) and Kate Darian-Smith and Sue Turnbull’s Remembering Television (2012), and the use of contemporaneous sources—letters to television stations or newspapers—as well as ‘favourite television memories’, assayed by Alan McKee in Australian Television (2001). Much of the work that goes beyond the syndicated surveys is not publicly available. News Limited from the 1960s and ACP in 1980s and

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audit bureau of circulations pitt and colleagues’ study Infants and Television (1998), and Linda Sheldon and colleagues’ ‘Cool’ or ‘Gross’ (1994) and Kids Talk TV (1996), as well as Children’s Views about Media Harm (2000); while ACOSS published Young People, Gambling and the Internet (1997). More recently, ACMA has published studies of children’s viewing patterns. Educational researchers, alive to the moral panics it engendered, were attuned to television from the start. The first research monograph on Television and the Australian Adolescent (1962) by W.J. Campbell was sponsored by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB). Groups of Sydney adolescents were interviewed in 1956 and re-interviewed in 1959; other groups were interviewed in 1959. As well as answering questionnaires, students kept daily diaries for a week. By 1959, television had emerged as the biggest leisure activity, with the time spent listening to the radio halved. Other data shed light on the effects of television on family behaviour, neighbourhood relations and the impact television personalities had as ‘models’. The report was mostly reassuring. In 1958, R.J. Thomson’s Melbourne study of the impact on children and adolescents of Television Crime Drama (1959), also sponsored by the ABCB, was equally reassuring about media and violence: there was ‘no evidence’ in ‘the great majority of viewers’ that crime films ‘provoked any criminal or psychopathic tendencies’.

internet, during election campaigns are tracked by the Australian Election Study (1987– ). A mid-1990s survey exploring a wider range of media is reported in Tony Bennett et al.’s study, Accounting for Tastes (1999). Overlooked by Bennett is the taste for videos, DVDs, magazines and the internet as sources of pornography—the subject of Hugh Potter’s Pornography (1996) and The Porn Report (2008) by Alan McKee et al. Also overlooked is research into book tastes. Hans Guldberg’s Books—Who Reads Them? (1990) is one of a series of studies commissioned by the Australia Council since 1978 on books, television and other leisure activities. Qualitative research, inevitably omitted from such compendia, should also be noted: the ABA’s Living with Television (1992); Toni Johnson-Woods’ audience study on the Big Brother phenomenon, Big Bother (2002); the ethnic audience’s experience of the mass media, reported in Bronwyn Coupe et al.’s report for the Office of Multicultural Affairs, Next Door Neighbours (1993); the diasporic audience analysed in Stuart Cunningham and John Sinclair’s Floating Lives (2000); the report for the ABA on The People We See on TV (1992), which focused on attitudes to the representation of Aborigines and people of non-English-speaking background; and the report by Michael Meadows et al., Community Media Matters (2007), which includes Indigenous broadcasting. With the development of radio in the 1930s, much of the media research by academics focused on children and the media. Children also became the main focus of content regulations for broadcasters. In the first large-scale study of Growing Up in an Australian City (1957), W.F. Connell and his students at the University of Sydney examined adolescents’ use of radio, films, newspapers, books and comics. In 12 to 20 (1975), Connell and his colleagues compared the reading, listening and viewing behaviour of boys and girls in and out of school; the discovery that newspaper reading at ages 13–14 was little different from that at 17–18 helped lower the minimum age in audience surveys. Newspapers and television, though not radio, also figure in R.W. Connell’s The Child’s Construction of Politics (1971). Other studies, mostly of children in Sydney and/or Melbourne, followed: John Blizard’s Individual Differences and Television Viewing Behaviour (1972); Kevin Tindall and David Reid’s Television’s Children (1975); Patricia Edgar’s Children and Screen Violence (1977); Edgar and Ursula Callus’s The Unknown Audience (1979); Mary Nixon’s TV is Funny, Boring, Exciting but I Love It (1981); Patricia Palmer’s The Lively Audience (1986); and Bob Hodge and David Tripp’s Children and Television (1986) and their reading of cartoons, the most theoretically sophisticated study since Raewyn Connell’s. Later, the ABA and the OFLC funded Margaret Cupitt and Sally Stockbridge’s Families and Electronic Entertainment (1996); the ABA sponsored Cup-

REFs: G.M. Anderson, Radio Audience Research in Australia (1944); M. Balnaves et al. (eds), Mobilising the Audience (2002); M. Balnaves et al., Rating the Audience (2011); H. Henry (ed.), Readership Research (1984); K. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983) and Whose ABC? (2006); J.F. Kiernan (ed.), A Forum on Australian Media (1975); H. Mayer et al., The Media (1983); W.A. McNair, Radio Advertising in Australia (1937); E. More and K. Smith (eds), Case Studies in Australian Media Management (1992); R.R. Walker, Communicators (1967). MURRAY GOOT

A UDIE NCE S , INT E RNE T see online audiences A UDIE NCE S , ONL INE see online audiences A UDIE NCE S , PRE S S see readers A UDIE NCE S , RA DIO see listeners A UDIE NCE S , T E L E V IS ION see viewers

AU D IT B U R EAU O F C IR C U LATIO N S The Audit Bureau of Circulations was established in Sydney in 1932 by the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) and the Australian Association of Advertising Agencies. Modelled on its US namesake (est. 1914), the bureau represents advertisers, advertising agencies and publishers. Its first members were

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audit bureau of circulations had to do with whether the ‘quality’ of the buyers of a newspaper or magazine should be noted, not just the size of its sales. Another concern relating to newspapers— especially afternoon newspapers—was that new editions did not necessarily generate a commensurate increase in the number of readers advertisers might reach. Moreover, there was no provision for differences in the reach of daily papers, and weeklies or bi-weeklies—publications that might be read for longer, or passed around to more people. And there was no measure of what ads were read. There was also friction over whether the bureau’s audit should be restricted largely to publications that carried a cover price; generally, advertisers wanted to reach as many people as possible while publishers wanted to count only those who paid for what they read. At its inception, the Audit Report included ‘free copies considered to be of advertising value’ (the Open Road, distributed free to members of the NSW National Roads and Motoring Association, signed up in 1933), but excluded ‘all other Free Copies, Voucher Copies’, and ‘Special Bulk Sales’. Later, the bureau restricted its audit to ‘paid-for copies’, even if the businesses that bought them gave them away. In 2006, in the interests of transparency, the bureau introduced reporting by type of sale. From 2012, sales were reconfigured into seven categories: accommodation and hotel sales; airline sales; bundled sales (added after 2006); event sales; multiple publication sales; school sales; and tertiary education subscription sales. Since 2012, the bureau has published separate figures for average net paid print-only sales, digital-only sales, and packaged print and digital subscription sales. In March 2013, the bureau and the Circulations Audit Board (CAB) combined to form the Audited Media Association of Australia (AMAA). CAB, established in 1957 to ‘verify the circulation of free and controlled magazines and newspapers’, and now responsible for auditing digital, web and email publications, covers business and professional publications, specialty publications, community newspapers and community-language publications; from 1972, the monthly Open Road opened up an increasingly large lead over the Women’s Weekly as Australia’s largest-circulation magazine. The founders of the CAB were the Australian Suburban Newspaper Association, the AANA, and some business-to-business publishers. But the driving force was advertisers and their agents: of the original members, 69 were advertisers, 89 were advertising agencies and 16 were publishers. In Melbourne, a Suburban Newspapers Audit Board was formed around the same time, but was short-lived. Within the AMAA, both the bureau and the CAB retain their identities.

drawn in almost equal number from publishers (21)—mostly of newspapers, which joined under their individual mastheads; advertisers (15); and advertising agencies (14). At the peak of its membership, in 1970, these proportions had changed little: 373 publishers, 361 advertisers and 309 advertising agencies. From the 1970s, however, the outsourcing of advertising to advertising agencies, from big department stores, among others, brought dramatic change. From the 1980s, most agencies disappeared from the bureau’s membership—some no longer seeing any advantage in membership, perhaps because they no longer focused on print; some swallowed by other agencies; others displaced by the rise of agencies that specialised in buying print space or broadcasting time. The bureau’s original function was to furnish advertisers and advertising agencies from Australia and the South Pacific—space-buyers— with reliable data on the number of copies of metropolitan and non-metropolitan newspapers and magazines that were sold—space-sellers. Later, its remit expanded to include newspapers published nationally, consumer magazines, magazines inserted into newspapers, agricultural publications, ethnic and Indigenous newspapers, and overseas newspapers. Since 1995, the bureau has also collected data on changes in cover prices. Newspaper circulation figures, originally collated every six months, have been published quarterly since 1995. For newspapers published six days a week, the reporting of separate figures for weekday sales and weekend sales became mandatory in 2006. For metropolitan dailies, national dailies and regional dailies with circulations above 25,000, the reporting of separate figures for each day of the week became mandatory from early 2012. The figures show average sales per issue. The most recent figures are available online, with other data available on a subscription basis only. While most metropolitan newspapers belonged to the bureau in the 1930s, the Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald and Labor Daily did not. In Sydney, the only metropolitan daily that had signed up was the Sun. The Herald, along with the Australian Financial Review, did not join until 1982; John Fairfax & Sons insisted that its audited figures ‘required no further evidence of accuracy’. The first figures for the Daily Mirror, launched in 1941, were not available through the bureau until 1946; for the Australian, launched in 1964, there were no figures audited by the bureau until 1990. Among weekly magazines, early membership was much patchier, though titles as diverse as the Australian Women’s Weekly, the Land and the Westralian Worker joined early. Provincial papers, with circulations in the hundreds, were also under-represented. The basis on which circulation is assessed remains contentious. One of the early concerns

REF: http://www.auditedmedia.org.au. MURRAY GOOT

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australasian performing right association cultural enrichment and some popular diversion. Returning war correspondent George Johnston was appointed editor to revamp its format and modernise its content. The first issue as Australasian Post was published in April 1946; Johnston’s editorship lasted only 15 weeks. For the next 10 years, Post’s identity wavered between its middlebrow civic antecedents and a celebratory, pictorial Australiana, later infused with heterosexual voyeurism. Post survived the closure of the Argus in 1957 and sustained its niche as a barbershop magazine with the Herald and Weekly Times (1957–87), and then later with News Limited and Pacific Magazines. From the mid-1950s, Post’s ubiquitous swimwear covers enclosed tabloid picture stories on sharks, car crashes, cancer, sex changes, street prostitution, polygamy, film stars, local eccentrics, legendary outlaws, the occult and UFOs. Although serious pieces from such writers as Ian Turner, Frank Hardy and Alan Marshall were occasionally published, by the mid-1960s crosswords, punning colloquial humour and conversational opinion columns were standard fare. Aligned with its defining theme of knockabout Australiana, Post’s most enduring feature was Ken Maynard’s Ettamogah Pub cartoon, originally appearing as ‘Ned and his Neddy’ in the late 1950s. Post changed its name to Aussie Post in 1997 and tried to broaden its diminishing appeal by scaling back swimsuit shots and including more family-oriented content and school project materials. When the magazine continued to lose readership, Pacific Magazines (in partnership with the Seven Group from 2001) decided to suspend publication in January 2002. Under its various guises, Australasian Post had been Australia’s longest-running general interest weekly.

AUDITE D M E D I A A S S O C IAT IO N O F AU ST R AL IA see

Audit Bureau of Circulations

AUSSAT see satellite broadcasting

A U S T R A LASI A N PE RFORM ING RIGHT A S S O CI AT I ON Established in 1926, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) is the central payment collection society in Australia and New Zealand for composers, songwriters and music publishers. It collects fees for the public performance of musical works on television, radio stations, the internet and other communication (such as ‘on hold’ music and mobile ringtones). It also distributes foreign earnings to members. Its sister organisation, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA), licenses businesses (gyms, restaurants, nightclubs, theatres, pubs, offices and retail stores) to play or broadcast protected copyright recordings. The Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society Limited (AMCOS) has been managed by APRA since 1997. APRA’s revenue for 2013 was $207.6 million, derived from a membership of 79,139. It has been vigorous in pursuing copyright royalties for its members, exemplified in its many battles with music radio stations. In 1931, APRA suspended the playing of members’ recordings on air; in 1970, commercial radio stations refused airplay of the six major labels’ songs as a result of demands for a higher levy. With the PPCA and the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), it fought the ‘parallel importing’ amendments in 2002, and the ‘private copying’ changes to the Copyright Act 1968 in 2006. As a co-founder of the Australian Content Industry Group, APRA has strongly opposed music piracy. It was a litigant in the Village Roadshow Films v iiNet (2010–12) case that failed to convince the courts that ISP companies be held legally responsible for unauthorised downloading on their sites. APRA also hosts a number of annual songwriting and composition awards. Questions about its powerful role have existed since the 1920s, including criticisms of its monopoly power, the dominance of the major labels in its executive and the pursuit of ‘secondary’ property rights as recording sales and related copyright incomes decline.

REF: W.L. Murphy and M. Mitropoulos, ‘The Last Post? Tracking the Australasian to Aussie Post, 1864– 2002’, Australian Journalism Review, 24(2) (2002). WAYNE MURPHY

AU STR ALIAN On 15 July 1964, the day of its first publication, the Australian carried on its front page a programmatic editorial: a mission statement drafted by its young proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. ‘Here is Australia’s first truly national newspaper’, the editorial declared. The new paper would be independent, outspoken and free from ties to factions or interests of any kind. Above all, it announced, ‘we shall encourage those feelings and movements in public and private life which elevate the individual and advance the nation’s welfare’. Almost as striking as the masthead’s survival through times of political and economic turbulence for half a century is the persistence in its content today of this consistent approach to the development of Australia and to the business of presenting ideas to readers—an elite group

REFs: B. Atkinson, The True History of Copyright (2007); http://www.apra-amcos.com.au. SHANE HOMAN

A U S T RAL ASI A N POS T The general-interest Australasian Post magazine began as the Australasian in 1864, published by the Argus and Australasian Limited. By the mid-1940s, the weekly had established its blend of consumerism, civic mindedness, 36

australian performing right association decency, remained at the helm in various guises from mid-1975 until almost the end of 1988. He provided a backbone: kindly leadership, moderate beliefs, the punctilious professional values of the trained Fleet Street sub-editor, all married to a self-conscious Australian nationalism. The Australian’s stand-point in those years was a hazy, centrist middle ground: its politics fluctuated from critical support for both the Fraser Coalition and Hawke Labor administrations to abrupt bouts of radical conservative enthusiasm—like the bizarre backing it gave to the 1987 ‘Joh for Canberra’ campaign. The paper’s metropolitan readership had dipped with the defection of the 1975 cohort, to be replaced by a scattering of professionals in the mid-range towns and cities of the regions. Circulation stayed in the vicinity of 100,000 for the weekday edition, and 300,000 for the weekend. This seemed at the time to be a ceiling of a kind: market shifts and corporate dictates would soon make it so. In 1987, after intense duelling between rival bidders, Murdoch swooped to buy the Herald and Weekly Times. This gave him a national chain of titles, which he turned into a family of tabloids. The dynamics of News Corporation now changed. So too did the Australian: a new era began—its third incarnation. News chief executive Ken Cowley had forged an understanding with his leading commentator, Paul Kelly, the dominant political journalist of the long Hawke–Keating reformist government’s reign. In 1991, Kelly took over as editor-in-chief of the Australian with a mandate to reshape the title. All newspapers are emanations of the personality directing them. This was so to an unusual degree of Kelly’s Australian: his temper was rational, his outlook national. Kelly also knew how to delegate. The paper became a home to the country’s best long-form writers, it opened foreign bureaux and it set policy debates. The republic, multiculturalism, micro-economic reform, reconciliation: these were its meat and drink. It was on the rise even as its rivals fell. Kelly was a close student of power: in a striking fashion, his Australian was both the chief reflecting mirror of the political process and a shaping check on its chief actors. This period was the high-point for the Australian’s role as monitoring angel of the national project. The clarity in the paper’s tone stemmed from a particular value-realm, which in turn descended from its social centre of gravity: a defining current—still evident, though often misconstrued. Rather than simply or solely conservative in tilt, the Australian bears the influence of a small, distinctive milieu: secular Catholic in culture, intellectual in orientation, social democratic, with national ideals and a commitment to communal bonds at its core. Hence, for example, the paper’s long-term interest in Indigenous advancement, both as a moral and a national agenda priority—an interest scarcely typical of

who ‘as thinking men and women would have a profound influence on the future’. This was the promise of the Australian: access to an inner circle of enlightenment. Progress was the defining theme of the newspaper in its first decade, under a range of distinctive editors. Murdoch’s initial appointment was Max Newton, a Cambridge-trained economist and libertarian. The two quarrelled, and control soon passed to Adrian Deamer, a socially engaged, campaigning editor. Under his guidance, the Australian’s first reputation was established. It was the newspaper that saw potential in the nation’s present; it spoke for a distinctive Australian culture, a new society, founded on well-managed migration inflows, on resources, on traditions transcended and given fresh life. This ‘development romanticism’ was often to the fore in those years, if shadowed by the steely commitment to the idea of market economics one might expect at the heart of a fast-growing global media empire. The title swiftly broke new ground. There was a dedicated arts page, the first of its kind in the country; there were high-grade critics and reviewers; feature writers flocked to the paper. How to expand this beach-head in the quality market? After the experiment of the Sunday Australian (1971–72), Murdoch, now resident in London, and key editors made plans to launch a high-end weekend edition derived from the great broadsheet models of the British press. It was a successful debut: the Weekend Australian (est. 1977) and all other in-depth Saturday editions in today’s market follow in its wake, and have adapted its initial formula: quality investigative journalism and high-bourgeois advertising spreads. Increasingly, the Australian was a brand whose time had come: it was the symbol of a knowledge class, it stood for a new national compact and new social attitudes and it backed Labor leader Gough Whitlam in the lead-up to the 1972 election. But the love of newspapers and their proprietors is conditional. When 1975 came round, the world economy was in crisis and the government in Canberra was in chaos. The Australian campaigned with ferocity to unseat Whitlam. This bid to overturn established power was a token both of the newspaper’s seriousness and of its potency. But it was deeply unpopular with the Whitlam government’s committed backers, and with large elements of the knowledge class whose members formed the Australian’s core readership. Journalists on the paper went on strike; there was uproar. The Dismissal and the subsequent Coalition victory whipped up a bitter political climate. For the best part of a generation, the Australian was seen as the newspaper that had betrayed the progressive cause. Under the stabilising editorial hand of Les Hollings (1923–2003), a period of recovery and repositioning began. It was a long haul. Hollings, a man of great thoroughness and

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australian and new zealand communication association ideal clothed in words that has endured for five decades. In 2013, circulation stood at 116,655 for the Australian, and 254,891 for the Weekend Australian.

conventional centre or right politics. This special thread is consistent in the recent history of the Australian. It survived the interregnum years following Kelly’s departure from the editorship in 1996 and return to his writing rostrum. It lurks as a veiled continuo in the latest long-lasting editorial reign, that of Chris Mitchell (1956– ), editor-in-chief since 2002. If ever an editor was groomed for the part, it was Mitchell, who had been shaped as a legendary chief sub-editor, night editor and deputy to Kelly before taking the Brisbane Courier-Mail and remaking it as a modern, policy-engaged newspaper with a voice on the national stage. This apprenticeship served, it was back to Sydney: the Australian’s fourth and most recent phase had begun. Mitchell was at ease with politicians and reform proponents, confident in Murdoch’s backing, contrarian, caught up in the play of ideas and contentions: he ran an expansive paper against a backdrop of broadsheet contraction and collapse. Soon he was the unchallenged king of high-end Australian media. The Australian became a renewed focus of controversies. It was the news-setter. It critiqued Coalition Prime Minister John Howard’s decline, and picked up Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s ascending current early, and backed him, then subjected both his regime and the Julia Gillard succession to sustained and pitiless oversight. For much of the Labor half-decade from 2008 to 2013, it was the intellectual opposition as well as the chief theatre of policy debate—an unusual role. In a sense, a cycle of history was being replayed from the 1975 era: radical government takes power, and strong hopes are pinned on it; those hopes are disappointed, so a campaigning national interest paper goes on the march. But Mitchell faced struggles just as intense on two other fronts: internal and structural. The world was moving online, including advertising and its revenue. Print-based business models were in tatters. The Australian, more interested in ideas than platforms, was slow to adapt. Eventually it took the paywall route and built a strong iPad site. Staff cuts were savage across the media sector. Fairfax Media’s print titles had withered. ABC free websites were the main rivals of the Australian now, together with a range of publicly funded online opinion forums. News Limited’s managers increasingly felt themselves to be running a 24-hour infotainment enterprise. The Australian seemed a natural candidate for homogenisation into a cross-product news flow. Fierce corporate manoeuvres ensued. Mitchell prevailed, and the mid-term autonomy of the Australian, Rupert Murdoch’s favourite child, seemed once more assured. Such is the title today: agenda-making, at the heart of federal politics and national debate, a rolling presentation of events and positions, constant in tone, evolving in form—an

REF: D. Cryle, Murdoch’s Flagship (2008). NICOLAS ROTHWELL

AU STR ALIAN AN D N EW ZEALAN D C O M M U N IC ATIO N ASSO C IATIO N This organisation began as the Australian Communication Association (ACA), founded in 1979. It hosted its first event in Adelaide in 1980, followed by a larger conference in Sydney in 1981. It became the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) in 1994, emphasising the association’s trans-Tasman nature. The establishment of the ACA followed significant expansion in courses in oral, written and organisational communication throughout Australia in the 1970s, mirroring developments in the United States. Since its inception, ANZCA has been shaped by the relationship between communication as an element of professional practice and a field of critical research—sometimes referred to as the distinction between the ‘empiricist’ traditions of North American mass communications research and the more critical traditions of British and European media and cultural studies, which drew upon sociology, Marxism and semiotics. It can also refer to distinctions between communication as a distinct professional and disciplinary field, as seen in areas such as interpersonal and organisational communication, and areas such as media studies and internet studies, which are more interdisciplinary in nature. Many ANZCA members are also active in more discipline-specific professional associations, such as the Journalism Education Association of Australia (JEAA) and the Public Relations Institute of Australia. The relationship between ANZCA and these associations is the subject of ongoing discussions, particularly around its relationship with the JEAA, as many are members of both associations. ANZCA members are also active in international associations such as the International Communications Association and the International Association for Media and Communication Research, both of which are affiliates; ANZCA is also affiliated with the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia and the Royal Society of New Zealand. The association has hosted an annual conference in either Australia or New Zealand since 1980. The Grant Noble Award, honouring a former president, was initiated in 1996 for the best paper presented by a postgraduate student, and the Christopher Newell Prize, honouring the late disability activist, was initiated in 2009

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australian associated press During World War II, almost all Australian news about the Pacific War was supplied by AAP or smaller supplementary cable services from particular mastheads. Torney-Parlicki reports one surprise exception to this: the Australian, which did not subscribe to AAP but relied on United Press International for its agency news. AAP’s in-house history of the organisation, On the Wire (2010), published to celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary, noted that after the war AAP partnered with (rather than subscribed to) Reuters to form a joint news service, AAP-Reuters, which intended to prioritise Asia-Pacific news for the Australian audience. This partnership saw Reuters’ senior journalist Duncan Hooper appointed as editor (1949) and later managing editor (1956). AAP divested its shareholding in Reuters in 1988. In its formative years, AAP’s news dominance was clear: Torney-Parlicki’s findings show that ‘AAP news alone and AAP in combination with other sources, accounted for over a third to a half of the total war coverage in all except the Sun during the Pacific War and the Daily Telegraph during Vietnam’. By the 1970s, AAP had established itself as a fully fledged national news organisation. Demand from regional media resulted in rapid expansion of staffing levels, resulting in a five-fold increase in size between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, a restructure in 1983 saw the company evolve from a non-profit cooperative into a private profit-and-loss group of companies. AAP-Reuters formed AAP Reuters Communications in 1984 to distribute information via the newly launched AUSSAT satellite, and the split between the two news services in 1988 saw the establishment of the telecommunications carrier AAPT (AAP Telecommunications) in 1990. Also during the 1980s, AAP established its media release service MediaNet, which delivers news releases to journalists via a dedicated public relations wire. This media distribution service enabled PR agencies—clients of AAP— to target different media types. In 2003, this was expanded to include MEDIAtlas, ‘a fully searchable online directory of … media intelligence’. The following decades saw the company move beyond its role as a wire service to become a large and diverse media provider. Its status as an oligopoly, owned and controlled by the major media groups, has been the subject of ongoing critique, as it does not fit the tradition of an ‘independent’ wire service. In 2002, AAP acquired Pagemasters, which provides page-ready material and editing and production services to major newspapers. In 2011, AAP announced that it had been contracted by Fairfax Media to sub-edit general news, business and sport for the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun-Herald, the Age and the Sunday Age, causing significant industry debate after more than 80 Fairfax staff in editorial production were made redundant. In 2007, AAP acquired

for the best paper dealing with disability/equity/ social justice and communication. Members receive the journal Media International Australia. They also received the Australian Journal of Communication from 1982 until 2013. REF: W. Ticehurst, ‘Ten Years On: The Development of the Australian Communication Association’, Australian Communication Review, 10(3) (1989). TERRY FLEW

AUST RAL I A N A SSOCIATED PRESS Australia’s national news agency, Australian Associated Press (AAP), began in June 1935 with a staff of 12. Based in Melbourne, its first international bureaux were established in London and New York. AAP was created out of an amalgamation of the two existing agencies at the time: the Australian Press Association (APA), run by John Fairfax & Sons and the Melbourne Argus, and the Sun Herald Cable Service, from the Herald and Weekly Times and Sydney’s Associated Newspapers Ltd, which merged to form a non-profit cooperative. The primary purpose of the merger was to pool resources and cut costs associated with bringing overseas news to Australia. AAP was established ‘for the benefit of its fourteen newspapers’, with the HWT’s Sir Keith Murdoch as chairman. AAP adopted a cooperative model, similar to that already established by the US agency Associated Press (AP). AAP’s original objective, stated in its memorandum of association, was to supply ‘the most accurate and most searching information of all the world’s activities and thought without any tendency toward or opportunity for the exercise of political partisanship or bias’. In the early years, most of Australia’s international news was drawn from the large international agencies, Reuters and AP, as well as from the ‘blacks’ (carbon copies of reporters’ stories) of British and American dailies, largely rewritten with an Australian angle. In its first financial year, AAP transmitted 1.1 million words, covering major events like the Berlin Olympics, the Spanish Civil War and the Davis Cup, but its continued reliance on British cables coloured Australian perceptions. In her work on Australian wartime journalism in the Asia-Pacific, Somewhere in Asia (2000), Prue Torney-Parlicki reports that in 1936–37, AAP cabled an average of between 27,000 and 28,000 words a week to Australia; ‘of these approximately 85 per cent emanated from London, 12 per cent from New York and 3 per cent from the rest of the world’. Around this time, AAP produced a service manual designed to minimise wordage when every word sent cost money. Under this cablese system, words were dropped or combined to cut costs. AAP continues to use words (rather than stories) to describe its level of productivity. 39

australian association of food professionals inc. together through workshops, newsletters and dinners. Well-known members have included Margaret Fulton, Lyndey Milan and Ian (‘Herbie’) Hemphill. Officially launched at the Sydney Opera House on 24 May 1982, the Food Media Club Australia was instigated by Courtney Clark, who discovered the need for a network when employed by NSW Agriculture Minister Jack Hallam on the ‘Fresh is Best’ campaign. The first elected president was Bernard King, whose flamboyant promotion of cooking and associated products was already an ‘industry’ in itself. In 1995, the club’s most public activity became the biennial, sponsored Australian Food Media Awards, an idea brought back from New Zealand by industry home economist and broadcaster Barbara Lowery. Winners comprise a ‘who’s who’ of culinary celebrities, including Matt Preston, who won the Australian Mushroom Growers’ Award for Best Food Article in 2004. The Melbourne Age’s ‘Epicure’ won the 2008 Nuts for Life Award for Best Food Section in a Metropolitan Newspaper. Originally named the Australian Food Writers’ Awards, they soon faced competition from the World Food Media Awards, started in 1997 in Adelaide as part of Ian Parmenter’s biennial Tasting Australia event. Following a postal ballot at the end of 2009, the club was renamed the Australian Association of Food Professionals Inc. President Stewart White advocated a more inclusive name for ‘nutritionists, home economists, producers, marketers’. Serious food journalists might privately scoff at the ‘PR and Nutritionists Club’, the members of which often combine publicist and reporting roles, and organise junkets for one another. Peter Howard recalls being asked to stand for president by Barbara Lowery on a familiarisation trip in Cordoba for Spanish olive oil. However, a shared passion for gourmet dining and travel makes members susceptible both to such blandishments and to peer pressure towards higher gastronomic standards.

Melbourne-based media-monitoring company the Media Research Group (MRG), expanding its already established Newscentre, which tracks media coverage using smart software. Tony Gillies was appointed editor-in-chief in 2003, succeeding Tony Vermeer who had filled the position for eight years and had spent a total of 19 years with AAP. Vermeer steered AAP through the early challenging years of the growth of the internet, noting that, ‘People have often seen the web as an alternative news source, but in fact it is an alternative market for agency copy’—and indeed recent studies of AAP copy indicate that most major news websites’ ‘Breaking News’ sections are almost entirely AAP copy (sometimes combined with Agence France-Presse or AP). In January 2010, veteran journalist Bruce Davidson was appointed chief executive officer. Davidson established Pagemasters in 1991, and was its managing director until AAP took it over in 2002. Previous long-serving staff include Harry Gordon, who began with AAP in 1951 as a sports reporter and became a director and chairman in the 1980s. In September 2011, AAP expanded its news service base to New Zealand following the closure of the 132-year-old New Zealand Press Association (NZPA). At the end of 2012, AAP was owned by the three media groups that produce the majority of Australia’s newspapers: Fairfax Media owns about 47 per cent, News Corp Australia about 45 per cent and West Australian Newspapers (now part of the Seven West Media group) has an 8 per cent share. It employs more than 800 people, including 220 journalists, with reporters and photographers in 15 locations worldwide, bureaux in all Australian capital cities and offices in selected international locations. While the news operation of AAP operates at a loss, its commercial profit-making ventures— Pagemasters, the media-monitoring service Newscentre and its media release distribution service MediaNet—all operate at a profit and subsidise the newsroom costs. In October 2013, AAP announced plans to sell Newscentre to Australian company iSentia (formerly known as Media Monitors Australia).

REFs: http://www.foodprofessionals.org.au; personal contacts (including Courtney Clark, Peter Howard, Barbara Lowery and Lyndey Milan). MICHAEL SYMONS

REFs: J. Johnston and S. Forde, ‘Not Wrong for Long: The Role and Penetration of News Wire Agencies in the 24/7 News Landscape’, Global Media Jnl, 3(2) (2010) and ‘The Silent Partner: News Agencies and 21st Century News’, International Jnl of Communication, 5 (2011). SUSAN FORDE and JANE JOHNSTON

AU STR ALIAN ASSO C IATIO N O F N ATIO N AL AD VER TISER S Frustrated by their perceived lack of influence over the conduct of advertising practice and the status of advertising, the country’s 12 largest advertisers formed the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) in 1928. The organisation sought to enhance the advertisers’ relations with media proprietors, advertising agencies and the general public. Its proven capacity to meet this aim has seen the AANA emerge as the most resilient and influential organisation within the advertising industry.

A U S T RAL I A N A S S OCI ATION OF FOOD P R O FE S S I ONAL S I NC. This is a Sydney-based association of culinary communicators, including cookbook authors, cooking teachers, radio and television presenters, food stylists, nutritionists, brand consultants, marketers and importers, brought 40

australian broadcasting control board Broadcasting companies had long advocated a separate organisation to act as a neutral ‘traffic cop’ for the airwaves. They had been calling for ‘security of investment’ following an attempt by the conservative Lyons government in 1935 to limit the number of commercial radio stations that could be owned by a single group. Their other goals were higher transmitter power to boost audiences and a reduction in political control of broadcasting. The ABCB delivered most of these goals in its first 20 years. However, there was no reduction in political control by successive ministers. The primary role of the ABCB was planning and technical management for broadcasting. However, the 1948 Act gave it extensive powers over programs. The board could, for example, control advertising, prevent stations from broadcasting similar programs at the same time, require equitable opportunities for political broadcasts and censor any program. In practice, the ABCB had a consistent but unwritten policy to avoid compulsion. When dissatisfied with program performance, it almost never went beyond privately counselling stations to do better. Timidity was encouraged by a setback in the first year. Following a specific duty in its Act, the board published a scheme to allocate time for political broadcasts in the 1949 federal election campaign. The scheme was castigated by commercial stations and the major parties. Objections included the possibility that minority parties—including communists—could receive free airtime. The ABCB withdrew its scheme and announced that it was vacating the field. From 1949 to 1956, the ABCB was responsible for the ABC as well as commercial stations. It could have dictated ABC program policy, and even censored specific programs. In practice, however, it did not go beyond discussing ABC program policy and listener complaints on occasions. The ABC was less fortunate on planning issues. For example, the board was deaf to all requests for frequency enhancements to allow two nationwide ABC radio networks. This was in line with the Menzies Coalition government’s strong preference for commercial stations. The start of television in 1956 brought new roles and recognition to the ABCB. The board chairman from 1952 to 1966, R.G. Osborne, was a member of the 1953–54 Royal Commission on Television. Board officers provided most of the support for the commission’s hearings and report. They were involved in drafting the Broadcasting and Television Act 1956, which set the framework for both radio and television through the next 20 years. The Royal Commission report was optimistic about the cultural role of television, and even about new methods of regulation. It saw the granting and renewal of licences as the ultimate safeguard in areas ranging from the monopolisation of stations to children’s programs. New television Program Standards were to be the

From the outset, the AANA has maintained that ‘the advertising agent is the agent of the advertiser and not of the publisher’. Such a stance has frequently placed it on a collision course with both agencies and media outlets. Its protracted campaign against the Media Council of Australia’s accreditation system for agencies eventually led to the system’s abandonment in 1995. A growing number of agencies and media operators have since taken out AANA membership. The AANA’s efforts to enhance the status of advertising have been equally vigorous. During World War II, it played a key role in developing the Commonwealth’s propaganda campaigns while highlighting advertising’s role in upholding freedom of speech. It has also been an ardent proponent of self-regulation and ethics in advertising. Following the collapse of the Advertising Standards Council, the AANA funded the creation of the new Advertising Standards Board, and the AANA Code of Ethics now forms the basis of its remit. REFs: R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); http://www.aana.com.au. ROBERT CRAWFORD

A U S TR A LI A N B RO AD C A S T IN G AU T H O R IT Y see

Australian Communications and Media Authority

A U S TR A LI A N B RO AD C A S T IN G C O M M ISS IO N see

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

AUST RAL I A N BR OADCASTING CONTROL BOARD The Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) was responsible for most aspects of broadcasting regulation and planning from 1949 until 1977. Although it was a separate corporation by law, the ABCB operated like a government department. A minister had final authority over licences and planning, and board officers saw themselves as servants of the government of the day. It was often difficult to discern which priorities came from the ABCB itself, and which from the government. The ABCB was an offshoot of the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG). Broadcasting grew rapidly through the 1930s and 1940s, but the PMG spared few resources for its broadcasting role, being preoccupied with building the nation’s telecommunications system. Broadcasters and the government wanted a separate body that could work on tasks such as the station planning backlog. The ABCB was created under the Australian Broadcasting Act 1948, staffed by officers transferred from the Wireless Branch of the PMG. They were led by L.B. Fanning, who was founding chairman of the board. Both the ABCB and the Wireless Branch were located in Melbourne.

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australian broadcasting corporation Wright, in 1966. A former manager of 3AW Melbourne, he remained until the ABCB was replaced in 1977. He had to manage a decade in which the culture of the board was under increasing challenge by advocates of greater competition, freedom of information, Australian content, children’s television and a host of other program and licensing issues. During Wright’s tenure, several new commercial radio licences were granted after ABCB inquiries. The board also responded more to viewer and listener complaints, and was much more publicly active through advisory committees, public information and research. On a few occasions, it using long-dormant powers against offensive material on television. In the most widely publicised case, in 1975 it required that appearances by Graham Kennedy should be pre-recorded to prevent repetition of his gag featuring a ‘crow call’. Other television personalities appeared to revel in being pursued by the board, and ridiculing its efforts. From 1949, the ABCB was the only source of information about most broadcasting issues. This changed in the 1970s, when many new sources appeared. In 1971, a Senate Standing Committee chaired by Senator James McClelland started hearings into all aspects of broadcasting. The submissions and hearings were a major information source, and a printing press for advocates of change. One of its reports led eventually to the ABCB planning for FM radio to be overturned in 1974. In 1972, the new Labor government established the federal Department of the Media. For the first time since 1949, the executive government was not dependent on the ABCB for advice. However, there was little change to the board or its Act—partly because the government did not have a majority in the Senate. The government did circumvent the ABCB by granting a variety of non-commercial licences—mostly for community broadcasting—as ‘experimental licences’ under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1905. The Fraser Coalition government made big changes in 1976. It abolished the ABCB, and gave some of its functions to the radically different Australian Broadcasting Tribunal.

main reference point for what was expected of stations. Following the ABCB’s unwritten policy, the new television standards spoke about what stations should do, and generally avoided specific obligations. The commission recommended that most of the minister’s powers to give directions to the board should be removed, but no change was made. The ABCB held public inquiries into the granting of television licences before making recommendations to the minister. The early applications were replete with proposals to enrich local culture—for example, to establish bands and orchestras, to provide special programs for children and to produce a variety of local programs. There was much argument in later years about whether the applicants should be held to account for the many proposals that did not materialise. In 1958, the ABCB suffered a public rebuff, involving the first television licences for Brisbane and Adelaide. After public inquiries, it recommended that the original applications should be rejected because they were dominated by the Sydney and Melbourne media proprietors and said new applications should be called to allow independent, locally owned stations. The minister ignored the recommendation and granted the licences, thus confirming the structure of television into the next century. Despite occasional rebuffs, these early years of television could be described as the golden years of the ABCB. It had a valued planning and technical role: to introduce television across the nation. There were good relations with government politicians and with radio and television stations. There was little scrutiny of its work— and little prospect of that occurring, because the ABCB published little, and closely guarded its information. Compared with other countries, the radio and television plans of the ABCB featured a small number of stations with strong signals reaching large areas. This has often been criticised as anti-competitive and conservative. The ABCB maintained that Australia’s unique spread of population and terrain were unsuitable for the approach taken elsewhere. Even if the board had wanted a pro-competitive approach, it is unlikely that the Menzies government would have allowed it. The first serious scrutiny of the ABCB came in 1963, when a Senate committee led by Liberal Senator Victor Vincent investigated the lack of Australian programs on television. The Vincent Report condemned the board for improper neglect of its powers and duties, and reliance on ‘sweet reasonableness’ without even threatening action against errant stations. Although ignored by the government in 1963, the report had a long-term influence. The Vincent Report proposal for more board members with broadcasting experience was adopted, starting with the new chairman, Myles

REFs: M. Armstrong, ‘The Broadcasting and Television Act, 1948–1976: A Case Study of the Australian Broadcasting Control Board’, in R. Tomasic (ed.), Legislation and Society in Australia (1980); B. Cole, ‘The Australian Broadcasting Control Board and the Regulation of Australian Commercial Radio since 1948’ (PhD thesis, 1948). MARK ARMSTRONG

AU STR ALIAN B R O AD C ASTIN G C O R P O R ATIO N The ABC began radio (wireless) broadcasting via Postmaster-General’s (PMG) Department transmitters at 8 p.m. EST on 1 July 1932. Announcer Conrad Charlton intoned in a refined English Australian accent: ‘This is the Australian

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australian broadcasting corporation allowed to establish its own independent news service. Previously the ABC had broadcast (at program times agreed to by newspaper proprietors) domestic and international news taken from the papers. From 1946, the ABC became a major influence and leader in Australian news journalism, and eventually current affairs on television (Four Corners, This Day Tonight, 7.30, Lateline, Foreign Correspondent) and radio (with daily programs AM and PM). The PMG’s power to direct ABC broadcasts was constrained by 1946 when the commission was allowed discretion over political and controversial material. This prevailed until the ABC Act was fundamentally changed in 1983 to establish the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The ABC’s board, appointed by government, and the board-appointed senior management remained highly sensitive to political controversy, leading to staff use of the term ‘the pre-emptive buckle’ to describe management interventions in some programs. While still dependent on Budget appropriations for its funding, the new corporation finally had its own borrowing capacity for its capital works and the power to form its own subsidiary companies, symphony orchestras and bands. Significantly, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 established the ABC’s statutory independence. The Act maintained the prohibition on advertising on domestic services (section 31) but exempted its international radio and television channels. The Act also defined the functions of the ABC under the title ‘Charter of the Corporation’: to provide ‘innovative and comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard’, including programs that contribute to a ‘sense of national identity and inform and entertain, and reflect the cultural diversity of, the Australian community’. The ABC narrative is primarily about its own creative exploitation of mass communication technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. It developed its AM radio stations in capital cities and major centres alongside a profitable commercial radio sector through Radio One for more populist fare and Radio Two (renamed Radio National in 1985) for highbrow specialist genres. Proceedings of federal parliament were broadcast on radio from 1946 and on television from 1990. The industry moved to higher quality FM stations in earnest from 1975, with the ABC establishing classical and youth (rock) music FM stations. Prime Minister Robert Menzies officially inaugurated ABC Television in Sydney on 5 November 1956. Programs were to be broadcast in monochrome (black and white) from television transmission towers in the capital cities. As with radio, all television transmissions were provided by the Department of Communications with the ABC’s transmission costs covered in the Budget appropriation, even after the transmission system was leased to private sector investors in 1998. Colour television came in 1975 with

Broadcasting Commission.’ The signal generated reached as far away as Perth and Rockhampton. Australia’s population at the time was 6.5 million with an estimated 6 per cent able to receive the ABC’s broadcasts. The ABC was created by the Commonwealth parliament through the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932. The commission took control of the assets of the Australian Broadcasting Company, a collection of former private radio licences acquired for the purpose. Coalition Prime Minister Joseph Lyons had been prevailed upon by radio manufacturers and retailers, along with other influential figures—including (Sir) Robert Menzies (then a Victorian MP and barrister)—not to abandon the recently defeated Scullin Labor government’s draft broadcasting Bill. Like the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the ABC was banned from advertising to defray its operating costs; although there was no objection to paid sponsorship of programs, political pressure exerted by private radio licensees meant it did not eventuate. Instead (again, as with the BBC), the ABC was funded through a substantial proportion of an annual licence fee collected from the owners of radio receivers, with fines imposed on those caught without one. This funding mechanism prevailed until 1948, when the Chifley Labor government determined that the broadcaster would be funded from annual federal Budget appropriations. Unlike the BBC, established by a Royal Charter, the ABC’s role and functions were prescribed by Act of parliament. Yet the ABC was not ‘independent’ of government. From the outset, the PMG had the power to compel or forbid the broadcasting of any matter—a power used from time to time, although ABC management often excluded material or programs considered likely to provoke ministerial intervention. The ‘independence’ of the public broadcaster from the government of the day has been in contention from the very beginning. But the debate about its independence was just as important to its governance arrangements as the ABC’s role in Australia. The BBC’s founding director-general, Sir John (later Lord) Reith, famously clashed with the UK government over editorial independence and the term ‘Reithian’ denotes equal consideration to all viewpoints, probity, universality and a commitment to public service. This can be distinguished from the free-market approach to broadcasting, where programming aims to attract the largest audiences or amount of advertising revenue, regardless of artistic merit, impartiality, educative or entertainment values. In Australia, the ABC’s struggle for independence often embroiled the governing body and management in disputes with both government and staff. In 1946, against the wishes of then general manager (Sir) Charles Moses but at the insistence of news editor Frank Dixon, the ABC was

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australian broadcasting corporation Report (1985– ), The Search for Meaning (1987–94), Late Night Live (1991– ) and Life Matters (1992– ) were radio milestones. Sport— particularly cricket—was the ABC’s defining service from the start, until the commercialisation of sport from the late 1970s left the ABC on the margins—although still a player through coverage of minority and women’s sport, and Test cricket. On television, content creation was expensive and categorised into ‘genres’—children’s, documentary, drama, news and current affairs, and comedy. In drama, ABC Television started with live broadcasts using sets constructed at its Gore Hill (Sydney) studios to evolve into award-winning series: Bellbird (1967–77), Seven Little Australians (1973), Certain Women (1973–76), Rush (1974–76), Power Without Glory (1976), Scales of Justice (1983), Palace of Dreams (1985), GP (1989–96), Brides of Christ (1991), The Leaving of Liverpool (1992), Blue Murder (1995), Sea Change (1998–2000), Grass Roots (2000–03), Changi (2001), Bed of Roses (2008–11), The Slap (2011) and Redfern Now (2012–13). In comedy, it screened Aunty Jack (1972–73), The Norman Gunston Show (1975–76), The Gillies Report (1984–85), Mother and Son (1984–94), Frontline (1994–97), The Games (1998, 2000), The Chaser (1999– ), Kath and Kim (2002–04) and Chris Lilley’s We Can Be Heroes (2005), Summer Heights High (2007), Angry Boys (2011) and J’Amie: Private School Girl (2013), among many others. For children, there were shows like Mr Squiggle (1959–99), Play School (1966–  ), Adventure Island (1967–72) and Bananas in Pyjamas (1992– ). In music, Six O’Clock Rock (1959–62), GTK (1969–74), Countdown (1974–87) and Rage (1987– ) appealed to a younger audience. In natural history, the ABC was responsible for In the Wild with Harry Butler (1976–81) and Wolves of the Sea (1993). In science, Why is It So? (1963–86), Quantum (1985–2001) and Catalyst (2001– ) became iconic programs. Studio-based entertainment included The Money or the Gun (1989–90), The Big Gig (1989–92), Roy and HG’s Club Buggery (1996–97) and Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope (2003–08). And in documentary and public and current affairs, programs such as Four Corners (1961– ), This Day Tonight (1967–78), A Big Country (1968–92), Chequerboard (1969–75), Behind the News (1969–2003), Monday Conference (1971–78), The Investigators (1985–95), The 7.30 Report (now 7.30, 1986– ), Media Watch (1989– ), Lateline (1990– ), Foreign Correspondent (1992– ), Australian Story (1996– ) and Q&A (2008– ) revealed the national broadcaster at its best. The ABC has been an international broadcaster since 1950. From wartime government control of international radio broadcasting, it

rapid consumer uptake in almost all Australian households. The ‘digital revolution’ was the next technological challenge, with free-to-air multi-channelling via the frequency precision in digital transmission from 2001 and digital radio from 2009. The ABC’s old analogue station, Channel 2 (renamed ABC1), was joined by multi-channels ABC2 (time-shifted repeat programs), ABC3 (a children’s channel) and ABC News 24 (continuous news) in 2010. With the internet in 1973 and the World Wide Web came a new form of mass and, most significantly, interactive communication through the limitless capacity of ‘cyberspace’. Broadcasting was morphing into cybercasting. The ABC began its online services in 1995 and its broadband portal in 2001. Live video and audio streaming of its radio and television output followed, and an active innovation department developed content for mobiles and smartphones, and ABC iView for playing programs at the viewer’s convenience. The rapid Australian consumer uptake of smartphones and tablet devices brought another high audience-penetrating content platform, with the ABC capable of delivering audio and video on such devices. The ABC’s creative contribution, within the constraints of its legislated role and functions, has helped to embed the broadcaster in the nation’s affections. From the memorable radio days of ‘synthetic’ Test cricket broadcasts in the 1930s, to often contentious news commentary, to engrossing radio serials, to great orchestral performances, the ABC’s distinctive content has complemented the efforts of the Australian commercial sector. In positioning itself as a key contributor to sectoral diversity, the ABC’s non-commercial character in radio and television has helped to establish it as a trusted national institution— particularly at times of natural disasters. In 1965, ABC graphic designer Bill Kennard submitted a design for a logo to be used as station identification for television. Taken from a cathode ray oscilloscope, the waveform Lissajous curve image has become one of the most recognisable logos in Australia. On radio, The Country Hour (1945– ) engaged rural listeners, The Argonauts (1941–69) captivated youngsters and Blue Hills (1949–76) by Gwen Meredith deferred nostalgically to traditional notions of Australian character. The ABC was not a secular broadcaster, finishing nightly transmissions on radio and television with an Epilogue (renamed Evening Meditation in 1947) and broadcasting Sunday services from Christian churches for many decades. The long-running Notes on the News, The Village Glee Club (1942–71), Relax with Me (1964–72, formerly on commercial radio), Singers of Renown (1966–2008), All Ways on Sunday/ Australia All Over (1969– ), The Science Report (1975– ), Ockham’s Razor (1984– ), The Health

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australian broadcasting corporation developed the short-wave radio service Radio Australia (RA), funded by the Department of External Affairs. Twenty-five years of dispute between the ABC and its international paymaster over editorial control followed. Editorial independence was effectively established from 1975. Through transmitters in Shepparton (Victoria), Carnarvon (Western Australia), Cox (Northern Territory) and Brandon (Queensland), RA grew an audience of an estimated 50 million through Asia and the Pacific, broadcasting in nine languages. Carnarvon was closed in 1996 and its subsidy transferred to a new satellite television service (Australian Television International), which had been established in 1993 through federal start-up funds but with a commercial business plan to develop revenues through sponsorship. ATVI carried a half-hour nightly news bulletin produced from Darwin and general and sports programming. The service faltered through inadequate operating funds and was sold to the Seven Network in 1997. From 1996, the then federal government cut RA’s budget in half and sold the Cox transmitter to a Christian broadcaster, leaving the ABC to reconstruct its short-wave radio service through rebroadcast arrangements with domestic broadcasters in the region. By 1998, 76 local radio stations in 20 countries in the Asia-Pacific region took RA programs in various languages. Australia’s satellite television broadcasting returned to the ABC in 2001, through a tender process for a five-year contract with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The new service was called ABC Asia Pacific, with an evolving footprint rising from 14 countries and progressively adding Japan, Solomon Islands, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and French Polynesia. The DFAT tender was reopened in 2005. The contract again went to the ABC, but only after a dispute in which the ABC threatened not to bid until the department withdrew a clause giving it the power to remove any program considered not to be in the national interest. In 2006, the service was renamed the Australia Network. When the contract was again opened to tender in 2011, the ABC faced a competitive bid from Sky News Australia but the assessment of the bids was abandoned when the Rudd Labor government claimed leaks had compromised the process. Competitive tendering for the service was abandoned when the federal Cabinet decided to make the Australia Network a permanent feature of the ABC’s role and functions. The ABC’s Australia Network contract was terminated by the new Abbott Coalition government in May 2014, leaving the ABC to pursure international braodcasting through its own now limitied resources. By far the greatest contribution of the ABC to the cultural life of Australia has been its involvement in the development and promotion of concert music through the nation’s symphony

orchestras. From 1932–35, the ABC annually broadcast tens of thousands of hours of live musical performances, and until the 1980s, all or part of every ABC concert was broadcast—usually live. With general manager Charles Moses, musical adviser Professor Bernard Heinze and federal controller of music William G. James directing the development of an ambitious ABC musical culture, permanent studio orchestras, dance bands and wireless choruses were established in all capital cities, and the ABC attracted many of the world’s greatest musicians. During World War II, the various ABC ensembles played a major role in maintaining morale, entertaining and educating the troops. After the war, an innovative partnership between the ABC and state and local governments resulted in full-sized permanent ABC symphony orchestras being established in all six state capitals. Over the next half-century, they would define the direction of Australian classical music. From 1947 to 1956, Eugene Goossens not only led the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to extraordinary international standards, but set the benchmark which all the ABC orchestras sought to match. Regional touring had always been part of Moses, Heinze and James’ musical vision for the ABC, and the orchestras performed subscription seasons and hundreds of individual regional concerts annually from the late 1940s through to the 1980s. Concerts for schoolchildren were always a vital part of each regional visit. From the 1990s, the orchestras began to be corporatised under new local managements, but orchestral recordings are still released regularly on the ABC Music labels. Two people are pivotal to the ABC’s governance and management: the chairman and the chief executive. Executive Council (the Governor-General advised by federal Cabinet) appoints the ABC chairman. The chairman and the ABC board appoint the chief executive. In 80 years of the ABC’s existence, attention has focused on the perceived leadership strengths and or weaknesses of these individuals. Chairmen have been (Sir) Charles Lloyd Jones (1932–34), William Cleary (1934–45), Sir Richard Boyer (1945–61), Dr James Darling (1961–67), Sir Robert Madgwick (1967–73), Professor Richard Downing (1973–75), Dr Earle Hackett (1975–76), Sir Henry Bland (1976), John Norgard (1977–81), Dame Leonie Kramer (1982–83), Kenneth B. Myer (1983–86), David Hill (1986–87), Robert Somervaille (1987–91), Professor Mark Armstrong (1991–96), Donald McDonald (1996–2006), Maurice Newman (2007–12) and James Spigelman (2012– ). Chief executives (called general manager from 1932 to 1983 and managing directors on statutory five-year contracts from 1983) have been Harold Williams (1932–33), Walter Conder (1933–35), Sir Charles Moses (1935–65), Sir Talbot Duckmanton (1965–82), Keith Jennings (1982–83), Geoffrey Whitehead (1984–86),

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australian broadcasting tribunal following the federal government’s 2011–12 Convergence Review and the reductions in the ABC’s appropriation announced in the May 2014 Budget. A reshaping of the ABC into a digital service content provider to exploit mass audience movement to smart phones and tablets, known broadly as the digital revolution which merges text, audio and video content, is now underway. With optic fibre through a National Broadband Network, audiences will be able to watch, listen and engage with content from any global source with almost limitless capacity. Two issues confront the ABC: its role in sustaining a sense of national identity and the adequacy of operational base funding with which to do, to a high standard, all the tasks a multi-platform strategy would require of it.

David Hill (1986–94), Brian Johns (1995–2000), Jonathan Shier (2000–01), Russell Balding (2001–06) and Mark Scott (2006– ). The longevity in management of Moses and Duckmanton (in total, 47 years) was attributed to their leadership, authority and consequent political survival skills. Both were broadcasters in their early careers. With corporatisation from 1983 came greater concern about politicisation, both from the former political connections of some of the appointed chief executives and some contentious board appointments by governments of both persuasions. In June 2012, an amendment to the ABC Act prescribing board appointments only after a short-listing merit selection process was carried. The amendment also reinstated the staff-elected director position provided in the ABC Act from 1983 to 2006. ‘Aunty’s Nieces and Nephews’ was established in 1976 by a group of concerned Melbourne citizens in response to threats to the ABC’s budget. It later changed its name to ‘Friends of the ABC’. The ABC’s governance and management objective has been to strive to maintain good relations with the federal minister responsible for the ABC Act, particularly through the triennial funding negotiations since 1983. The biggest recurrent cost is payroll, taking about 70 per cent of the annual parliamentary appropriation. The appropriation peaked at $434 million in 1985–86, rising to $500.5 million in 1997–98 and $800 million by 2011–12. Following the establishment of the first ABC Shop (in Sydney in 1981), in 1985 the ABC was allowed to establish its own subsidiary trading companies, including ABC Books, which in 2009 became a division of HarperCollins. The ABC’s staffing rose to a peak of more than 7000 in 1985 and fell through various budget-driven restructures to a low of 4200 by 1999, rising through more recent budget enhancement to 4600 by 2010–11. Around half the staff work in Sydney leading to persistent complaints about the institution’s ‘Sydney centrism’. The ABC structures its services to provide branded ‘bridges’ to audiences: Radio National, Classic FM, NewsRadio, Local Radio, Digital Radio, Triple J, ABC Online, ABC Open, ABC iView, ABC 1, ABC 2, News 24, ABC 3, Radio Australia, the Australia Network and ABC Shops. On radio, ‘market’ penetration through all outlets was reported to be 23.6 per cent by 2010. On television, the ABC’s five-city metropolitan prime-time (6 p.m. to midnight) share of audience was reported at 16.5 per cent, with 17.7 per cent in regional markets. ABC Online had a monthly reach of 3.5 million internet users with 56.5 million podcasts (audio) and 15 million vodcasts (video). Australia Network reported an estimated audience of 31 million ‘can see’ homes in 45 countries. ABC Commercial reported a net profit of $7.9 million. The future strategic role of the ABC in Australia’s media is being redefined in the years

REFs: M. Buzzacott, The Rite of Spring (2007); K.S. Inglis, This is The ABC 1932–1983 (1983) and Whose ABC? (2006); http://www.abc.net.au/corp/history/ 75years/timeline. QUENTIN DEMPSTER

AU STR ALIAN B R O AD C ASTIN G TR IB U N AL The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) was responsible for broadcast licensing, regulation and information. It was created as an independent tribunal to separate broadcasting from political pressures, through methods including open hearings and access to information. However, it was progressively disempowered during its life by federal departments, politicians and lobbyists. As a by-product of the ABT’s existence between 1977 and 1992, there are more public records of broadcasting in that period than any other. The Fraser Coalition government created the ABT following a 1976 report on the structure of broadcasting by F.J. (Fred) Green, the secretary of the Postal and Telecommunications Department. He recommended the creation of a tribunal that could air all contesting information. It was to ‘remain aloof from the day-to-day processes of government’. In future, decisions about station licences would be made by the tribunal, not by government ministers. The ABT would be based in Sydney, close to broadcasting organisations and distant from the previous Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) in Melbourne and the federal bureaucracy in Canberra. The government accepted most of Green’s proposals, changed the law in 1976, and appointed Bruce Gyngell as founding chairman in 1977. As the nation’s best-known television executive, he surprised critics by his rapport with community groups and advocates of better programs. He and his colleagues often stumbled over legal and administrative issues—particularly during hearings. They were reliant on staff transferred from the previous ABCB (contrary to the Green Report’s recommendations) or advisers from the federal Attorney-General’s 46

australian cartoonists’ association Communications, who wanted the opposite result. In response, the department published its own report, favouring the three largest networks, which became law. The department put increasing resources into policy research and publishing during the Hawke period, especially through its Forward Development Unit. It disliked any tribunal output that could reflect on policy or planning. With hindsight, it can be said that by the time Deirdre O’Connor became chairman in 1986, the ABT’s heyday was over. Federal departments restricted its resources, and the ABT conformed increasingly with ‘day-to-day processes of government’, the opposite of what the Green Report had recommended in 1976. When it was abolished in 1992, the tribunal was still performing a range of necessary regulatory and reporting functions, but there were few public hearings and little public recognition. None of the bodies that came after it had the same independence, capacity for public inquiries or duty to disseminate information.

Department. Neither group sympathised with the public hearings. Despite early management chaos, and frequent legal actions brought by licensees, the ABT’s public inquiries had television executives discussing the performance and goals of their stations for the first time. After the first shock, they generally accepted the tribunal’s role. Commercial radio leaders were less comfortable. The tribunal also held direction-setting inquiries into broader issues, such as the 1977 inquiry into self-regulation for broadcasters. In 1980, it fell to the next chairman, David Jones, to turn the new ideas and high expectations into a viable regime. Jones, a prominent media lawyer, built an administrative and inquiry system that could survive the continuous legal and bureaucratic challenges faced by the ABT. The ABT visited the licence area of each station across the country to conduct a public hearing. When the tribunal identified problems, the licensees usually fixed them of their own accord, to avoid embarrassment at a public hearing. They were also very responsive to ABT threats to impose licence conditions or shorter renewal. There was a financial motive to protect the value of the licence, and thus very few occasions when the tribunal needed to actually shorten or revoke a licence. The ABT had a range of effective sanctions, but the 1981 ‘Murdoch amendments’ to its Act restricted the issues it could consider when making decisions by preventing it from holding a licensee to promises it had made in the past. Thus, the winning applicant for a new licence could be purchased by another company that would do everything differently from the application. The amendments also removed the ABT’s ability to decide what was in the public interest. The 1981 amendments overrode a High Court decision confirming the ABT’s power to block a station takeover by News Limited. Apart from licensing, the ABT also published an unprecedented range of surveys, reports, statistics and research. It revised all the previous program standards after public input, and converted them into enforceable documents. The amounts of Australian drama and children’s programs on television were increased. Many archaic obligations in the radio Program Standards were deleted. The ABT also oversaw various specific laws, such as the ban on cigarette advertising and election broadcast laws. Major inquiries focused more on the future of communications, such as introduction of cable and pay television, remote area broadcasting and violence on television. The Satellite Program Services report of 1984 illustrated the perils of independent inquiry. The ABT recommended more programming independence for stations outside Sydney and Melbourne, which was unwelcome to some in the new Hawke Labor government and the Department of

REF: M. Armstrong, Broadcasting Law and Policy in Australia (1982). MARK ARMSTRONG

AU STR ALIAN C AR TO O N ISTS’ ASSO C IATIO N On 17 July 1924, a group of 24 disgruntled cartoonists and one poet met in rooms in the Royal Arcade in Sydney. They had all been members of the Society of Artists, which had run a number of events, including Artists’ Balls. Each of these balls had been popular with members of the public and financially successful. But the cartoonists believed they had done all the work to enable these balls to take place, while other members of the Society of Artists had made all the decision regarding the spending of the profits. In retaliation, the cartoonists formed the Australian Society of Black and White Artists. For more than 40 years, there had been cartoonists involved in almost every art society formed in Sydney. However, there were many splits and new groupings were not uncommon. But this split was different. The new body was the first association formed for the benefit of newspaper artists in Sydney. This was also the first association of newspaper artists anywhere in the world. Early in the 20th century, Sydney was one of the best places in the world for a cartoonist to work, led by the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly. Cecil Hartt, a cartoonist on Smith’s Weekly, was elected the first president of the new society. It was never intended to be a trade union or a professional body; rather, its aims were social. There were sketch nights, exhibitions, informal dinners and balls. The 1924 Artists’ Ball conducted by the new society was intended to be similar to previous events. However, after it descended into a Bacchanalian riot, it was considered so outrageous 47

australian communications and media authority net. It was established on 1 July 2005 through the merger of the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) and the Australian Communications Authority (ACA). The ACMA’s predecessor organisations, the ABA and the ACA, were established under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, which aimed to promote greater market competition and co-regulation with industry, including the development of industry Codes of Practice. The ABA was responsible for planning and regulating broadcasting services and broadcast licensing, as well as content and community standards regulations. The ACA was responsible for regulating telecommunications and radio communications. The passing of the Broadcasting Services Act (Online Services) Amendment Act in 1999 saw the ABA also become responsible for internet content regulations. The ACMA is a convergent media regulator. Convergent media regulators have been a worldwide trend in the 2000s. One prominent example has being the establishment of the Office of Communication (Ofcom) in the United Kingdom, under the Communications Act 2003. Ofcom brought together the regulatory functions associated with telecommunications and broadcasting under a single regulator, whose remit has required it to consider both ‘consumer’ and ‘citizen’ interest in the setting of UK communications policy. Under section 51(v) of the Australian Constitution, broadcasting and telecommunications powers reside with the Commonwealth. In broadcast media, this includes powers related to spectrum allocation, allocation of broadcasting licences, and content and community standards regulations—including the Australian content standard and the children’s television standard for commercial free-to-air broadcasters. The ACMA has understood its role as involving working with relevant industries to achieve active self-regulation, while ensuring industry compliance with licence conditions, codes and standards. In response to complaints that the ABA had insufficient powers to deal with breaches of industry codes, as with the ‘cash for comment’ scandal involving commercial radio broadcasters Alan Jones and John Laws in 1999, the enforcement powers of the ACMA were broadened to enable the application of ‘middle-range’ penalties to address those breaches not considered serious enough to warrant the imposition of criminal penalties, or suspension or cancellation of a licence. Such powers were applied to the Ten Network in 2005 in relation to episodes of the reality television program Big Brother Uncut, which contained sexual content unsuitable for its MA15+ timeslot, and again in 2006 around inappropriate online content in what was known as the ‘turkey slap’ incident, where a male housemate appeared to strike the face of a sleeping female housemate with his genitals.

that further Artists’ Balls were banned from the Sydney Town Hall. Council staff had to assist the police in clearing the hall the next day, and in getting the sick and wounded to hospital. There were calls from many in the community to have Artists’ Balls banned altogether. The Australian Society of Black and White Artists (subsequently renamed the Black and White Artists’ Club) hosted over 20 Black and White Artists’ Balls, with the last being the Atomic Ball of 1946. Even though a successful exhibition of cartoons was held in the Sydney Journalists’ Club in 1964, for the best part of the next 30 years, the club restricted its activities to social events for members. The membership waxed and waned over the years, and by 1984 there were fewer members in the Black and White Artists’ Club than there had been when the body was formed. Rather than just fold the club, the members decided to expand into a national body. They also wanted to run awards to promote cartooning in the media. They approached the Bulletin—which at the time was running around 50 cartoons a week—to take on sponsorship. A partnership was formed and in 1985 the first Bulletin Black and White Artists’ Awards (later renamed the Stanley Awards, after Stan Cross) were presented. The first Gold Stanley (for Cartoonist of the Year) was awarded to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Alan Moir. Other Stanley categories are Best Illustrator, Comic Strip Artist, Single Gag Cartoonist, Caricaturist, Editorial/Political Cartoonist and Comic Book Artist. The collaboration lasted until 1992 when the Bulletin changed editorial direction and reduced its cartoon content and withdrew from the event. Since then, with a membership hovering around 300, the Australian Cartoonists’ Association (as it has been known since 2002) has run the awards with support from other sections of the publishing industry. The first inductees to the Australian Cartoonists Hall of Fame were announced at the 25th Stanley Awards night in 2009. The ACA’s Inkspot magazine has been published since 1986. REF: V. Lindesay, Drawing from Life (1996). LINDSAY FOYLE

AUST R A LI A N C O M M U N I C AT IO N S AU T H O R IT Y see

Australian Communications and Media Authority

A U S T RAL I A N COMMUNICATIONS AND M EDIA A U T HORI TY The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is an independent statutory authority of the Australian federal government, responsible for the regulation of broadcasting, radiocasting, telecommunications and the inter-

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australian consolidated press content and delivery platforms—that is, specific vertically integrated industries such as television, radio, telephony and the internet. It argued that regulation premised on the notion that content can be controlled on the basis of how it is delivered was losing its effectiveness when ‘technological change in the form of digital transmission systems means that service delivery is now independent of network technologies’. As with similar regulatory bodies worldwide, the ACMA is challenged with the task of adapting to this converged media environment.

Since its establishment, the ACMA has had to deal with an increasing number of consumer complaints each year. These have more typically been in relation to telecommunications than broadcasting, where the number of complaints dealt with has remained relatively static over the 2000s. The ACMA has also conducted a growing number of internet content investigations. Between 2000 and 2013, the ACMA conducted investigations into more than 26,000 items of online content, of which it found 14,000 items of prohibited or potentially prohibited content (such as depicting child sexual abuse or abhorrent phenomena); the number of online investigations grew dramatically over the 2000s. The ACMA conducts extensive community and industry research. It monitors the effect of broadcasting regulations to ensure they are responsive to the community’s needs, as well as conducting ongoing research into community attitudes to media and changing patterns of media use. An example of such research is Digital Australians: Expectations About Media Content in a Converging Media Environment (2011), a study into how Australians are using media and their expectations about its regulation. In 2012, the ACMA was part of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE). In the context of the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) to provide high-speed broadband internet access to all Australian homes, the DBCDE had responsibility for the Convergence Review. The Convergence Review was tasked with reviewing Australia’s policy framework for the production and delivery of media content and communications services, and their suitability in the context of a communications landscape increasingly experiencing convergence. It was undertaken alongside related reviews such as the National Classification Scheme Review (2011–12), undertaken by the Australian Law Reform Commission, and the Independent Media Inquiry (the Finkelstein Inquiry, 2011–12), looking into regulation of newspapers and online news media services. The ACMA took a very active role in advising the Convergence Review, particularly in relation to the limitations of current Australian media and communications regulations in a convergent media environment. In particular, the ACMA (2011) identified 55 ‘broken concepts’ in the broadcasting, telecommunications and radio communications legislation that it administered, including ‘influence’ in broadcasting; the ‘Australian identity’ of media owners; the concept of a ‘program’ in broadcasting; the distinction between a ‘content service provider’ and a ‘carriage service provider’ in relation to the internet; and regulations specifically applied to activities such as telemarketing and interactive gambling. It argued that such concepts were becoming unsustainable in a context where there was no longer a clear relationship between media

REFs: ACMA, Broken Concepts (2011); Convergence Review Committee, Convergence Review: Final Report (2012); T. Flew, The Convergent Media Policy Moment (2012). TERRY FLEW

AU STR ALIAN C O N SO LID ATED P R ESS In November 1932, (Sir) Frank Packer and a former Labor politician, E.G. Theodore (1884–1950), formed Sydney Newspapers Ltd. Almost immediately, it was paid £86,500 by Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), managed by Frank’s father, R.C. Packer, in return for a three-year agreement not to publish a Sydney afternoon newspaper in competition with the Sun. Restricted in what it could publish, Sydney Newspapers launched the Australian Women’s Weekly in June 1933. National in focus and with a topical edge, the magazine was edited by a founding investor in the company, G.W. Warnecke. As the end of the agreement with ANL approached, Sydney Newspapers began to consider producing a daily newspaper. In January 1936, the two companies formed Consolidated Press Ltd. With Sydney Newspapers owning the majority of shares, Theodore became chairman and Packer managing director. Non-compete clauses protected ANL’s Sun and Sunday Sun on one side, and the Women’s Weekly on the other. The new company relaunched an ailing morning newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, in March. Consolidated Press was to be one of the two dominant newspaper groups in Sydney—along with John Fairfax & Sons—for the next four decades. Consolidated Press’s first annual report showed a modest net profit of £11,950; it rose to £34,307 in 1937–38 after an increase in sales and advertising revenue, particularly for the Women’s Weekly. In 1938, the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) offered some £350,000 for Consolidated Press. Theodore agreed with Packer’s cheerful view that, ‘If it’s worth that to him [Sir Keith Murdoch], it’s good enough to keep.’ In 1939, Consolidated Press launched the Sunday Telegraph. Warnecke, who believed that he was entitled to a one-third share in the company, resigned as editor-in-chief that year, 49

australian consolidated press Street, enabling an expansion of company headquarters. Sir Frank executed a stunning coup in 1967 by hinting that he was considering selling his business, possibly to the HWT. The end result was that CPH increased its holding in Television Corporation and Murdoch was forced to sell his minority interest in the latter company. CPH won majority control of TCN9 and Melbourne’s GTV9, and the Packer family’s personal wealth was enhanced. For all this, Packer had developed elaborate measures to hide the losses incurred by Daily and Sunday Telegraphs. He had long realised the necessity of producing an afternoon newspaper to use idle printing capacity, but his efforts to acquire a majority shareholding in ANL in 1953 had been thwarted by John Fairfax & Sons. Despite impressive sales, the Daily Telegraph had never been able to break the Sydney Morning Herald’s stranglehold on classified advertising, and had always been subsidised by the Women’s Weekly. In June 1972, Packer finally acceded to pressure from his sons, Clyde and Kerry, to sell the Telegraphs to News Limited for $15 million. After taking over K.G. Murray’s Publishers Holdings Ltd, ACP became the largest magazine publisher in the southern hemisphere. As Clyde had fallen out with his pugnacious father, it was his younger brother who took over as chairman of CPH. Kerry moved aggressively to secure sports broadcasting rights in 1976–77, establishing World Series Cricket. In 1979, ACP, News Limited and the British pools entrepreneur Robert Sangster secured the Lotto licence granted by the NSW Labor government. However, various investment forays proved costly in the early 1980s. In 1983, Packer worked with bankers to execute a privatisation of the empire that allowed him to pick up assets worth more than $220 million for less than half that price. But over at John Fairfax Ltd, young Warwick Fairfax’s attempt at privatisation was a disaster. In 1988, CPH bought key Fairfax magazines (including Woman’s Day and Dolly); it on-sold the Canberra Times to Kerry Stokes the following year. In 1987, TCN9 and GTV9 were sold to Alan Bond for $1.05 billion; three years later, on the brink of collapse, Bond Corporation sold the stations back to CPH for less than a quarter of the original price. As managing director (1991–93) of CPH, American Al ‘Chainsaw’ Dunlap slashed costs and staff, and 300 of the 401 companies that now made up the group. In 1992, ACP was floated, netting Packer an extraordinary profit for the magazines. CPH was transformed into an investment company with shares in three key enterprises: the Nine television network, ACP Magazines and the American newspaper coupon insert manufacturer Valassis. In the early 1990s, ACP obtained a 15 per cent stake in its old rival, John Fairfax Holdings, but was unable to gain control due to media

and later sold his shares. By 1946, the company had formed a subsidiary, Conpress Printing Ltd, to print supplements and do commercial work. Consolidated Press also moved into book publishing by acquiring a controlling interest in Shakespeare Head Press Pty Ltd. In 1948, the Chifley Labor government amended the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 to counter the efforts of private companies to minimise their tax bills. Consolidated Press was one of the companies affected, with the Daily Telegraph attacking the legislation for punishing ‘those who have succeeded’. Packer and Theodore converted Consolidated Press into a public company, and bought ANL’s 170,000 shares for £1 each. In 1949, a year before his death, Theodore installed his elder son, John, as chairman. In 1952, the Telegraphs savaged the Treasurer, Arthur Fadden, in the Coalition government for proposed changes to income tax laws; the obscure clauses in question dealt with the taxation of partnership assets. Two years later, Consolidated Press underwent an elaborate corporate restructure. Cairnton Ltd (named after the Packer mansion) and a Theodore family trust were registered in the Australian Capital Territory to receive the profits the empire earned and minimise taxation. Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd (CPH) was formed with an authorised capital of £2 million. In 1955, Television Corporation Ltd, with around half the shares owned by Consolidated Press, was formed, securing one of Sydney’s first two commercial television licences (for TCN9). Consolidated Press’s 20th anniversary in 1956 was marked with a name change to Australian Consolidated Press (ACP). Next year, the executors in E.G. Theodore’s estate decided to sell their shares in Sydney Newspapers Pty Ltd (est. 1937). A Packer ally, J.V. Ratcliffe, masterminded a rescue operation that enabled Packer, whose resources were depleted by television, to buy the shareholding. Packer replaced John Theodore as CPH’s chairman. A flurry of attempted expansion commenced in 1960. ACP and a Fairfax subsidiary formed Suburban Publications Pty Ltd to compete with Cumberland Newspapers Pty Ltd, bought by Rupert Murdoch in a backdoor manoeuvre to enter the Sydney market. ACP abandoned its first attempted foray overseas (involving the London News Chronicle and Star) when the opportunity emerged to buy into GTV9 for £3.6 million. Soon afterwards, Conpress Printing purchased the legendary Bulletin, which came with the Australian Woman’s Mirror. In 1961, ACP’s fledgling Observer was merged with the Bulletin, and the Woman’s Mirror was nominally merged with ACP’s Weekend (est. 1954). However, ACP’s takeover bids for another venerable institution, Angus & Robertson Ltd, failed. ACP acquired property in Elizabeth and Park Streets, next to the main building in Castlereagh

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australian content ownership rules. In 1994, Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) was formed from a merger of ACP and Nine. PBL failed to secure the licence for Sydney’s casino, but in 1999 bought Crown Casino in Melbourne. Although gaming would become an increasingly important part of the group, PBL acquired a 25 per cent stake in Foxtel, a 50 per cent stake in Fox Sports and a 33 per cent stake in Sky News Australia. PBL’s investment in the telecommunications company One.Tel was disastrous, but there were more profitable investments in online classified sites SEEK and CarSales. After Kerry Packer’s death in 2005, his son, James, became executive chairman of CPH. In 2006, immediately after limits on foreign media ownership were lifted, he sold half of PBL’s media interests to a private equity firm, CVC Asia Pacific, in a deal worth $4.6 billion; another 25 per cent was sold to CVC in 2007. That year, PBL was split into two companies, Consolidated Media Holdings (CMH) and Crown Limited. With cash freed to focus on gaming, Crown Limited invested in casinos in Macau. In 2012, the Nine Entertainment Co. sold ACP Magazines to Germany’s Bauer Media Group. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission rejected a takeover bid by Seven Media Holdings for CMH, by now centred on pay television, but approved a bid by News Corp Australia. Approval by shareholders in November 2012 ended the Packer family’s control of any major media company.

mented to support domestic production, and to preserve a local media production industry. A complex system of quid pro quos has justified the imposition of content obligations on broadcasters in return for protection from competition, and for their privileged access to the broadcast spectrum. But with the prospect—and recently the reality—of content services delivered via the internet rather than over the air or via cable or satellite, the rationales for Australian content regulation and the forms that regulation may take have increasingly been called into question. The regulatory framework has been shaped by a core set of rationales, including protecting media proprietors’ commercial interests; providing employment and opportunities for Australian practitioners; limiting the ‘dumping’ of international content and the influence of American cultural forms; serving the national public interest in accessing Australian material; engaging with the best of the world’s media content; and ‘telling our own stories’ and ‘dreaming our own dreams’. Debate has been most robust in relation to broadcast and screen media, although there are parallel histories in other media and arts forms. In cinema, calls for government intervention to assist the once thriving film industry met with limited success until the Australian Film Development Corporation (AFDC) was established in 1970. The Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia (1927–28) recommended an ‘Empire quota’, but lobbying by US film companies meant this was never implemented. In 1934, an exhibition quota of Australian films was legislated in New South Wales but again not enforced. The Australian Film Development Corporation Act 1970 instituted the practice of government funding for feature film production. In order to qualify as Australian, a film had to display ‘significant Australian content’. Today, Screen Australia administers a similar ‘significant Australian content test’, although films are no longer required to be wholly or substantially made in Australia. The original Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932 did not specifically require the broadcast of any Australian content on radio, although the ABC was expected to encourage local talent, and to establish orchestras, choirs and bands around the country. The Australian Broadcasting Act 1942 imposed a similar local talent requirement on commercial radio licensees, and established the first local content quota, requiring both national and commercial radio services to devote at least 2.5 per cent of music time to the work of Australian composers (rising to 5 per cent in 1956). Although around 10 per cent of commercial stations consistently failed to meet the quota, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) did not deem this sufficiently serious to merit any kind of sanction, let alone the ultimate penalty of licence cancellation.

REFs: P. Barry, The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer Uncut (2006); B. Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer (1999). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

AUST RAL I A N CONTENT There has long been widespread community, political and industry agreement over the important place of Australian content in the media mix, but debate continues over what counts as such in different media, how that content is defined, how much there should be, whether particular genres should be privileged, who should finance production, and how all of these things should be regulated. The history of Australian media content has largely been a history of regulation. Social and cultural policy objectives have most often been cited as the grounds for government intervention, although various policy domains, including international trade, communications, innovation and employment, can influence the regulatory approach. The many reviews and inquiries conducted since early last century by parliamentary committees, special commissions and successive regulators have produced myriad reports, recommendations and regulations designed to ensure the presence of Australian content in media markets. Taxes and tax-based incentives, direct and indirect financial subsidies and investment mechanisms have been imple51

australian content campaign, ‘TV Make it Australian’, which had been established in 1970 to advocate for content regulation—especially for drama. The system was revised in 1976, and while in subsequent years many stations exceeded their overall requirements, many failed to meet the drama and children’s quotas. Sympathetic to industry lobbying over the impact of the requirements on stations’ profitability, the ABCB continued to overlook this widespread non-compliance. Ultimately the points system failed to meet its objectives of increasing the volume and diversity of Australian content. It was revised in 1990, and again in 1996 when a new drama points arrangement and a new definition of Australian content were introduced, along with a quota for first release documentaries. The content standard was amended again in 1999 after the High Court ruled in favour of New Zealand producers who had argued that the non-discrimination provision of the Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Agreement meant that New Zealand programs could count as Australian for quota purposes. Another trade agreement, the 2005 Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), placed further restrictions on future expansion or modification of content rules. In radio, further music quotas may be imposed, although they cannot exceed 25 per cent of programming time. Any future reduction of either the commercial television transmission quota from its current level of 55 per cent, or the 80 per cent Australian advertising quota, cannot subsequently be reversed. The AUSFTA does permit the imposition of rules or measures to ensure the availability of Australian content in online services, but only if such content is not readily available, and only after consultation with the United States. The Convergence Review was established by Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy in late 2010, in part to assess the effectiveness of media and communications regulation in the light of digitisation, rapid technological change and the availability of new online services. Australian content was a principal focus. The Review’s final report (2012) recommended the eventual introduction of a uniform, platform-neutral system, with responsibility for financing Australian content production falling principally to the largest media enterprises. Recognising that this system could not be introduced immediately, the Review made a series of transitional recommendations, including extending the expenditure quota for pay television services to documentary and children’s programs as well as drama; increasing the drama, documentary and children’s sub-quotas for free-to-air broadcasters; and imposing transmission quotas on the public service broadcasters for the first time. Ultimately, the Gillard Labor government did not accept the Review’s proposals for fundamental change. The Aus-

In 1973, the ABCB introduced a 10 per cent ‘Australian musical performances’ quota, rising to 20 per cent in 1976. In 1999, the quota was recalibrated by genre under Commercial Radio Australia’s Code of Practice for Australian Music. Mainstream pop/rock attracted the highest quota of 25 per cent, a quarter of which has to be less than a year old. The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Act 2006 requires regional commercial radio licensees to broadcast set levels of ‘material of local interest’, and to maintain prescribed staffing levels and facilities when a licence changes hands. In 2010, the Australian music quotas were waived for digital-only radio services. Despite the Convergence Review’s 2012 recommendation that the quotas should be extended to these services, no such provision was included in the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Act 2013. Regulation in support of local production and employment in television was considered before television broadcasting commenced in 1956, although it was not until 1960 that the first quota was introduced. The Postmaster-General, (Sir) Charles Davidson, then directed licensees to broadcast Australian programs for at least 40 per cent of transmission time by the end of their first three years of operation, with an additional one hour of programming per week in peak time (initially 7.30–9.30 p.m.) to be devoted to programs that were distinctively Australian in content and character. While the levels changed over subsequent years, the transmission and peak time quotas were the core of Australian content regulation both before the introduction of a qualitative points-based system in 1973, and again since 1990 when the points system was revised following yet another public inquiry. The new transmission quota was progressively increased from 35 per cent in 1990 to 50 per cent in 1993, rising to its current level of 55 per cent in 1998. Genre quotas were introduced following the recommendation of the Senate Select Committee on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for Television (known as the Vincent Committee, 1962–63) that special consideration be given to Australian drama and children’s programs. ‘Credit loadings’ were introduced in 1966, with particular genres and levels of Australian employment given additional weighting in the calculation of licensees’ transmission obligations. Minimum hourly requirements for drama and children’s programs were introduced in 1970, before the entire framework was overhauled under the new points system in 1973 that privileged certain Australian programs—notably drama, news and current affairs, documentary and children’s shows. The points system privileged onscreen indicators, with the ‘Australian look’ of programs as well as their genre, cost, employment and length determining the points they received. The system in part reflected the success of a lobbying

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australian film television and radio school included Gillian Armstrong, Phillip Noyce and Chris Noonan. In 1975, the government created a new funding structure to support the industry and the school, which helped bring about a renaissance in the Australian film industry between 1970 and 1985, a period when close to 400 films were produced. After years of lobbying from the radio industry, ‘radio’ was added to the school’s name in 1981 and a Radio Department was formed to develop new talent for Australia’s expanding radio industry. With strong support from individual stations and the industry’s representative body, now known as Commercial Radio Australia (CRA), students were quickly snapped up by stations wanting well-trained staff ready to hit the ground running. The Radio division of AFTRS has maintained better than a 95 per cent student employment rate since its inception. In the 1980s, television production boomed thanks to new tax concessions, and AFTRS ramped up its television courses to help the industry satisfy the demand for new staff. During the directorships of Anne Deveson and John O’Hara, employment of television graduates increased and special training programs that were developed for Indigenous broadcasters helped the Aboriginal film, television and radio sectors come to life. In the 1990s, director Rod Bishop further expanded television training, giving the medium its own departmental status within AFTRS and introducing high-end digital production equipment to the school. There are several reasons for the success of AFTRS. A primary element is its engagement with the industries it serves. Another is its commitment to having industry practitioners as teachers, within a supportive administrative structure. A third is its commitment to understanding and teaching new technologies to help industry keep ahead of the curve. And the fourth secret to success can be explained in marketing terms: while in many educational institutions education itself is the product, in an industry-facing institution like AFTRS, the ‘manufacturing process’ is education, the ‘product’ in marketing terms is the students and the ‘customers’ are the radio, television, film and now digital media industries. The most important graduates from AFTRS are not just those who make award-winning films, television and radio programs; they are the people who have changed their industries in a way that builds a better, more sustainable, culturally rich future. Successful graduate employment is a key factor in the fortunes of the school. Student numbers generally have been kept low, and difficult selection criteria have ensured that a hot-house incubator factor is in play during a student’s tenure at AFTRS. While career paths in radio and television are relatively stable, the nature of film production is itinerant, short term and project based, sometimes making it difficult for newcomers to find employment easily.

tralian content provisions in the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Act 2013 were limited to the introduction of a time-based Australian program quota for free-to-air broadcasters’ digital multi-channels—albeit at a lower level than that at which most were already recording. The Convergence Review had proposed to balance ‘flexibility’ for the free-to-air networks with increases to the sub-quotas, new requirements for pay television and the public broadcasters, and increased tax credits for producers. The 2013 Act includes none of these. As a result, the question of how Australian media content may be secured in the future remains unresolved. REFs: ABA, Australian Content: Review of the Program Standard for Commercial Television: Working Paper (1994); Convergence Review, Discussion Paper: Australian and Local Content (2011); Screen Australia, Convergence 2011 (2011). BEN GOLDSMITH

AUST RAL I A N F ILM TELEVISION AND RADIO SCHOOL The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) plays an important role in ensuring that Australian stories, faces and voices continue to be heard on our radio stations and seen on our screens, and in assisting the broadcast industries to strengthen their skills base and achieve world-class standards. In this new age of multi-platform consumption, AFTRS—like the industries it serves—faces the challenge of identifying what people want to consume and how they like to consume it. Always-on internet, digital delivery, mobile consumption, ubiquitous social media connectivity and multi-platform distribution have given audiences new ways to use media, with new consumption patterns forcing the film, television and radio industries to reinvent their business models and to seek more cost-effective and efficient ways of creating and delivering viable content to increasingly savvy and connected audiences. AFTRS was born as the Australian Film and Television School in 1973, a key part of the Whitlam Labor government’s plans to revive the Australian film industry, which had stagnated during the 1960s. The school’s ground-breaking practical curriculum, combined with the capacity for highly motivated students to get their hands on professional equipment, brought new techniques to the practice of teaching film and television. Today, these innovative techniques can be found in many universities and colleges around Australia; however, the school is still known for having a closer understanding of the industry than most teaching institutions. In 1973, the first classes began under the interim leadership of Storry Walton until the first director of the school, Polish film educator Jerzy Toeplitz, was hired. The first intake of students

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australian financial review

The age of media convergence changed all that. Towards the end of the 1990s, when the methods of content creation were transformed by computer file-based production technology, AFTRS was part of efforts to change filmmaking practices through a series of initiatives that got the industry exploring new production models. During that time, under the directorship of Malcolm Long, the AFTRS curriculum was also reorganised to supply more multi-skilled practitioners to the converged workplace. For a school with so many award-winning ex-students, it was particularly gratifying at that time to see awards won that reflected the new teaching priorities. Andrew Lesnie’s Academy Award for his work on the ground-breaking digital effects movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and Sejong Park’s numerous awards for Birthday Boy (2004) are just two examples of that success. Sydney-based, the school has moved premises three times: from the back-blocks of North Ryde to purpose-built studios on the grounds of Macquarie University in 1988, then to a new ‘digital’ building at Fox Studios, Moore Park in 2007, enabling the school to continue to innovate in new courses, technology and teaching methods more suited to the multi-platform converged media environment of today. So what of the future? Should games be included in the storytelling craft being taught at AFTRS? Do the pictures on digital radio now mean radio broadcasters also need cinematography and graphic design skills? Should television producers be taught how to construct mobile phone apps? These are some of the many complex questions with which AFTRS must now grapple so that it can continue to have a positive influence on media education and Australian cultural life into the future.

took several decades to resolve as subsequent AFR editors sought to exert their independence from the editorial line of the Herald, which was dominated by the Herald’s financial editor Tom Fitzgerald, who had made the Herald’s finance pages very influential. The AFR’s initial cover price was an expensive 1 shilling. Horsfall lasted less than a year as editor, but not before the AFR had created an early reputation for well-informed coverage of Australian and international business and economic affairs. Its first major story was the 1951 contractionary ‘horror Budget’, which initiated a boom/bust cycle that was to convulse Australia’s post-war economy. The AFR’s 1951 Budget edition sold 12,000 copies at a time when the Herald and other major metropolitan papers sold around 300,000 daily. The paper was able to attract high-profile business and academic commentators, and ran lengthy profiles of prominent business leaders. By the end of its inaugural year as a weekly, the AFR’s circulation had dropped to 10,850, and throughout most of the 1950s it sold below 10,000 weekly. However, continuous marketing and the newspaper’s national reach allowed its circulation to strengthen later in the decade. By 1960 it was publishing 21,400 copies weekly and was attracting more than double the volume of advertising it had achieved three years earlier. In 1960, Fairfax management appointed a brilliant younger journalist from the Herald’s finance staff, Max Newton, as managing editor of the AFR. Newton firstly convinced Fairfax to publish bi-weekly, adding a Tuesday edition to complement Thursday’s publication. This was to shore up its defences against an attack from Sir Frank Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press, which in May 1961 had begun publishing an Australian edition of the British broadsheet the Financial Times on a Wednesday. Newton hired a group of young guns, including future editor Maximillian Walsh, David Love, Alan Wood, Albert Smith and Michael Baume (later a senator) to strengthen coverage and editorial quality, and by October 1963 had convinced management to take the newspaper daily. Newton was impressed at the way the London Financial Times had widened its coverage to include the political economy, and the AFR’s content reflected his wider interests, including the arts as well as business and politics. Australia was recovering from its worst recession and credit squeeze in decades, and the paper’s profitability as a national bi-weekly had bounced back. But the move almost sent it broke. Newton, like Horsfall, lasted less than a year in the new role. He was lured by the emergent newspaper tycoon Rupert Murdoch to start a daily general purpose national newspaper, the Australian, in 1964. The new editor, Vic Carroll, was well suited to the difficult circumstances facing the AFR following Newton’s defection. Throughout

REFs: A. Urban (ed.), Edge of the Known World (1998); http://www.aftrs.edu.au. STEVE AHERN

A U S T RAL I A N F I NANCIAL REVIEW The Australian Financial Review (AFR) began as a weekly newspaper in 1951. It was initiated by John Fairfax & Sons Pty Ltd, the publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald, in response to perceived threats that a stand-alone financial publication was about to be launched by Associated Newspapers Ltd, publisher of the Sydney afternoon tabloid the Sun. Jack Horsfall (1912–76), an Australian journalist working in London for the Economist, had been hired by Fairfax in 1950 to return to Sydney and strengthen the Herald’s finance and business coverage. He was appointed editor of the new publication. The first edition, on 16 August, made it clear the AFR was published as an adjunct to the Herald. The tension between the vigorous new tabloid-sized paper and the mother broadsheet 54

australian home beautiful

newspapers, more than 60 years after the fledgling weekly finance newspaper emerged from under the wings of the dominant Sydney Morning Herald.

the 1960s, he steered the paper’s coverage of business, the property market, the stockmarket and exposure of corporate malfeasance. Carroll strengthened Newton’s approach to covering areas of the political economy that were not part of mainstream journalism, including issues such as banking consolidation, manufacturing tariffs, and the importance of seasonally adjusted statistics. Carroll was still at the helm during a spectacular boom in nickel stocks in late 1969, when ordinary public stockmarket speculators began buying the paper in their thousands. Circulation reached 49,000 in early 1970 (from 19,500 when it first published daily) and the paper was turning a significant profit. The following two decades of the 1970s and 1980s saw a consolidation of the AFR’s position within Australian newspaper circles. The paper’s obdurate editorial opposition to industry assistance, labour featherbedding, business flaccidity and government indecision, as well as its sceptical approach to the role of state governments, made it a strong advocate for change. In 1987, the AFR was briefly sold to the Western Australian entrepreneur Robert Holmes à Court after the publicly listed John Fairfax Group was privatised by Warwick Fairfax Junior, but the deal fell through as the stockmarket collapsed in October 1987. The AFR’s circulation peaked at 85,000 daily in the 1990s. Its international reach had also widened, with 10 foreign correspondents. It had expanded its coverage of the money and currency markets, as well as futures and commodities, and had a lively line-up of opinionated columnists, including leading politicians, business critics and economic commentators. Its journalists regularly featured in the Walkley Awards. However, challenges were emerging from two quarters. Several major market crashes, notably the so-called ‘tech wreck’ in the late 1990s and the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–09, undermined readership. But the greatest threat lay in the disruptive technology of the emergent internet. Like many international newspapers, the AFR responded to the opening up of vast, easily accessible and usually free digital information sources by providing an online version, produced behind a paywall. But its success, expensive by newspaper standards, proved to be lack-lustre. By 2013, the paid circulation of the paper itself was 65,000, while its foreign bureaux had contracted to two journalists. In 2013, Fairfax Media sought to achieve economies across all its mastheads. The group rearranged business coverage in sister papers the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times by having AFR copy supplied to them daily. Still a dominant voice in Australian business and political circles in its own right, paradoxically it had become the mainstay of finance and business coverage for Fairfax’s metropolitan

REFs: AFR, 25 November 2013; G. Noonan, ‘The Establishment of the Australian Financial Review, 1951–1970, and Its Impact on Public Policy’ (MA thesis, 2003). GERARD NOONAN

AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING SERVICE see

government printing

AU STR ALIAN H O M E B EAU TIFU L Published by the United Press of Melbourne, Australian Home Beautiful made its debut in October 1925 fully developed and with a buoyant market, having previously been entitled Real Property Annual (1912–22) and Australian Home Builder (1922–25). Each incarnation deftly caught its market and then, anticipating domestic residential trends, presciently recalibrated its focus from real estate, to residential development, and finally to home-making. In this way, architecture and town planning were soon joined—and ultimately dominated—by home building, interior decoration, gardening and other domestic pursuits. The monthly magazine’s early promise was carried through the late 1920s and early 1930s with vibrantly coloured, domestic-themed covers, each painted by talented commercial artist F. Hedley Sanders. Regular contributions from Ruth Lane Poole (interiors), Alex Wilkinson (carpentry), Edna Walling (gardens) and ‘Sue Flay’ (cooking) captured a loyal national readership with projects for the home workshop sitting alongside cookery and sewing. Walling’s contributions set the pace, with their focus on design rather than the more conventional recitation of seasonal hints; this resulted in a celebrated career in garden design. By the 1930s, the magazine was also publishing handbooks on topics ranging from tatting to concreting. There were few competitors. Sydney Ure Smith’s quality quarterly the Home (1920–42) covered similar territory at a more sophisticated level; Australian Homes and Gardens (1925–31) struggled to achieve national coverage and South Australian Homes and Gardens (1931–53) reverted to its primary constituency. Exclusively garden-based magazines lacked home building credentials. If subscribers to the Home also took its stablemate Art in Australia, purchasers of Home Beautiful were more likely to seek out Yates’ Garden Annual or New Idea. The war saw a reduction in bulk and paper quality and a sharpened focus on the home front. Vegetable gardening received added prominence. European modernism swept through the pages and as post-war construction occupied Australian minds, a new North American design 55

australian indigenous communications association Indigenous media sector. By contrast, when the national native title legislation was negotiated at this time, just seven Indigenous representatives were involved. When NIMAA was disbanded in 2001, an Indigenous Communication Consultative Committee was set up to enable participation in the sensitive lobbying process for a national Indigenous broadcasting service under consideration at the time. A month later, in October 2001, the Indigenous Remote Communication Association (IRCA) was set up to ensure ‘bush’ communities retained a voice in the discussions. The formation of the AICA in 2003 coincided with a federal government decision to split the powers of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and a major push by Indigenous broadcasters for a national Indigenous broadcasting service. The association has struggled to mediate the continuing divisions between urban and bush communities’ needs, resulting in the launch in 2004 of the independent Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) service for remote Indigenous community audiences. In July 2007, reflecting the continuing dispute between Indigenous urban and ‘bush’ community media needs, ICTV was taken off the air following a federal government policy decision to make way for a new National Indigenous Television (NITV) service.

focus became apparent. Features were aided by the advent of coloured photographs during the 1950s. Post-war competitors such as Australian House and Garden (1948– ) sharpened the focus of each title, with the newcomer breezily championing modernism and architectural design for public consumption as its older rival consolidated its focus on interior renovation and similar home-making projects—internal and external. Australian Home Beautiful remains the country’s longest running home journal, notching up its centenary in 2012. REF: J. Oliver, The Australian Home Beautiful (1999). RICHARD AITKEN

A U S T RAL I A N I NDI GE NOUS COM M UNICATIONS A S S OCI ATI ON The Australian Indigenous Communications Association (AICA) is the third incarnation of an Indigenous media producers’ peak national representative body. Set up in 2003, AICA has a broad brief that includes coordinating policy development activities relevant to a wide range of media—radio, television, print, online and film—produced by Indigenous people. The AICA had its genesis in the first peak body formed to service the needs of Indigenous broadcasters in Australia, the National Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting Association (NAIBA), which operated as a lobbying entity for Indigenous broadcasters between 1982 and 1985. The NAIBA folded, largely due to a lack of federal departmental funding, in turn, stemming from continuing federal government disinterest in Indigenous media development. Following a seven-year gap in representation for the emerging Indigenous media sector, the formation of the National Indigenous Media Association of Australia (NIMAA) in 1992 represented a major new force in Indigenous media policy development. It had a broad membership of urban, regional and remote community broadcasters and multimedia producers around Australia. Like AICA, NIMAA was responsible for Indigenous media policy relating to film, advertising, print, radio and television. By 1994, NIMAA had seven full-time staff working with around 80 remote Indigenous communities involved in some way with broadcasting, as well as around 50 additional Indigenous community groups broadcasting on local radio around Australia. Under the auspices of NIMAA, Indigenous broadcasters were encouraged to embrace new digital production technologies such as video-conferencing and digital video editing, aligned with their own cultural protocols. The aim was that the communities themselves must be the driving force behind any form of media production. Although often fraught, regular meetings of NIMAA’s vocal and varied membership enabled discussion and debate around major issues confronting the

REFs: H. Molnar and M. Meadows, Songlines to Satellites (2002) and ‘Bridging the Gaps: Towards a History of Indigenous Media in Australia’, Media History, 8(1) (2002). MICHAEL MEADOWS

A US T RA L IA N INF ORMAT ION S E RV ICE see

Australian News and Information Bureau

A US T RA L IA N JOURNA L IS T S ’ A S S OCIAT ION see Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance

AU STR ALIAN N EW S AN D IN FO R M ATIO N B U R EAU The Australian News and Information Bureau (ANIB) was established in 1940 within the Department of Information (DOI). The ANIB was a wartime initiative of Sir Keith Murdoch as the Director-General of Information, but was implemented after his resignation from that position by the Minister for Information, H.S. Foll. Initially based in New York, ANIB’s primary aim was to foster stronger links with the United States by informing it of Australia’s war effort. David W. Bailey was appointed to head the office. He was on the editorial staff of the Herald and Sun News-Pictorial and a senior staff member with Australian Associated Press in London and New York. Bailey also chaired the United Nations Information Board, the first multinational UN organisation with an international staff and budget, established by Allied nations in 1942 to

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australian newspapers council In December 1972, the Whitlam Labor government subsumed ANIB into a new Department of the Media. In February 1973, it became the Australian Information Service, which concentrated on domestic dissemination of government information. By the end of its administrative career, the ANIB had dedicated state offices in Western Australia and Queensland, and overseas offices in London, Ottawa, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco, The Hague, Paris, Bonn, Bad Godesburg (Germany), Stockholm, Karachi, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, New Delhi, Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Tokyo and Manila. The ANIB has left a legacy of an extensive photographic collection maintained by the National Archives of Australia.

disseminate war information throughout North America. The ANIB remained primarily a US-based publicity arm for Australia’s war effort until 1944, when a London office was opened. In 1945, an office was opened in San Francisco. Under Foll and subsequent ministers, the DOI had begun to develop ‘overseas publicity’ alongside domestic censorship and war publicity. By 1944, the overseas publicity component, managed by the ANIB, had become the central rationale for the department’s work. When the DOI was abolished in 1950, the ANIB was transferred to the Department of the Interior. The ANIB absorbed a large proportion the DOI’s function as well as many of its journalism and administrative staff. After the war, the ANIB consisted of a Home and an Overseas Organisation. The Home Organisation produced films, articles, photographs and radio scripts through an Editorial Division and a Film Division. This material was sometimes used in domestic information campaigns; often, however, it was sent overseas. The Overseas Organisation disseminated the material through overseas diplomatic posts, trade organisations and interested individuals. As immigration policies developed after the war, the ANIB had a role in creating an image of Australia that could be deployed to inform and persuade new migrants of the benefits of moving ‘Down Under’. Various publications painted a picture of a vast, productive land barely touched by war—a land of opportunity. During the Cold War, ANIB overseas publicity took on a more political hue. The benefits of living in Australia could not only attract migrants, they also suggested that the ‘Australian way of life’ was superior to communist ideology. The Colombo Plan, a multilateral aid scheme established in 1950, provided the ANIB with a rich source of images and information of Australia’s commitment to developing countries. While generally directed to overseas audiences, the Colombo Plan also provided the stage for the ANIB’s most extensive internal propaganda operation since the war. In 1957–58, the Colombo Plan had come under sustained criticism for waste and poorly managed and targeted aid. In 1959, the ANIB, with the support of the Minister for External Affairs, (Lord) R.G. Casey, deployed well-known journalist Osmar White and an experienced cameraman/photographer, James (Jim) Fitzpatrick, on a six-month tour of Colombo Plan projects. White and Fitzpatrick sent material to Australian newspapers and television stations, highlighting the Plan’s successes. Initially, some effort was made to ensure the reports were not linked to the ANIB, but a publication on the project, The Seed of Freedom (1961), noted that the Australian government had asked the journalist and photographer to survey the Plan.

REFs: P. Clarke, ‘Bias for Good or Ill? Australian Government Overseas Propaganda in the 1950s’, http:// www.isaa.org.au/articles/bias-for-good-or-ill-australian-government-overseas-propaganda-in-the-1950s (2014); J. Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors (1984). JOHN TEBBUTT

A US T RA L IA N NE W S PA PE R HIS T ORY GROUP see

media history

A US T RA L IA N NE W S PA PE R PROPRIE T ORS ’ A S S OCIAT ION see Australian Newspapers

Council

A US T RA L IA N NE W S PA PE RS CONF E RE NCE see

Australian Newspapers Council

AU STR ALIAN N EW SP AP ER S C O U N C IL Australian newspaper proprietors established the Australian Newspapers Conference (ANC) in the mid-1920s. Convening biannually, it considered issues such as advertising rates, cover prices and industrial negotiations. In 1931, a somewhat apprehensive ANC was persuaded by the Australian Association of National Advertisers to set up the Audit Bureau of Circulations; the ANC chairman chaired the board of the new organisation. In 1940–41, the Menzies Coalition government considered whether to grant Ezra Norton’s Truth & Sportsman Ltd a newsprint licence to publish a new Sydney afternoon newspaper, the Daily Mirror. Although newsprint supplies were critically low because of the need to conserve cargo space for war supplies, the ANC’s dominant figure, Sir Keith Murdoch, could afford at his distance from Sydney to take a philosophical view of the impending Daily Mirror. In early 1941, when the licence was granted, other Australian newspaper proprietors erupted in protest. The ANC was disbanded and replaced by the Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association (ANPA), with R.A.G. Henderson elected president.

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australian press council Associated Newspapers Ltd withdrew from the ANPA in 1951, and John Fairfax & Sons withdrew shortly before the association was wound up in August 1958. Although the rump of the ANPA joined the ANC in 1958, Fairfax preferred to go its own way. In 1968, the ANC’s president, Rupert Murdoch, also became chairman of the new Media Council of Australia. In 1969, Regional Dailies of Australia Ltd declined an invitation to join the ANC, preferring to retain its independence. The ANC held a series of conferences focusing on the technicalities of typesetting and layout during the 1960s. In 1975, it resisted plans for the Australian Press Council, but then provided its entitlement of four publisher members until the APC was reconstituted and individual publishers became the nominators of industry members. By 1993, the ANC had been quietly disbanded.

In September 1942, when the government decided on an additional cut to newsprint supplies of 15 per cent, the ANPA formed a voluntary pool of all newsprint stocks held by its members. The administration of the pool was, predictably, marred by tension amongst members, and Norton’s newspapers noisily, but falsely, alleged that the ANPA enforced a common political and editorial line on members. However, the ANPA aggressively presented a united front in its campaign for freedom of speech, and against the government’s heavy-handed approach to press censorship. It took the lead in negotiations over the ABC’s establishment of an independent news service, considered issues such as manpower, and established an active advertising and accreditation section. As commercial radio’s share of the advertising market increased, the ANPA published a promotional booklet, 7,480,000 Buyers, and What Buyers! In 1942, the ANPA refused the request from the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) to intervene when a member, Consolidated Press Ltd, demoted, and then dismissed, Leslie Haylen after he won federal Labor pre-selection. However, it convened an emergency meeting to protest against the exclusion of Consolidated Press journalists from federal parliament following a contentious article by Richard Hughes. Feeling under siege on all fronts, the ANPA viewed with suspicion the AJA’s campaign for a statutory standing committee on ethics. In 1945, the ANPA and the AJA agreed to establish an Australian Newspaper Board to defend the freedom of the press, uphold press standards and advance the professional status of journalists, but it was to achieve little. In 1947, ACP withdrew from the newsprint pool’s rationing recommendations, describing them as ‘partisan and detrimental’. In February 1948, this company, and others principally connected with the Herald and Weekly Times, formed the breakaway Australian Newspapers Council; John Fairfax & Sons was amongst those groups to stay with the ANPA. At the industrial level, the AJA negotiated separately with both organisations, but the two joined together on matters concerning metropolitan daily newspapers. On 11–12 November 1948, the breakaway ANC convened, in Melbourne, a conference for newspaper editors, at which academics, lawyers and the American ambassador spoke. However, plans for a permanent editors’ society do not seem to have eventuated. The proprietors’ organisations also served a broader role with, for instance, Eric Kennedy, the ANPA president, heading the publicity sub-committee of the Commonwealth Jubilee Celebrations Council in 1950–51. The ANPA was a vocal critic of a 1953 NSW Labor government’s Bill to compel sources to disclose sources of information exposing council corruption.

REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer (1999); N. Petersen, News Not Views (1993); G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

AU STR ALIAN P R ESS C O U N C IL In July 1976, publishers and the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA)—now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA)—set up a body that would address concerns that the Australian press was unregulated. The Australian Press Council (APC) had two main objectives: to ensure that the press remains free to report matters of public interest, and to make sure that the free press reports responsibly. The APC has sought to maintain responsibility by considering complaints about material in newspapers and magazines. From 2000, it also addressed complaints about the news websites of affiliated publishers, and in 2011 it invited interested websites to agree to abide by APC principles and complaints procedures. Also in 2011, the APC initiated the Standards Project to develop specific standards that constitute good media practice and are applied by the APC when considering complaints. These standards will be promulgated through newsrooms and, together with the council’s Statements of Principles, will form the binding Standards of Practice. This will enable the APC to initiate complaints on systemic issues of concern, as well as dealing with readers’ complaints. The APC deals with more than 500 complaints each year. Of these, about one-third have been successfully mediated, with settlements such as an apology, correction, retraction or follow-up. Fewer than 20 per cent are dealt with by adjudication, with over 70 per cent of these being upheld in recent years. The APC is able to deal with complaints speedily: those settled by means other than adjudication have averaged 21 days; adjudications have taken on average four months from receipt of the complaint to 58

australian town and country journal

established its own independent council to hear complaints along the same lines as the APC. The APC presents Case Studies Seminars to university journalism students as a way of encouraging discussion of ethical issues, and presents a prize to participating universities for excellence in a course encompassing journalism ethics. The APC has been characterised at times as a ‘toothless tiger’ or a ‘publishers’ poodle’. These characterisations may have had some validity in the past but, in the last 15 years, the APC has become a much more effective voice for those with concerns about press standards in Australia. The increasing willingness of publishers to offer complainants satisfactory settlement through mediations or prominently published adjudications attests to this effectiveness, and to a system that is both efficient and free.

finalisation. The most common reasons for complaints are inaccuracy, unfairness, imbalance and offensive material. In its attempts to maintain press freedom, the APC has made close to 150 submissions. It has contributed to significant reform of defamation laws, freedom of information laws, shield laws for journalists, whistleblower laws, access to court records and information on suppression orders. Its representations have ameliorated restrictions in areas including privacy law and the reporting of confidential information. The APC consists of representatives of the publishers, journalists and members of the public, with an independent chair. The chair and all public members are appointed from among people with no previous association with the press. The chairs have largely been senior lawyers (with the only non-lawyer being Professor Ken McKinnon). Professor Julian Disney has been chair since 2009. The Council maintains an administrative office in Sydney, headed by an executive director—currently John Pender. The publishers provide the bulk of APC funding. They were the only source of funds until 2011, when the APC agreed to accept independent funding for special projects. The APC also agreed that no publisher should provide more than half the council’s total funding, the bulk of which comes from the metropolitan newspaper publishers, News Limited and Fairfax Media. The other publisher members of the APC include newspaper, magazine and website publishers, as well as associations of community and country press owners. In 2009, during the Global Financial Crisis, the publishers cut the APC’s funding by 20 per cent, but have since agreed to annual increases that saw the council restored to its previous level of funding in 2011 and double it in 2012. They also agreed to maintain this level of funding for a minimum of four years. The history of the APC has not always been smooth. John Fairfax Ltd was not originally a member, joining in 1982. News Limited withdrew in June 1980, and rejoined in 1987. (Its publications continued to cooperate with the council during that period.) The AJA withdrew from the APC in 1987. The MEAA reaffiliated with the APC in 2005. In 2011–12, the APC was at the centre of two major government inquiries into media regulation: the Finkelstein Inquiry, which recommended its replacement by a statutory body, and the Convergence Review, which saw a future for a revamped and expanded council. The increases in APC funding and stronger commitment by press and online publishers followed these inquiries, and the APC is in a stronger position than it has been for many years. The one exception to the agreement for increased funding and a four-year commitment was from Seven West Media, publishers of the West Australian. That company withdrew from the APC in 2012 and

REF: D. Kirkman, ‘Whither the Australian Press Council? Its Formation, Function and Future’ (MA thesis, 1996). JACK HERMAN

A US T RA L IA N PRE S S CUT T INGS A GE NCY see Media

Monitors

A US T RA L IA N S UBS CRIPT ION T E L E V IS ION A ND RA DIO A S S OCIAT ION see pay television

AU STR ALIAN TO W N AN D C O U N TRY JO U R N AL Launched on 8 January 1870 by Samuel Bennett (1815–78), three years after he started the Evening News, the Sydney-based Australian Town and Country Journal became a leading publisher of Australian journalism and fiction. It was also known as the Town and Country Journal, although ‘Australian’ always appeared above the masthead. The illustrated weekly was Bennett’s response to John Fairfax & Sons’ Sydney Mail (1860–1938), but aimed for a national readership—especially in the bush. Features included news summaries, sports results, sections on agricultural markets and shows, and essays on literature and science. It was the first Australian publication to run a regular ‘Ladies’ Column’. The journal sold for sixpence, and boasted a ‘circulation three times that of any other weekly journal in Australia’. In 1895, the editor of Cosmos magazine, Annie Bright, wrote that the journal had gained an ‘unprecedented popularity’ throughout Australia and New Zealand: ‘Settlers in the interior where postal communication was infrequent would travel long distances to meet the mailman with his weekly supplies of the journal.’ Like the Bulletin, the journal featured articles by future Australian literary greats. In 1894, Ethel Turner—yet to write Seven Little Australians—took her nom de plume Dame Durden, along with the Children’s Page, from the defunct Illustrated Sydney News to the journal. She edited the page for the next 25 years. Thomas 59

australian women’s weekly

Australia’s women’s magazines, it is an unparalleled longitudinal record of changing everyday culture: ideas about femininity and beauty, sex and romance, marriage and child-rearing, women’s work (paid and otherwise), food, houses and health. It has responded to major changes in society. The Weekly played an important role during World War II in rallying women to participate in the war effort, whether from their homes or by joining the workforce. After the war, the Weekly’s reader’s life was expected to revolve around her husband and children, but she was also invited to embrace a more glamorous ideal of femininity. By the late 1960s, however, there was a groundswell of discontent among women unhappy with their domestic lot, often juggling a badly paid job as well. Even in the pages of the Weekly, ‘housewife blues’ was finally given a name. In 1959, recognising the emergence of a new group of young readers and consumers, the magazine introduced a ‘Teenagers’ Weekly’ supplement. But it became clear as the 1960s went on that young women did not want to live like their mothers: they were better educated, and they wanted to earn money and see the world—even to explore their sexuality. Since the 1970s, the Weekly has had to respond to two major changes in women’s lives: mass participation in the paid workforce and expanding horizons for personal and sexual fulfilment. Editors—of whom there have been remarkably few—have dealt with change in different ways. Alice Jackson (1939–50) was succeeded by Esmé Fenston (1950–72), whose firm ideas about what was right for the Weekly were shared by Packer. She was succeeded by the magazine’s best-known journalist, Dorothy Drain (1972–74), who disliked having to defend the Weekly against emerging women’s liberation ideas. In a brief interregnum after Sir Frank’s death, Ita Buttrose (1974–76) introduced radical changes such as inviting readers to write about their experiences of sexual abuse. When she was promoted to publisher, the editorship was taken on by Dawn Swain (1976–85), who had trained with Fenston. Swain toned down this new look, and steered the magazine through its 1983 change to a monthly. This coincided with its 50th anniversary, which was marked by the publication of Denis O’Brien’s book, The Weekly. Later editors included Richard Walsh, the first male editor since Warnecke, and Nene King (1992–99), who notoriously took the magazine into gossip, paying paparazzi for revealing photos of celebrities. Deborah Thomas (1999–2008), like Swain before her, returned the Weekly to respectability. She is now publisher, having been succeeded as editor by Helen McCabe. Today’s Weekly still has many continuities with the format of its heyday—promotions and competitions, readers’ letters and special supplements. The same kinds of products are advertised. The Weekly always prided itself on its smart look

Alexander Browne, under the pen name Rolf Boldrewood, published seven serialised novels in the journal between 1873 and 1880. However, the journal rejected what was to become his most famous work, Robbery Under Arms, which was serialised in the Sydney Mail. Following Bennett’s death in 1878, his son Alfred took over as editor until 1893. Journalist and novelist Walter James Jeffery (1861–1922) then took the helm until 1906, when he exchanged editorships with Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864–91), then editor of the journal’s sister publication, the Evening News. Paterson resigned in 1908, weary of city life. In 1918, a new company, S. Bennett Ltd, was formed with a capital of £200,000. On 27 April 1919, the company launched the Sunday News. Two months later, the publishers claimed that the new weekly had taken the place of the journal and the extra printing could not be sustained. The last edition of the Australian Town and Country Journal was published on 25 June 1919. REF: R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (1976). MARGARET VAN HEEKEREN

AUST R A LI A N W O M E N ’S B R O A D C A S T IN G COOPE R ATI V E see Media Women’s Action

Group; women in broadcasting

A U S T RAL I A N W OMEN’S WEEKLY Founding editor George Warnecke’s vision for the Australian Women’s Weekly was: ‘Start it Big. Give it an unswerving Australian outlook. Above all, whether the journalists are writing about fashion, cookery, baby care or diet, there has to be an element of news in what they write.’ He took this formula to the young (Sir) Frank Packer, and in June 1933, the magazine that was to become Australian Consolidated Press’s flagship, and a national institution, was launched. Creating a ‘world for women’, the Weekly offered its readers advice on managing their domestic lives, as well as fiction and stories about royalty, film stars and fashion, scandals and survivors. It rapidly rose to a pre-eminent position as the top-selling Australian magazine. Interstate editions, including a ‘letter’ from one social editor to another, were swiftly rolled out. The height of the Weekly’s popularity came in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was read in one in four Australian homes, and had the biggest circulation per head of population of any women’s magazine in the world. It implicated itself in the lives of its readers, through outlets and promotions including the Women’s Weekly Test Kitchen, cookbooks and World Discovery Tours. The Weekly managed to attract and hold major advertising clients. Because of this combination of journalism and advertising, among all 60

australian writers’ guild The South Australian branch successfully went on strike against Channel 9 over payments to Here’s Humphrey writers in 1980–81, and the AWG helped ratify the first worldwide writers’ strike against American producers. The 1990s saw the AWG’s focus shift to government policy and legislation. It lobbied for increases in government support for the film and television industries, the retention of tax incentives to fund film production and increases in local content quotas. The AWG signed a co-production accord with the Australian Film Commission to ensure the majority of scripts were written by Australian writers, and campaigned to enshrine moral rights in the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000. The Australian Writers’ Guild Authorship Collecting Society was also established to collect international royalties for its Australian and New Zealand members. By 2000, the AWG had negotiated major agreements with the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia to establish minimum rates and residuals for television writers. It had also negotiated the Theatre Industry Agreement, the first collective agreement for theatre writers. Since its humble beginnings, the AWG now stands as an undisputed force within the film, television, radio and theatre industries. Contracts and minimum rates have been established across the spectrum of film, documentary, television, radio and theatre, and the AWG acts as a powerful lobby group, influencing government policy and legislation. Its history is a story of an uncompromising determination to protect the rights of all writers for the screen, radio and theatre.

and high production values, and in appearance it has changed radically over time, as the publishers made use of the latest developments in colour reproduction, printing and binding. The Weekly adapted to the many changes in the mediasphere largely by multiplying its functions, and bringing out supplements that would later make up separate segments of the magazine market. The Singapore Women’s Weekly was launched in 1997, followed by the Malaysian Women’s Weekly in 2000. The Australian Women’s Weekly became part of the Bauer Media Group in 2012, recording a circulation of 459,175 in 2013. REF: S. Sheridan with B. Baird, K. Borrett and L. Ryan, Who Was That Woman? (2002). SUSAN SHERIDAN

AUST RAL I A N WRITERS’ GUILD The Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) was founded in 1962 when 17 radio writers met at the Australia Hotel in Sydney to form a body to protect their professional interests. Work conditions at the time were dire due to the introduction of television, which had led to the axing of radio serials by nearly all commercial radio stations. English and American television programs were mass imported, leaving little work for local writers. In desperation, the AWG lobbied the British Writers’ Guild to impose a blacklist on Australian production companies using non-Australian writers to write offshore scripts. The attempt failed, but it marked the beginning of an ongoing campaign to establish local content quotas for television drama. The 1970s and 1980s were a hectic period of political activity and industrial action. The AWG joined the ‘TV Make it Australian’ campaign, lobbied cinemas to screen Australian films, and in 1973 demonstrated against a visiting American film industry troubleshooter, Jack Valenti.

REFs: http://www.awg.com.au; http://www.nfsa.gov. au/collection/oral-history/screenwriters-talk-abouttheir-craft. GINA RONCOLI

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B B A L IB O F I VE On 16 October 1975, five journalists from Australian television networks who had been sent to cover Indonesian incursions into East Timor were murdered and their bodies burnt by Indonesian Special Forces in the village of Balibo. Two were Australian: Gregory Shackleton, whose final report included footage of the painting of an Australian flag and the word ‘AUSTRALIA’ on the house in which they sheltered, ‘hoping it will afford us some protection’, and cameraman Anthony Stewart. With them was New Zealander Gary Cunningham. All worked for HSV7. Two British journalists, cameraman Brian Peters and reporter Malcolm Rennie, working for TCN9 Sydney, were with the Melbourne-based journalists. Indonesian forces’ public execution of Australian Roger East in Dili on 8 December 1975 led to his inclusion as the silent sixth member of the ‘Balibo Five’. East worked for AAP-Reuters, and hoped to discover more about the deaths. Australian intelligence agencies and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, endeavouring to hide Australian surveillance of Indonesia, suppressed their immediate knowledge of the Balibo deaths. Several inquiries by Australian and international authorities have failed to change the Indonesian position that the five men were killed in crossfire, despite credible evidence to the contrary. Then and now, Australia regarded its covert operations and its relationship with Indonesia as more important than bringing those responsible to account. A film, a play and active social media sites continue to fuel public focus on the murders. The Balibo Five tragedy represents more than the death of five journalists. It continues to be a focus for public and media in the reporting of Timor-Leste, and clouds developments in Australian–Indonesian relations.

He wrote articles on international affairs for the Melbourne Herald, seeking disarmament and the peaceful settlement of international differences. While he came to reject the communist-inspired World Peace Congress (1936), he remained outspoken in defence of democratic freedoms and detested censorship. In 1932, he secured a lecturing post with the University of Melbourne. He also spent time with the BBC, studying its methods of programming talks, and collecting and broadcasting world news between 1938 and 1939. During this time, Ball wrote Press, Radio and World Affairs: Australia’s Outlook (1938), and began giving talks for the ABC. He joined the Department of Information, established as Australia’s civil propaganda and censorship agency during World War II. From June 1940, Ball managed its pioneering ShortWave Broadcasting Division, the predecessor of Radio Australia. Ball’s approach to broadcasting overseas avoided crude propaganda and disinformation, but journalists and censors in the department regarded Ball’s stance as defeatist and weak, with chief publicity censor Edmund Garnett Bonney viewing it as undermining his main message of victory. Following recommendations by the Joint Parliamentary Committee into Broadcasting (the Gibson Committee), Ball’s division was transferred to the ABC in July 1942. Many of Ball’s broadcasts were in foreign languages, and those preparing the broadcasts had to understand their audiences. The culture of the service created by his specialist staff was encouraged by Ball, but a later director characterised (and criticised) the short-wave service between 1940 and 1944 as ‘run by academics rather than trained broadcasters’. Fearing he would lose his autonomy, in April 1944 Ball resigned his post after the new Minister for Information, Arthur Calwell, moved his division back to the department. After the war, Ball took on diplomatic duties, but his frank and balanced approach upset officials, including Minister for External Affairs Dr H.V. Evatt, and Ball saw that career end in turmoil and resignation. From 1949, he returned to the University of Melbourne as Foundation Chair of Political

REFs: D. Ball and H. McDonald, Death in Balibo (1992); J. Jolliffe, Balibo (2009). TRISH PAYNE

B A L L , W I LL I A M MA CMAHON (1901–86) Broadcaster, academic and diplomat W. Macmahon Ball (‘Mac’) was the epitome of a 20th-century Australian left-leaning public figure who chose to be fair and true in tough times. 62

barnet family B AR N ET FAM ILY The Barnet family published the Bunyip newspaper at Gawler, 40 kilometres north of Adelaide, for 139 years from 5 September 1863. When the family sold the paper on 31 March 2003, only the Weston family of the NSW Kiama Independent had a longer record of control as Australian newspaper founders. The Bunyip began as an eccentric monthly quarto-sized satirical pamphlet with content provided by the Gawler Humbug Society. The printer and part-owner was William Barnet (1834–95), who had served a printing apprenticeship in his home town of Kinross, Scotland. He migrated to South Australia and established a printery and stationer’s shop at Gawler in 1857. In 1861 at Blackwood, he married Hannah Burfield, who was fresh from boarding school but showed a maturity beyond her years in assisting William in the printing business. They had six sons and four daughters. Four months after the Bunyip’s launch, Barnet turned to traditional news content as the staple for his columns. The paper continued as a monthly in 1864, but appeared twice a month in 1865 and weekly (as a broadsheet) from 1866. Barnet fought off three competitors between 1869 and 1885, absorbing two of them. Hannah Barnet (1843–1921) took the proprietorial reins when William died. Son Robert Henry (1868–1917), who had started working at the paper at 13, managed the business and became the printer. Another son, Frank Lindley (1875– 1941), turned his back on a mining career to become the Bunyip’s accountant, and a daughter, Emily Margaret Mercury (1865–1925), ran the stationery department. Robert was elected foundation president of the South Australian Country Press Association in March 1912 and president of the Australasian Provincial Press Association (1914–15). When Robert died in 1917, Hannah took the reins again briefly. Frank, who had become expert as a linotype operator, became the printer and publisher and, in 1921, the manager. Assisting him was Emily in the front shop. When she died in 1925, eldest brother William returned from Adelaide after 49 years on the Advertiser and became the linotype operator for three years until his death. During the Great Depression, Frank’s son, Kenneth Lindley (1919–2000), left school at 14 to join the family firm and became a qualified linotype operator. After serving in World War II, he rebuilt the nearly bankrupt Bunyip into a viable business. He acquired other newspapers, including the Salisbury News, on the northern fringes of Adelaide, in 1948. Ken withdrew from day-to-day management in 1974–75, and son John Lindley (1945– ) became the managing editor; another son, Craig Kenneth (1951– ), became his assistant and Paul William (1957– ) was the photographer. John and Craig became the owners in

Science, remaining there until January 1968 and continuing his ABC commentaries. He was appointed AC in 1978. REFs: J. Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors (1984); E. Vickery, ‘Telling Australia’s Story to the World: The Department of Information 1939–1950’ (PhD thesis, 2003). JOHN HILVERT

BANKS, NORMAN TYRELL (1905–85) Norman Banks was a leading Melbourne radio broadcaster, both before and after World War II. Joining 3KZ in 1931, Banks was one of the pioneers of a natural, conversational style that distinguished commercial radio in the 1930s from the ABC, which sought to emulate the formal, distant manner of the BBC. Banks quickly shaped an informal, friendly, ‘man-next-door’ personality, and was consistently voted one of the most popular broadcasters in Victoria throughout the 1930s. He was a versatile and enthusiastic broadcaster, initiating programs such as The Voice of the Voyager, based on an American program, in which he interviewed famous visitors to Melbourne as their ships entered the port. With numerous variations on this program—such as The Voice of the People, The Voice of the Shopper and The Voice of the Business Girl—Banks took radio out into the world of his listeners as it increasingly became part of their daily lives. Perhaps the most dramatic of his initiatives was his continuous, live broadcast of VE Day celebrations at the end of World War II from the Manchester Unity Building opposite the Melbourne Town Hall. A keen follower of football and other sports, Banks broadcast his first live coverage of a VFL match in 1931 while standing on a ladder at the end of the Princes Park dressing room. But sport also led to his departure from 3KZ, when he insisted on going to the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. Rival station 3AW quickly took him on and he covered both the Helsinki and Melbourne Games for them. Banks was appointed MBE in 1953. At 3AW, he moved into public affairs programming, and in 1956 became the station’s world news editor-in-chief. His conservative social and political opinions became more explicit in this context. His outspoken views—for example, in support of the apartheid regime in South Africa—and suggestions that he was anti-Semitic led to his move into public affairs television being rather short-lived. The Norman Banks Program for GTV9, which commenced in 1963, was cancelled less than two years later. But he retained a hugely popular following on radio, and by 1970 it was reported that he attracted 300,000 Melbourne listeners who tuned in to his show for at least two hours each week. Ill-health forced his retirement in July 1978. REFs: Banks Papers (SLV); L. Johnson, The Unseen Voice (1988). LESLEY JOHNSON

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bean, charles edwin woodrow (1879–1968) 1978; they sold in 2003 to the Taylor family, proprietors of the Murray Pioneer (Renmark) since 1905 and more recently papers at Loxton, Waikerie, Burra and Pinnaroo.

REFs: M. Piggott, A Guide to the Personal, Family and Official Papers of C.E.W. Bean (1983); http://www. anzacsite.gov.au/1landing/beanbio.html. HARVEY BROADBENT

REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘How the Bunyip became more than the medium for jokes’, PANPA Bulletin (October 2001); R. Kirkpatrick, interviews with John and Craig Barnet (2003). ROD KIRKPATRICK

B EH IN D TH E N EW S Behind the News is an award-winning Australian television news and current affairs program for upper primary and lower secondary school students. It aims to provide information and context on political, social, economic and environmental issues of national and international importance. The show first aired on 6 June 1969 at Sydney’s ABC studios. In 1986, production moved to Melbourne, and the program was broadcast live to air, before moving in the 1990s to its current production location in Adelaide, where it has since been pre-recorded. The ABC axed Behind the News in 2003, citing government budget cuts. Network Ten’s The Total News filled the void before Behind the News returned in 2005; the program is still being broadcast. The television program is supplemented by the Behind the News website, which provides educational resources and interactive activities for teachers and students. Behind the News is also used as a tool for English as a Second Language (ESL) students, and has attracted a growing adult audience seeking an alternative news source. Notable presenters over the years have included Richard Morecroft (1982–85), Paul Higgins (1986–93) and Tania Nugent (1993–2000). Behind the News is broadcast on ABC1 and the current presenter is Nathan Bazley (2007– ).

B E A N , CHA RLES EDWIN WOODROW (1879–1968) C.E.W. Bean is best known as Australia’s official World War I war correspondent, general editor of the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18 and a founder of the Australian War Memorial. He is regarded as a formative influence on the establishment of the Anzac legend. Born in Bathurst, New South Wales, Bean moved to England at age of 10 with his family, and studied classics and law at the University of Oxford. He returned to Australia in 1904, was admitted to the NSW Bar and then travelled widely in New South Wales as a judge’s associate. This resulted in an unpublished illustrated book, ‘The Impressions of a New Chum’, which reflected his fascination with outback life and became the basis for a series of Sydney Morning Herald articles in mid-1907. Bean joined the Herald as a junior reporter in 1908 and, between 1909 and 1911, published three books derived from Herald articles. He was posted to London in 1910, returning to Sydney in 1913 and becoming a Herald leader writer. Following the outbreak of war in 1914, Bean narrowly won a ballot held by the Australian Journalists’ Association for appointment as official correspondent to the AIF, ahead of (Sir) Keith Murdoch. Bean sailed with the first AIF convoy to Egypt, where he began filing his reports before landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. He became a dedicated and brave war correspondent, receiving a wound at Gallipoli in August but remaining until a few days before the evacuation. Bean continued his reporting on the Western Front and began to record events in diaries and notebooks, with a history of the war in mind. In 1919 he led a historical mission to Gallipoli. He then returned to Australia and began two decades of work on the official history of Australian involvement in the war. Bean worked hard to create the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, opened on 11 November 1941. He was chairman of the memorial’s board from 1952 to 1959, maintaining close connections with the institution for the rest of his life. He was involved in creating the Commonwealth Archives (now the National Archives of Australia) and also served as chairman of the Promotion Appeals Board of the ABC (1947–58).

REFs: Behind the News Records (ABC Adelaide); http://www.abc.net.au/btn. MADELEINE TURNER

B EN T, AN D R EW (1790–1851) Andrew Bent arrived in Hobart in February 1812 under a life sentence for burglary. He worked for George Clark, publisher of the colony’s first newspaper, the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer (1810–12), before replacing Clark as Government Printer in 1815. The following year, Bent began the Hobart Town Gazette, and Southern Reporter, and two years later he printed and published the first general work of literature issued in the Australian colonies: Thomas E. Wells’ Michael Howe: The Last and the Worst of the Bushrangers of Van Diemen’s Land. Bent also compiled and published the Van Diemen’s Land Pocket Almanack for the Year of Our Lord from 1824 to 1830. The Gazette was produced under the authority of the government, and Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell exercised some control over the content of its articles. However, in 1824 Bent was allowed to buy the operation, 64

bias This separation was among the central tenets developed by the US Commission on the Freedom of the Press, which reported its findings in 1947, and formed part of what later became known as the social responsibility theory of the press. This theory held that in liberal democracies, the press—now extended to mean the media as a whole—received certain privileges and protections, in return for which society expected it to discharge certain functions, including a truthful, comprehensive, intelligent and contextualised account of the day’s events. Out of this grew a professional adherence among journalists to the idea of ‘objectivity’. Journalists came to see themselves as detached, disinterested observers whose job was merely to report what they saw and heard. This well-intentioned but disingenuous self-view did not survive: it could not withstand the central criticism that journalists could not plausibly cut themselves off from all their past experiences, beliefs and attitudes, or the fact that the choice of every word, the structure of every sentence, the ordering of every set of facts in every story involved a value judgement. A more honest and intellectually respectable concept was needed, and what emerged over the last quarter of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st centuries was a commitment to impartiality—the promise of something tangible that was attainable, and about which assessments might be made. It was a more useful concept than bias, which was said—often justifiably—to exist in the eye of the beholder. A good example of this difficulty arose in 2003 when Senator Richard Alston, as Minister for Communications in the Howard Coalition government, lodged a complaint alleging bias against an ABC Radio current affairs program, AM. Alston provided 68 examples from the AM programs of 21 March to 14 April 2003, which he contended showed biased coverage of the war in Iraq, being ‘one-sided and tendentious commentary by program hosts and reporters’. The ABC rejected all but two of Alston’s examples, and those were judged not to be instances of bias but of speculative reporting with a tendency to sarcasm. An independent review panel subsequently found that, taken as a whole, the coverage of the war on AM had not been biased. Three different examinations of the same material arrived at three radically different conclusions. Lack of a commonly agreed definition did not help. Indeed, because of definitional difficulties, media codes of ethics have tended to concentrate on more tangible qualities such as fairness and balance than on bias. For example, the principal code for Australian journalists, that of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, exhorts journalists to commit to the values of honesty, fairness, independence and

making him the first private newspaper owner in Australia. He marked the occasion with an editorial headed ‘The Press Set Free’, but this freedom was to prove troublesome. The new Lieutenant-Governor, (Sir) George Arthur, took strong exception to a number of articles by Evan Henry Thomas and Robert Lathrop Murray published in the Gazette in 1824 and 1825, and a charge of libel was brought against Bent. He was convicted, fined and imprisoned, and government work was withdrawn. A new rival paper pirated the Gazette’s title and, after a short period during which the two duplicated issue and volume numbers, Bent changed his title to Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser. He continued to fight Arthur’s attempts to control the press after being denied a licence in 1827, but again fell foul of the law and was imprisoned in 1828. News of the disallowal of Arthur’s Licensing Act 1827 by the British government encouraged Bent to revive the Colonial Times, but he sold it in 1830 to the like-minded Henry Melville. There were two further libel actions against Bent before he left for New South Wales in 1839. After briefly publishing a weekly, Bent’s News and New South Wales Advertiser, in Sydney, he moved to the Macleay River, where a series of misfortunes reduced him to penury. Bent died in the Sydney Benevolent Asylum, leaving a large family. While the quality of his work as a printer and publisher was arguably his finest achievement, he is chiefly remembered for his struggles for the freedom of the press. REF: J. Woodberry, Andrew Bent and the Freedom of the Press in Van Diemen’s Land (1972). MICHAEL SPROD

BI A S In the Australian media, the concept of bias means partisanship of a kind that ought to be avoided in the reporting of news, but may be acceptable as part of commentary. The ideal from which these normative standards sprang emerged towards the end of the 19th century, as journalism became more professionalised. Some leading publishers and editors, such as Joseph Pulitzer in the United States and C.P. Scott in Britain, began to advocate that the press owed a duty to the public that overrode sectional interest. This represented a radical departure from earlier practice. In Britain especially, newspapers had long been owned by, and unashamedly represented the interests of, individual business people, political parties and trade unions. The new ideal posited that whatever the interests of the proprietor, the news content of the newspapers ought to be governed by four over-arching values: independence, impartiality, accuracy and fairness; partisan content ought to be confined to discrete and identifiable sections of the paper given over to commentary and opinion. 65

births, deaths and marriages column B IR TH S, D EATH S AN D M AR R IAG ES C O LU M N The births, deaths and marriages column has been a feature of the Australian press since the early 1800s. The column continues to be most popular in newspapers that serve niche geographical areas—particularly small towns and cities—but larger publications covering states and territories also have a long-standing tradition of running these notices. These include the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age. Over time, placing a birth, death or marriage notice has become an important and powerful cultural practice for many Australians, continuing a tradition that is common across the Western world. Aside from the official births, deaths and marriages register, it serves as the informal public record for important cultural milestones and celebrations. The column includes announcements of important birthdays, wedding anniversaries, engagements, funeral notices and an in memoriam section. Such notices are published in newspapers that serve the places where people live or have social or genealogical ties. Newspapers generally charge a fee to publish this content, which represents a regular source of revenue, although this information is generally considered a source of ‘news’ rather than advertising content among readers. Death notices published in this section differ from the obituary, which tends to be written and sourced by journalists about people considered to have contributed to public life. The first official death notice recorded in the Australian press appeared in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on the back page of its 5 March 1803 edition. The typography of births, deaths and marriages began with the recording of factual information about a birth or death, including the name of the person(s) involved and the residential address of the next of kin. During the late 1800s, these notices often assumed pride of place in the first column on the front page. They remained there until the turn of the century (although the Melbourne Argus kept births, deaths and marriage notices on the front page until as late as 1937), coinciding with the rise of the industrial model of news and the ‘professional’ journalist. The funeral notice, which tended to run on a separate page until the mid-1900s, became a reliable source of information for people to find out when and where a funeral would take place. Newspapers were eager to ensure the accuracy and legitimacy of this section as an important public record. The Argus provided a notice in the late 1800s informing readers ‘that in order to guard against imposition, notices of births, marriages and deaths must be authenticated by some respectable person in Melbourne’. During World Wars I and II, newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald introduced a ‘Roll of Honour’ to pay tribute to the fallen within the births, deaths and marriages col-

respect for the rights of others. It does not mention bias. Nor does the statement of principles of the Australian Press Council, which refers to accuracy, fairness and balance. The Code of Practice of the commercial television sector prefers ‘impartiality’, and the code for commercial radio prefers accuracy and fairness. All assert the need for a clear separation between news and opinion. In its editorial policies, the ABC also eschews ‘bias’ in favour of ‘impartiality’. In 2007, as part of the development of a process of editorial quality assurance, it isolated what it considered to be the essential elements that constituted impartiality. These elements were subsequently refined and distilled for its revised Editorial Policies published in 2011 as ‘a balance that follows the weight of evidence; fair treatment; open-mindedness; opportunities over time for principal relevant perspectives on matters of contention’. This is the most comprehensive attempt by an Australian media organisation to define the meaning of impartiality in a way that would make assessment possible using transparent methods. Indeed, the ABC developed and pilot-tested methods for doing so, and published the results on its website in 2007 and 2008. The concept of bias is thus more usefully thought of in terms of impartiality. Whatever term is used, in the second decade of the 21st century it remains a core value of Australia’s professional journalists to provide news content untainted by partisan interests. Their performance in doing so is better assessed against the qualities that make up impartiality than against the more elusive concept of bias. Their capacity to deliver on this core value is critical to public trust in the media. An analysis of public opinion polls spanning 45 years (1966–2011), carried out for the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation (the Finkelstein Inquiry) in 2011, showed that the ABC was consistently perceived to be the least biased media organisation in Australia, and also consistently the most trusted. It is also a legitimate criterion for assessing the media’s contribution to debate on major policy issues. In 2011, the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism analysed the coverage of climate change policy in 10 Australian newspapers over a six-month period that year. Central to that policy was the introduction of a carbon tax. Its headline finding was that negative coverage of the Australian government’s climate policy outweighed positive coverage by 73 per cent to 27 per cent. It concluded that ‘many Australians did not receive fair, accurate and impartial reporting in the public interest in relation to the carbon policy in 2011’. REFs: D. Muller, Journalism Ethics for the Digital Age (2014); S.J.A. Ward, Ethics and the Media (2011) DENIS MULLER

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blogging By the mid-2000s, several scholarly collections—including Laura Gurak et al.’s Into the Blogosphere (2004) and Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs’ Uses of Blogs (2006)—attempted to map these diverse genres of blogging, and to assess the role of blogs as components within the wider mediasphere. Likewise, dedicated blog indices and search engines such as Technorati began to index blog contents and provide up-todate statistics on the activity and comparative ranking of individual blogs. A disproportionate amount of attention has been paid to political blogs and their impact on national politics. US blogs have been implicated in a number of political scandals, and bloggers were officially accredited in the 2004 presidential elections. Politicians and journalists also increasingly created their own blogs in order to connect with constituents and readers. In Australia, too, much of the public discussion about blogging has been directed towards political blogs. Here, one of the earliest Australian political blogs was Webdiary, published by Sydney Morning Herald journalist Margo Kingston from 2000 to 2012. On her departure from Fairfax Media in 2005, Kingston helped re-establish Webdiary as a participatory journalism and news discussion community, supported by volunteer labour and occasional donations. Until 2012, when the site closed, a small contributor group took care of editorial, moderation and technical work. Founded before self-publishing became ubiquitous, Webdiary encouraged many users to publish for the first time, launching the media careers of writer/ commentators Antony Loewenstein and Tim Dunlop. Prominent columnists such as Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt have operated successful blogs, while several prominent independent political blogs also emerged during the early 2000s. Despite the early involvement of journalists in Australian political blogging, the relationship between bloggers and journalists has at times been fraught; this was especially true during the ‘blog wars’ around the 2007 federal election, when bloggers forcefully criticised what they saw as the partisan and counterfactual interpretation of opinion polls by mainstream media commentators, especially at the Australian. In turn, mainstream columnists called political bloggers ‘parasites’ and ‘armchair journalists’. Such animosity masks a considerable overlap between Australian political bloggers and the mainstream commentariat, however. Several previously independent bloggers have been employed (at least temporarily) as columnists on newspaper websites, such as Peter Brent and Tim Dunlop at the Australian, while others have become regular commentators on blog-style mainstream media commentary sites such as The Drum (ABC), The Punch (News Limited) and the National Times (Fairfax Media). Likewise, blog formats at least partly

umns. It was around this time that poetry was introduced into death notices, with grieving relatives and friends writing their own verse or borrowing from popular British literature. By the 1940s, there was an increase in the number of death notices placed for the same individual by different family members and friends. Since then, placing a death notice in a newspaper as a tribute to a family member, friend or colleague has become an important ritualistic practice. The column has endured a bumpy shift into the digital news space, however: while it remains a fixture in the print edition of many newspapers, it can be difficult to locate in some online editions. The importance of births, deaths and marriage notices to Australian newspapers has received little interest from journalism and media scholars, largely because it tends to be delegitimised by the journalistic field as a form of advertising rather than news. REF: K. Hess, ‘Making a Connection: Reconceptualising Australia’s Small Commercial Newspapers and Their Relationship to Social Capital’ (PhD thesis, 2014). KRISTY HESS

B LA C K A N D W H I T E AR T IST S ’ C L U B see Australian

Cartoonists’ Association

BL OGGI NG Weblogs, or blogs, constitute a form and genre of online publishing that emerged in the mid1990s as a logical consequence of the confluence of personal and professional home pages and new web publishing technologies. To overcome technological limitations, where news updates had to be manually inserted by editing the underlying HTML code, the early content-management systems in the second half of the 1990s built on server-side database technology to dynamically generate web pages; this enabled more convenient and more frequent content updates. Weblogs utilised such technologies to provide an up-to-date news feed, presenting individual news items in reverse chronological order. Most blogging platforms provide commenting functions that enable readers to respond to and discuss individual blog posts. Early blogs were operated by online technologists, but the practice was popularised with the advent of dedicated blog-hosting services such as LiveJournal and Blogger in 1999. These sites, now seen as precursors of Web 2.0, provided web-based interfaces for creating and operating blogs that required minimal technical knowledge, making the reading and writing of blogs accessible to a mass audience. Blogging approaches, practices and styles rapidly diversified as a result; they now range from diary-style personal blogs through a wide spectrum of special interests at the personal and professional level to those covering news and politics.

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base, many of whom listened to Blue Hills their entire adult lives. She published several novels from the serials, and was appointed MBE in 1967 for her services to radio broadcasting and an OBE in 1977 for her services to the arts.

inspire online-only news and commentary publications such as On Line Opinion, Crikey, New Matilda and The Conversation. Indeed, the online versions of many regular newspaper columns are now frequently described as ‘blogs’ on the newspaper websites. Claims about the ‘death of blogging’ in the early 2010s are exaggerated. What has really taken place is a normalisation of blogging formats and practices, to a point where the ubiquity of blog-style functionality has made a discussion of blogs as blogs increasingly difficult. The reverse-chronological news updates logic of blogging has been embedded as a core feature into social networking sites such as Facebook, real-time microblogs such as Twitter and multimedia sharing platforms such as Tumblr—a personal profile on Facebook, for example, essentially is a blog, even if the term is rarely used. What such more recent platforms do is to extend blogging practices by embedding them into a wider socio-technological framework, enhanced by recent web technologies.

REF: Blue Hills Revisited (1988). MICHELLE ARROW

B O LIN G , (ELIZAB ETH ) D U LC IE (1936– ) Magazine editor and media executive, Dulcie Boling (née Leatham), who was born in Kyabram, Victoria, began her journalistic career as a cadet on the Melbourne Herald. In 1977, only a few years after joining New Idea, she was appointed editor-in-chief and began transforming the moribund 75-year-old women’s magazine into the biggest selling weekly, per capita, in the world. Adding gossip and romance to the staples of recipes and knitting, she determined the direction of Australia’s women’s magazine market for the next three decades, according to Margaret Simons. New Idea’s circulation increased from about 400,000 to over one million, making the magazine’s publisher Southdown Press one of the great cash flow companies of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited. As chairman and CEO of Southdown Press from 1982 and executive chairman in 1992–93, Boling controlled many magazines, including TV Week, making the Logie Awards the defining annual event of Australian television. Boling’s epic battle to win the women’s magazine circulation war against Nene King, her former employee and editor of the rival Woman’s Day, was portrayed in the mini-series Paper Giants: Magazine Wars (2013). Chequebook journalism played a major role in the efforts of both to gain scoops. Boling’s most spectacular success was her world scoop in January 1993 when New Idea published the transcript of an illegally taped phone conversation between Prince Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, one of the most sensational and damaging British royal stories of the 20th century. Dulcie Boling was a trailblazer among women journalists in gaining powerful media directorships. As well as her board responsibilities at Southdown Press, in 1987 she was appointed a director of News Limited. When Murdoch siphoned off his Australian magazines into a new company, Pacific Magazines and Printing, in 1991, Boling was made a founding director. In 1993, Murdoch appointed her to a seat representing News Limited on the Seven Network board. After Kerry Stokes became a major shareholder in the Seven Network in the late 1990s, Boling stayed on as an independent director. Often the only female on a board, Boling claimed she was never a ‘token woman’. At the 2012 Melbourne Press Club’s Quills awards ceremony, Boling was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award for sustained

REF: J. Walker Rettberg, Blogging (2008). AXEL BRUNS

B L U E HI LL S The longest-running serial on Australian radio and an Australian institution, Blue Hills was broadcast by the ABC from 1949 to 1976. Written by Sydney playwright Gwen Meredith (1907–2006), Blue Hills was the sequel to The Lawsons (1944–49), an immensely popular drama created by the ABC’s Rural Department. Meredith was originally commissioned to write a serial for a new ABC program, The Country Hour. The serial was intended to serve as a vehicle to convince farmers to modernise their methods and grow new crops. A drama of a farming family during wartime, The Lawsons debuted on 23 February 1944. Episodes ran for 15 minutes every weekday, and Meredith wrote them all. By 1949, and 1299 episodes later, Gwen had exhausted the dramatic possibilities of her Lawsons characters, so she created a new serial with a more portable framework, also broadcast as part of The Country Hour. Blue Hills was named, she said, because ‘everywhere you go in Australia there are blue hills in the background’. Blue Hills began immediately after The Lawsons ended. Meredith still grounded the serial in relationships and family life, but she peppered the drama with ‘social issues’—for example, alcoholism and migration. In total, Meredith created 5795 episodes of Blue Hills. At its heart, Blue Hills was a drama of character rather than plot, and Meredith was masterful in her creation of a large family of believable, warm characters. She depicted the drama of middle-class life with a distinctively Australian accent. Blue Hills earned Meredith the fierce loyalty and devotion of a huge fan 68

bonython family Network, effectively constituted a bribe. It also found Bond guilty of threatening to have his television staff dig up damaging material about a leading investment manager critical of Bond Corporation’s selective takeover of cashed-up miner Bell Resources. Additionally, Bond was found guilty in three fraud and deception cases. However, two of these convictions were overturned and he served less than four years in prison (1996–2000) after protracted legal wrangling and another successful High Court appeal.

excellence as editor and industry leader by actress Rachel Griffiths, who portrayed her in Paper Giants. Her portrayal included Boling’s well-remembered and defining ‘ice maiden stare’. REFs: Speeches by Dulcie Boling, Rachel Griffiths and Michael Rowland, Melbourne Press Club, 15 March 2013; M. Simons, Kerry Stokes (2013). PATRICIA CLARKE

BOND, AL AN (1938– ) In 1983, Alan Bond turned his attention to the media after more than two decades of controversial property, mining and industrial deals, mainly in Perth. Buoyed by his recent America’s Cup win, Bond’s public flagship, Bond Corporation, purchased Perth television station STW9 for $40 million and two years later outlaid $65 million for QTQ9 Brisbane. In January 1987, following the relaxation of cross-media ownership laws, Bond bought TCN9 Sydney and GTV9 Melbourne from Kerry Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings for $1.05 billion, ensuring dominance of Australia’s commercial television market, but further burdening his companies with unsustainable debt. His $800 million cash payment prompted Packer to remark that you ‘only get one Alan Bond in a lifetime’. Bond Media, the company floated to finance the acquisition, also owned several regional television stations, nine radio stations and Australia’s only satellite broadcaster, Sky Channel. In 1987, Bond also took a 22.5 per cent stake in the fledgling British satellite consortium British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB). While visionary, the BSB venture ultimately failed, costing Bond Corporation shareholders over $300 million. Bond also purchased Hong Kong television station HKTVB for $190 million through Bond Corporation International Ltd. Newspapers, including the West Australian, were added in 1988. He also briefly owned Perth television station TVW7, through Bond Corporation’s controlling interest in Robert Holmes à Court’s Bell Group. By 1989, Bond Corporation and its subsidiaries were on the brink of collapse and Bond stood down as head of Bond Corporation. The Nine Network was sold back to Consolidated Press Holdings in 1990 for less than a quarter of the original purchase price. Nevertheless, Bond proved adept at both quarantining much of his personal wealth from aggrieved creditors and deflecting serious corporate and criminal charges. He managed to have the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s (ABT) unprecedented 1989 decision to declare him unfit to hold a television licence overturned on a technicality after a High Court appeal. The ABT had decided that a $400,000 defamation payment to Queensland Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, revealed by Bond in a compromising interview with Jana Wendt on his Nine

REF: P. Barry, The Rise and Fall of Alan Bond (1990). JENNIFER KITCHENER

B O N YTH O N FAM ILY The Bonython family, civic minded, philanthropic and Methodist—thanks to an early association with John Wesley—took great pride in its Cornish ancestry. Eric Glenie Bonython self-published a book tracing the family’s origins in Cornwall to 1277. The repossession of the family estates was a motivating but unrealised force in the long life of the Hon. Sir John Langdon Bonython KCMG (1848–1939), one of the third of the six generations who settled in South Australia and the forceful editor/owner of the Adelaide Advertiser. He arrived in South Australia with his parents, George and Annie, in 1854, aged six; his grandfather, Thomas, and his wife, Ann Harris, had arrived in 1840. Thomas farmed at Mt Barker. George, who had been born in Canada, pursued a thriving building trade in Adelaide. John Langdon joined the Advertiser in 1864. Fifteen years later, he was made a partner; he became the sole owner in 1893. The business traded as J.L. Bonython & Co. and remained his until 1929, when it was sold to Advertiser Newspapers Ltd. His early association with radical men like South Australian premier Charles Cameron Kingston—to whom he was very loyal—and Sir John Cockburn—with whom he conducted a correspondence of over 30 years—marked his early political life as a radical liberal. Bonython was the supporter of reforms associated with the Labor Party, although he opposed the establishment of a Labor Party paper, which became known as the Herald, in 1932. Bonython’s relations with his own journalists soured in 1917, and by 1925 his long support of Labor men—both state and federal—had come to an end. He served in the first two Commonwealth parliaments as an Independent Liberal. He did not give Federation much support initially, and continued to champion state rights and bemoan big government spending. After 1924, he became more conservative. The newspaper and speculation in mining shares made him a fortune. His contribution, and that of his whole family, to South Australia 69

book reviewing while Stuart Sayers served as literary editor of the Age from 1968 until the 1980s. He also contributed the weekly ‘Writers and Readers’ column. Each editor was happy to use regular reviewers and to seek out untried talent. The popular press also played a role in promoting ‘good’, or ‘good value’, reading. The Australian Women’s Weekly introduced a free full-length liftout novel in 1934, and discussed Australia’s large crop of contemporary women writers. One of the magazine’s earliest literary critics, W.S. Howard, was to host Book Parade, sponsored by Angus & Robertson, on the Macquarie Network in the 1950s. Many other book programs, often hosted by local bookshops, were heard on metropolitan and regional commercial radio stations across Australia, and writers such as Miles Franklin gave talks on the ABC and commercial stations. As well as the literary editors on newspapers, the founding and long-serving editors of the magazines Meanjin and Overland—respectively Clem Christesen and Stephen Murray-Smith— played an important role. Book reviews of varying lengths have long been a staple of both magazines. That has also been the case with Australian Literary Studies, founded by poet and academic James McAuley under the editorship of Laurie Hergenhan at the University of Tasmania in 1963 before transferring to the University of Queensland in the 1970s. The increasing professionalisation of journalism from around the 1960s also contributed to the decline of opportunities for freelancers, especially for those who had ranged across a number of fields. In colonial Australia, Marcus Clarke was the most complete man of letters— novelist, short story writer, playwright, editor, but also journalist, essayist, art critic, book reviewer (French novels a specialty) and Charles Dickens’s obituarist. James Smith was a leader writer, drama, art and literary critic between 1854 and 1910, working in Melbourne at both the Age and the Argus, editing the Australasian and founding the periodical Victorian Review (1879–86). (Sir) Walter Murdoch was perhaps the most prolific and influential essayist (the title that he preferred) cum literary journalist in Australia from 1905, when his column ‘Books and Men’ began in the Argus. It ran with an interruption for World War I until 1938. Murdoch was one of the first literary journalists to diversify into the medium of radio, broadcasting from the 1930s until the 1960s. A collection of his work, On Rabbits, Morality, etc: Selected Writing of Walter Murdoch, edited by Imre Salusinszky, was published in 2011. Two of Murdoch’s contemporaries, Vance and Nettie Palmer, also adapted quickly to radio in addition to their decades of literary journalism. Some of Nettie’s extended pieces on Australian writers appeared between 1927 and 1933 in the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail and the Brisbane Courier. Her personal column,

is legendary. He presided over the School of Mines for 50 years and served on the councils of Roseworthy Agricultural College and the University of Adelaide. At the federal level, he served on the Commonwealth Literary Fund and acted as trustee and commissioner of the Soldiers Repatriation Fund and the Old Age Pensions Commission. A Chair of Law, the Bonython Hall and the marbled parliament were among a number of gifts bestowed by him. His eldest son, Sir John Lavington Bonython (1875–1960), edited the Saturday Express and, from 1929 to 1960, served as a director of Advertiser Newspapers. He became Lord Mayor of Adelaide (1928–30). His second wife, Constance Jean Warren, a Downer, wrote a light-hearted autobiography, I’m No Lady (1981). John Bonython AO (1905–92), the only son of Sir John Lavington Bonython’s first marriage to Ada Bray, daughter of a premier, was educated at the University of Cambridge and chaired Advertiser Newspapers in the 1970s, as well as becoming a founding director of Santos Ltd. REFs: E.G. Bonython, The Bonython Family (1966); E.J. Prest, Sir John Langdon Bonython (2011). E.J. PREST

B O O K RE V I EW I NG Whether in Britain or in Australia, book reviewing has always been a staple not only of freelance journalists, but of novelists and poets needing to supplement their incomes. Elizabeth Webby points out that in the colonial period in Australia, ‘few authors were able to make a living from [creative] writing and these few depended heavily on journalism’. Book reviewing was a significant part of that work. Among the prime enablers of reviewing and literary journalism are the literary editors of newspapers and magazines. Often they have had literary careers of their own, as columnists and controversialists as well as commissioners of reviews and articles. Before he became editor (1896–1906) of the Red Page of the Bulletin, A.G. Stephens was a literary essayist and reviewer. In the early 1890s, his column in the Boomerang, ‘The Magazine Rifler’, surveyed the latest numbers of English and American journals. ‘The Red Page’—devoted to both local and international literature—began in October 1896 and developed from the ‘Books of the Day’ and ‘Book Exchange’ columns. One of Stephens’ successors—from 1940–61—was the poet and dramatist Douglas Stewart. Often the influence of these editors was increased by the longevity of their tenure. Margaret Jones was literary editor at the Sydney Morning Herald for most of the 1970s and Patricia Rolfe at the Bulletin in the 1970s and 1980s; poet David Rowbotham was literary and theatre critic of the Brisbane Courier-Mail from 1969–79 and its literary editor from 1980–87; 70

boyer, sir richard james fildes (1891–1961) programs—notably The Book Show (SBS, 1986–97) and The Book Club (hosted by Jennifer Byrne, ABC, 2006– )—have been confined to public service broadcasters. A perception of the need for lengthier and more reflective book reviews led to the creation early in 2013 of the online Sydney Review of Books (sydneyreviewofbooks.com), which is modelled on two print magazines, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. Its online format gives its writers the luxury of expansive 2000/3000–word articles, and may indicate a likely direction for the future of book reviewing in Australia.

‘A Reader’s Notebook’, appeared in All About Books from 1928–38. Both Nettie and Vance Palmer offered numerous lectures in the Commonwealth Literary Fund series. Delivered at universities and provincial centres, the scheme of lectures ran from 1940 until 1964, and was an important, public source of book talk around Australia. Such literary journalism, whether first published in newspapers and magazines or delivered as lectures, furnished important works of cultural and literary criticism. Vance Palmer’s The Legend of the Nineties (1954) and A.A. Phillips’ The Australian Tradition (1958) were among these. Significantly, as with a number of books of Australian history written in the first half of the 20th century, they were produced from outside universities. One of the few current, non-academic literary journalists and book reviewers of the same breadth is Peter Craven, who writes about literature, theatre and cinema. Michael Wilding has asserted that ‘one of the advantages of living in Australia for a serious writer was that freelance journalism paid so badly that it was not much of a temptation’. It should be added that the temptation has waned further because the number of print avenues for such journalism as well as for book reviewing has dwindled notably over the past two decades. That period has seen the demise of the Age Monthly Review and the Australian Literary Review (each of which encouraged lengthy critical appraisals of recent books), the Bulletin (so crucial to the early history of book reviewing in Australia), the (broadsheet) Melbourne Herald, the National Times and Nation Review. In addition, literary features and book talk were once a feature of such more populist, but also defunct, magazines as the Australasian Post, Man, Pix and Walkabout. Financial pressures have meant that since early 2013, the Saturday editions of Fairfax Media’s the Age, the Canberra Times and the Sydney Morning Herald now share many book reviews. This reduces both the opportunities for book reviewers and the range of opinions about the books. Short reviews of books are now more common in the weekend literary pages. Moreover, the length of longer reviews has also been reduced. The Australian Book Review has had two incarnations. The first was published in Adelaide from 1961 to 1974. The second began in 1978 and has continued to the present with support from the Literature Board of the Australia Council as well as private and corporate donations. In line with its brief, the Australian Book Review covers more Australian titles than any other publication. Allan Ashbolt livened up the discussion of books on ABC Radio in the 1970s with a new program, Books and Ideas, arranged and presented by young producers. The Book Show (2006–12), heard daily on Radio National and hosted by Ramona Koval, consolidated ABC Radio’s book programs. On television, book

REF: W.H. Wilde, J. Hooton and B. Andrews (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1994). PETER PIERCE

B O YER , SIR R IC H AR D JAM ES FILD ES (1891–1961) The longest-serving chairman of the ABC was born at Taree, New South Wales. Graduating from the University of Sydney in 1913, Boyer enlisted in the AIF in 1915. Gassed and wounded at Passchendaele, he was invalided home in 1918 and became a successful grazier in Queensland before returning to Sydney in the late 1930s. Appointed a Commissioner with the ABC in 1940, Boyer led two Australian delegations to Institute of Pacific Relations conferences in north America in 1942 and 1945. He became chairman of the ABC when the incumbent, W.J. Cleary, resigned in March 1945 following political interference by the Curtin Labor government and tensions with ABC general manager (Sir) Charles Moses. Boyer secured a promise of independence for the ABC from Curtin, and established a workable—though sometimes volatile—relationship with Moses. However, they were both keen to promote the ABC’s cultural role in the community. Between 1945 and 1950, ABC symphony orchestras were set up in each state capital. In January 1946, a ‘Radio in Education’ conference foreshadowed many of the educational uses to which ABC media could be put. Despite Boyer’s misgivings about cost, the federal government imposed further responsibilities on the ABC: the provision of an independent news service in 1946 and a monopoly of Frequency Modulation (FM) broadcasting in 1948. That year, the ABC was granted funding from consolidated revenue provided representatives of the Postmaster-General’s Department and the Treasury were added to the Commission. However, Boyer managed to retain the ABC’s power over political broadcasts, and in 1956 ensured the bureaucrats were removed from the Commission and replaced by community representatives. Political interference proved harder to counter. Although Prime Minister Ben Chifley was supportive of the ABC’s independence, 71

bray, theodor charles (1905–2000) other front-benchers interfered. In the Cold War climate of the later 1940s and early 1950s, even mildly radical ABC commentators, such as Professor C.P. Fitzgerald and Dr Peter Russo, were attacked for their opinions. Some wanted to ban even factual reports about the Communist Party. Boyer’s belief in an even-handed presentation of all political views drew fire, but he was reappointed chairman in 1949. He served two further four-year terms under the Menzies Coalition government. In 1950, the management of Radio Australia was restored to the ABC, and Boyer fostered an Asian emphasis for the service. When television was introduced in 1956, he ensured that the ABC provided state-owned services. He saw the ABC’s role as ‘primarily an informative and educational force’ belonging to ‘those areas of social activity which do not have to sell their goods in the open market’. He was the driving force behind the University of the Air program. But radio was not neglected, and in 1959 he persuaded the ABC to initiate an annual series of lectures by an eminent scholar on the model of the BBC’s Reith Lectures—after 1961, known as the Boyer Lectures. In 1960, the ABC joined with its British and Canadian counterparts and with a US producer to form Intertel, to produce features promoting knowledge of international affairs. Australia was responsible for a program entitled Living with a Giant, about US–Canada relations, but the Australian government refused funding. A now ailing Boyer was distressed at this revival of political interference. He was contemplating resignation when he died on 5 June 1961. A liberal with a strong belief in liberty of conscience, freedom from censorship, and education, Boyer significantly influenced the ethos of the ABC, but his pragmatism in operating within the system could not always avert the ongoing threat of political pressures.

of US servicemen seeking to halt the Japanese advance. In later years, Bray said he had found that the demands of being an editor in wartime far exceeded those in peacetime: ‘You got very little relief from the job but you were sitting in a position where you had tremendous responsibility because you were given information by the authorities for guidance and in the greatest confidence so that your presentation and interpretation of the news was not too far astray from the truth.’ He had to publish verbatim the communiqués issued by General Douglas MacArthur, the US commander of the Allied forces in the South-West Pacific, even though they contained ‘a degree of exaggeration … that would only be believed by those who read them every day and were briefed with the Australian background one hour later’. If there was a very high degree of exaggeration, Bray tended to treat the communiqué ‘more quietly’. Bray’s role was expanded to editor-in-chief of the Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail in 1954. He insisted on maintaining high editorial standards, and travelled widely, attending many international press meetings. When he resigned this role in 1968, the circulation of the Courier-Mail had risen from 90,000 to 250,000 during his 26 years as editor; over the same period, the Sunday Mail’s circulation rose from 90,000 to 340,000. Bray served as joint managing director of Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd until 1970. He was the driving force behind the establishment of Griffith University in Brisbane, and served as its first chancellor (1975–85). Bray was knighted in 1975 for his services to tertiary education.

REFs: G.C. Bolton, Dick Boyer (1967); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983). GEOFFREY BOLTON

B R O AD B AN D The term ‘broadband’ has had different meanings. It originally referred to the radiation of electromagnetic energy across a broad, continuous band of frequencies where multiple independent signals are carried on discrete channels within the total bandwidth. This contrasts with ‘narrowband’, where the signal occupies almost the whole transmission channel. Early cable telegraph and telephone systems were narrowband, carrying just one signal, or one in each direction. The term ‘broadband’ was used freely to describe successive new generations of cable and later wireless technology that allowed multiple signals to be carried. In the mid-1960s, a US government policy document argued that ‘the development of transistorised, broadband cables should be aggressively pushed in the US as well as abroad’. In Australia, the Overseas Telecommunications Commission’s 1974 annual report said, ‘submarine cables continue to be economically competitive with

REFs: M. Pratt, interview with T. Bray, 1971 (NLA); T. Bray, ‘View from Top Chair’, Courier-Mail, 50th anniversary souvenir, August 1983. ROD KIRKPATRICK

B R AY, T HEODOR CHARLES (1905–2000) The son of a South Australian market gardener, Theodor Bray was pulling page proofs for the Adelaide Register at the age of 15. He served only one year of a printing apprenticeship before becoming a Register telephone attendant then, around 1921, a cadet journalist. His journalistic work ranged widely, including covering a Royal tour, ‘a great deal of parliamentary reporting’ and a term as secretary to the editor—a role that included assisting with leader writing. Bray joined Melbourne’s Argus as a sub-editor in 1929 and was chief sub-editor when he left in 1937 to join the Courier-Mail in Brisbane as chief sub-editor. Bray became editor in 1942 only months before Brisbane became the base for thousands 72

broadcasting for remote aboriginal communities scheme its opposition and took to the 2013 election a cut-down version, promising less impressive download and upload data rates, but delivering the improvements more quickly and cheaply. While the policy debate about fixed line broadband raged, Australians increasingly took up mobile broadband services. At the end of 2008, one-fifth of broadband subscribers were mobile subscribers. That grew to more than half in June 2013. By then, Australia’s fixed broadband penetration of 25.6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants was again just behind the OECD average, but in mobile broadband penetration, at 114.0 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, Australia led the 34 OECD countries.

satellite for the provision of broadband international capacity’, particularly on heavily trafficked routes. A related term, ‘wideband’, also has different meanings in different contexts. In the late 1990s, broadband became the term applied to a new form of internet access service that progressively overtook ‘dial-up’ access. Broadband services offered higher data rates than dial-up and were ‘always on’. The higher data rates improved users’ experience when accessing content like music, images and video. Statistics about broadband take-up were first published by the OECD in the early 2000s. It defined broadband as a service offering download data rates greater than 256 kilobit per second, although some member countries chose different measures. In the late 1980s, the International Telecommunications Union’s standard-setting agency had specified that a ‘broadband service’ required channels supporting data rates above 1.5 or 2 megabit per second. The Australian Bureau of Statistics effectively adopts the OECD definition: ‘an “always on” internet connection with an access data rate of 256 kilobit per second or higher’. The scale and speed of investment in broadband infrastructure became an important test of newly liberalised telecommunications markets in the 2000s. Australia had just 1.3 broadband subscribers per 100 people in June 2002—about one-third of the OECD average and well behind market leaders Korea (20.3) and Canada (10.3). In 2004, the OECD Council called on its members to assist the expansion of broadband markets, promote efficient and innovative supply arrangements, and encourage effective use of broadband services. Australia crept ahead of the OECD average (13.6 to 13.4) the following year. At the 2007 election, the Labor opposition’s commitment to upgrade much of the country’s fixed line access network became an important difference between the major political parties. In office, Labor found Telstra reluctant to cooperate, and announced a much bigger plan for a National Broadband Network (NBN) in 2009. Initially costed at around $43 billion, this would be a wholesale-only network, built and operated by a new state-owned enterprise. An optical fibre connection would be installed to more than 90 per cent of Australian households and business premises, and a terrestrial wireless or satellite service to the rest. The same year, the US Federal Communications Commission declared broadband to be ‘the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century … Until recently, not having broadband was an inconvenience. Now, broadband is essential to opportunity and citizenship.’ Labor’s fibre-to-the-premises NBN was a decisive factor convincing some independent MPs to support a minority Labor government after the 2010 election. While the Coalition strongly criticised Labor’s policy, it eventually modified

REF: P. Fletcher, Wired Brown Land? (2009). JOCK GIVEN

B R O AD C ASTIN G FO R R EM O TE AB O R IG IN AL C O M M U N ITIES SC H EM E Indigenous use of video can be traced back to a 1975 Whitlam Labor government initiative that made video equipment available in urban and remote video access centres. But a major impetus for community control of Indigenous television in Australia came from experiments with local video at two Central Australian Aboriginal communities—Yuendumu, 300 kilometres north-west, and Ernabella (or Pukutja), 400 kilometres south, of Alice Springs—in the early 1980s. In 1983, American anthropologist Eric Michaels, working with TAFE assistant Kurt Japanangka Granites, began a study of Aboriginal television production at Yuendumu. School teacher Rex Guthrie supported a similar experiment at Ernabella the following year. This ‘Aboriginal invention of television’, as Michaels’ landmark report on the experience is called, paved the way for the first recognition by the Australian government of the need for Indigenous people’s control of their own media production, illustrating the strength of kinship ties and their relevance to the ownership of knowledge and its dissemination in various forms. The Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS) was announced in 1987 as a means of delivering satellite radio and television to 28,000 remote Aboriginal Australians. It was a direct result of Aboriginal submissions to two 1984 inquiries into the broadcasting needs of remote communities: Satellite Program Services and Out of the Silent Land. Around 80 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities received an equipment package that included a satellite dish, an FM radio aerial, an audio cassette recorder, two video cassette recorders and a video camera. This enabled communities to receive one of three available ABC radio services (national, regional and FM) and the only available ABC television service. Remote Commercial Television Service

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broadcasting regulation vision service, Indigenous Community Television (ICTV), in 2001. However, a federal government policy decision switched off ICTV to make way for the new National Indigenous Television Service in 2007. ICTV re-launched as both a streaming website called Indigitube and via the Westlink satellite service on Channel 23 in 2009.

programs were also available via satellite, with communities deciding which channels to accept. BRACS also provided basic facilities for communities to produce and broadcast their own community radio and television programs, including those in their own languages. Control of programming was at the point of entry of the signal from the satellite, enabling communities to switch it off and insert programs of their choice. Some Indigenous broadcasting groups in North Queensland and the Torres Strait used BRACS in its early stages to videotape and ‘broadcast’ local sporting activities and to inform their communities of important local cultural events such as funerals. The Department of Aboriginal Affairs argued that it allowed for culturally offensive material to be managed by individual communities. The scheme has been criticised on a number of counts. Virtually all communities involved claimed there was little or no consultation before equipment was installed. Some communities already had some production equipment and would have preferred to have chosen additional gear rather than having existing equipment duplicated. Another key complaint was that there was little funding for training and maintenance of the equipment in the critical early years of operation. A belated federally funded training program for community BRACS operators up until the early 1990s had mixed success, which spurred Remote Indigenous Media Organisations (RIMOS) to develop their own training regimes. There are now several established training centres for remote Indigenous broadcasters, primarily in the Northern Territory and Queensland. Most Indigenous media organisations argue that the sector has never been funded at levels that meet community communication needs and expectations, with few options for a career path in Indigenous broadcasting. Under BRACS, each community was encouraged to form a community media association to control and administer its own facilities. The scheme went part of the way towards giving communities control over the type of television and radio they could experience, but a lack of training, the powerful attraction of mainstream programming and the later arrival of pay television in some remote communities limited its potential. Some have argued that BRACS should have been seen as an experiment and, if successful, could have become an important cultural development tool. Indeed, its later incarnations have arguably produced some of the most innovative television in the country, particularly through the efforts of several active RIMS. The Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services scheme became the latest incarnation of BRACS in 2005 under a revised Indigenous Broadcasting Program. For all its faults, BRACS encouraged the development of these associations, which ultimately produced Australia’s first remote Indigenous tele-

REFs: M. Meadows, ‘The Way People Want to Talk: Indigenous Media Production in Australia and Canada’, MIA, 73 (1994); H. Molnar and M. Meadows, Songlines to Satellites (2001). MICHAEL MEADOWS

B R O AD C ASTIN G R EG U LATIO N Both generally and on a global basis, there are a limited number of ways in which to regulate either television or radio broadcasting. With regard to content, there is scope to define the genres of programming—for example, there may be an obligation imposed to deliver certain quotas of drama and children’s programming, or obligations relating to the timing and availability of types of programming. This might mean that programs of certain censorship classifications must be shown after a certain time. There may also be restrictions on the country in which the programming is made, in the form of domestic content rules. Many jurisdictions restrict the ownership and control of broadcasters in terms of both nationality and ownership of other media interests. Limiting the number of participants (including by technology) can also restrict the nature of the market. In addition, there may be measures restricting entry by new firms or exit by incumbents. Having allocated spectrum as an input to the broadcasters’ operations, there may also be regulations as to the reach and availability of services, including ensuring that consumers can afford to enjoy the broadcasters’ programming. The result is that there are only six major regulatory issues associated with broadcasting in any specific geographic area: number of licences; audience reach; foreign control; cross-media control; domestic content requirements; and censorship. Australia adopts elements of each of these regulatory options, and imposes them under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. This legislation establishes the general licence conditions for broadcasting services. The regulation of broadcasting is different from the regulation of other networked industries in that broadcasting can be an expression of both culture generally and specifically national or regional culture. Australian television programs have an appeal to Australians—something that does not have a parallel in sectors such as electricity or telecommunications. The effect of this distinction is that broadcasting regulation is driven by at least two social policy concerns: pluralism, which in broadcasting can mean the delivery of fair, balanced and unbiased representation of a wide range of political opinions

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broadcasting regulation There are two limits to cross-media control. The first allows cross-media transactions such as takeovers to proceed, subject to a minimum number of commercial media groups remaining in the relevant market. The minimum number is five in mainland state capitals and four in regional markets. As a result, the restriction has been called the four/five rule. In addition, there is a restriction known as the ‘two out of three’ rule, which applies in radio licence areas. This prevents anyone from owning more than two out of: a commercial television licensee; a commercial radio licensee; or a newspaper in a radio licence area. These limitations do not take into account other media such as subscription television or internet-based services. Despite these limitations, the Australia media sector is regarded as highly concentrated compared with comparable liberal democracies. This limitation of the current regime was a significant driver behind the recommendations of the Convergence Review that were made in April 2012. The Labor government did not adopt these recommendations in its March 2013 response. There are separate Australian content requirements for commercial television and commercial radio. In the case of television, the requirements are set out in the Australian Content Standard and the Australian Content in Advertising Standard, both of which are made by the ACMA. In the case of radio, the requirement for new Australian music is determined by the genre of the radio channel and ranges between 5 and 25 per cent. This requirement is set out in the ACMA-approved Code of Practice 4, entitled ‘Australian Music’ and made by Commercial Radio Australia. Pay television has an obligation to spend 10 per cent of its drama production costs on Australian drama. The final area of regulation, that of censorship, is regulated by Codes of Practice adopted by commercial and subscription broadcasters, and approved by the ACMA. The classification of programming in these codes is sometimes different from that used by Australian classification. However, a review by the Australian Law Review Commission tabled in Parliament in March 2012 recommended harmonisation of the diverse classification schemes used in Australia. If these recommendations are accepted, a single round of classification will cover both theatrical release and broadcast. Despite the enforcement of the codes by the ACMA, there are regular breaches in commercial radio by talkback and breakfast presenters.

and views; and cultural protection, which is the widely practised use of barriers in trade in services to protect the integrity of domestic culture on a national basis. Censorship and universal availability of services are additional social policy concerns. In practice, plurality requirements drive all the regulatory levers except censorship, and cultural protection drives foreign control and domestic content. The number of commercial broadcasting licences in any geographic area in Australia is limited by availability of spectrum and decisions by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA). Commercial broadcasting licences for radio and television are issued with an apparatus licence, permitting use of the relevant spectrum. The apparatus licence is issued under the Radiocommunications Act 1992. Subscription broadcasting licences have no spectrum use rights stapled to them. There are three commercial television licences in any licence area (defined by geographic boundaries). The number of commercial radio licences will be limited by the spectrum available in high population areas and by commercial viability (determined by the ACMA) in other areas. The number of commercial television networks is fixed at three by federal government decision. The ABC and SBS, designated as national services, also provide television and radio. In the mainland state capital cities, and other areas where digital radio has been deployed, the national and commercial broadcasters with analogue radio services are also able to provide digital services. The number of community television broadcasters is limited to one, and the number of community radio broadcasters is limited by spectrum. The reach of a licensee is limited in three ways. The first relates only to commercial television, and requires that no person may control licensees that serve more than 75 per cent of the population of Australia. The effect of this is that the commercial networks provide services to a significant proportion of the population and then use regional affiliates to reach the balance. In 2013, a Parliamentary Committee recommended that this ‘reach rule’ be removed. The second and third limitations are interrelated. The power, location and antenna type associated with a broadcaster’s transmitter determine the technical limitations of coverage. As a practical matter, the ACMA-determined licence areas are designed with these technical limitations in mind. When services are delivered outside of the licence area, this is usually referred to a fortuitous reception. Since amendments to the regulatory framework in 2006, Australia has not had foreign ownership restrictions as part of its regulatory framework. The broadcasting sector is considered ‘sensitive’, and foreign acquisitions of broadcasting licensees are subject to recommendations of the Foreign Investment Review Board.

REFs: ALRC, Classification—Content Regulation and Convergent Media (2012); Convergence Review: Final Report (2012). ROB NICHOLLS

BROA DS HE E T S see newspaper formats and

design

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brown, sir harry percy (1878–1967) B U LLETIN The Bulletin was an illustrated weekly that became popular with a national readership in the lead-up to Federation and beyond. Founded by J.F. Archibald and John Haynes, this innovative and influential periodical ran from January 1880 until January 2008, with a string of editors and several different owners. Any full account of the weekly would cover the periods of its numerous editors—certainly up until the Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) era. These editors include: Archibald (1880, 1886–1903), W.H. Traill (1881–86), James Edmond (1903–15), S.H.  Prior (1915–33), John Webb (1933–48) and David Adams (1948–61). ACP acquired the magazine in 1960, and changed the format to the news magazine style. This resulted in a boost in circulation back to 1890s levels. A string of editors subsequently struggled to increase and maintain a viable readership during a period of rapid change in publishing, communications technology and corporate management. These ACP editors included Donald Horne, Peter Hastings, Peter Coleman, Trevor Kennedy, David Dale, James Hall, Lyndall Crisp, Gerald Stone, Max Walsh, Kathy Bail and Garry Linnell. The list of the Bulletin’s owners is also significant: Archibald and John Haynes (1880), Traill (1881–83), Archibald, Haynes and Traill (1883–86), Archibald and William McLeod (1887–1914), McLeod (1914–27) and the Prior family (1927–60). By common consent, the glory days of the Bulletin coincided with Archibald’s editorship and the run-up to Federation. Perhaps the most oft-cited quote about the magazine is Archibald’s pronouncement, ‘the Bulletin is a clever youth. It will become a dull old man’. Sylvia Lawson astutely characterises the magazine during this formative period as ‘the Great Print Circus’, presenting a lively and witty ensemble of subjects, forms, styles and voices. This eclectic, often contradictory but always energetic mix enabled it to boisterously address a broad, popular and heterogeneous audience, which it provocatively imagined as a fully independent national community. One of the more innovative facets of the magazine was the way in which it encouraged its readers to contribute as writers by telling their own stories of who they were and where they lived. In this way it anticipated the Web 2.0 phenomenon of engaging amateur as well as professional expertise wherever and whenever it might be found. The Bulletin, however, was neither narrow nor idiosyncratically specialised. Archibald’s weekly was interested in international trends as well as regional differences, and it canvassed issues that it thought pertinent to the social contracts required of a disparate nation. These included a republican Australia, one person/one vote, free secular education, criminal and penal reform, a united, protected, white Australia, and the abolition of titles of nobility and the private

B R O WN, S I R HARRY PERCY (1878–1967) Engineer, secretary and director-general of posts and telegraphs, H.P. Brown arrived in Australia as expert adviser to the Commonwealth government on telephone and telegraph management, on loan from the British Post Office, in January 1923. He became the permanent head of the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) in December 1923. For 16 years Brown was the instigator of a range of strategic planning decisions that modernised Australia’s telecommunications systems. He transformed the diffuse PMG, restructuring and centralising its functions and placing it on a foundation of sound engineering management. Believing that the telephone was the service that had ‘the most personal and intimate contact with the community’, Brown made it his top priority, dividing it into social and business activities. He standardised telephone and exchange equipment throughout the Commonwealth, and from 1925 accelerated the systematic introduction of automatic exchanges. He also pushed through ‘carrier wave’ technology of multi-channel trunk lines and linked the telephone to speed telegraphic traffic. New technology and a strong engineering culture were central. His concern to keep abreast of telecommunications inventions and developments overseas prompted the creation of a one-man research section under S.H. Witt in 1923 and the establishment of the PMG Research Laboratories in 1925. Brown also played an important role in the growth of wireless broadcasting between 1923 and 1928. He was influential in the adoption of the dual system of ‘A’ (national) and ‘B’ (commercial) stations under the revised Wireless Telegraphy Regulations of 1924, an idea that remained the basis for Australian radio and television broadcasting. From the outset, Brown attracted the attention of the press. Newspapers dubbed him ‘Horse-Power’ Brown or ‘Pooh-Bah’ after The Mikado’s ‘Lord High Everything Else’. He had a keen eye for public relations and was a pioneering publicist and propagandist. At the same time, his frequent travels to locations throughout Australia, his awareness of the diverse employees under his command and his simply expressed sense of institutional goals inspired the enthusiasm of subordinates. Through the 1930s, the PMG became one of Australia’s largest business undertakings and employers. Brown established rapport with nine ministers from all major political parties. Prime Minister Joseph Lyons knighted him for his services in 1938, but he was ousted from his post under (Sir) Robert  Menzies in late 1939 following a dispute over plans to transfer some regulatory powers to Sir Ernest Fisk. REF: A. Moyal, Clear Across Australia (1984). ANN MOYAL

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burchett, wilfred graham (1911–83) Mary Gilmore, Louis Esson and ‘John O’Brien’ wrote for the magazine; Prior added Kenneth Slessor, Norman Lindsay, and Frank and Nettie Palmer; Webb established the S.H. Prior Award for fiction, which ran from 1935–45, and recognised writers such as Miles Franklin, Kylie Tennant, Douglas Stewart, Gavin Casey and Eve Langley. The literary significance of the magazine enjoyed a second heyday in the 1940s and 1950s when Douglas Stewart took over as editor of the Red Page, publishing writers such as Judith Wright, David Campbell, Rosemary Dobson and Hal Porter. Although it continued to publish literary luminaries such as Frank Moorhouse, Thomas Keneally and Peter Carey to the end, after Stewart it was never again to be at the centre of Australia’s literary networks. Donald Horne famously removed the slogan ‘Australia for the White Man’ from the masthead in 1961. In 1962, the Bulletin went on sale in South-East Asia. Norman Lindsay’s memoir, Bohemians of the Bulletin (1965), was followed by The Bulletin Book (1966), a compilation of writings and art from the 1960s. Following Sir Frank Packer’s sale of the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs in 1972, the Bulletin became the only publication where he could express his political or other views until his death in 1974. Alan Reid continued as political correspondent until his retirement in 1985, and was succeeded by Laurie Oakes. Trevor Kennedy, editor from 1972–80, hired the best journalists and cartoonists in the market, ending his reign with circulation nearing 100,000. Content from Newsweek, the international news magazine, was added in 1984. The 1987 stockmarket crash diminished the Bulletin’s business readership. City readers vanished under the onslaught of free magazine inserts, including the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age’s Good Weekend. The Bulletin was relaunched with a greater business focus in 1999, but this was not enough to stem the tide. The internet helped to create an expectation of faster news cycles, at the expense of a magazine focused on reviewing events of the past week. The Bulletin’s 125th anniversary issue was published in 2005—but the year also saw the death of its patron, Kerry Packer, who had kept the magazine running despite it having lost money for years. In January 2008, CVC Asia Pacific, which had bought ACP the previous year, closed the Bulletin: its last audited circulation was 57,039.

ownership of land. The weekly was aggressively racist, misogynist, socialist and republican in the late 1880s and early 1890s. After Archibald’s tenure, it became progressively more conservative, with such formats and opinions this view persisting for over half a century, long after they failed to engage a significant national readership. The Bulletin of the 1890s was especially significant for a new generation of Australian writers and artists because it paid well, and upon receipt of every manuscript or illustration. In art and letters, it displayed a preference for new forms of realism that were compatible with the New Journalism, although its writers and writing remained eclectic. Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Louise Mack, Will Ogilvie, Breaker Morant and Christopher Brennan all contributed to the magazine’s glory days. Black and white artists Phil May, Livingston Hopkins, Lionel and Norman Lindsay, Ambrose and Will Dyson, David Low, D.H.  Souter, Alf Vincent, Frank Mahony and George Lambert contributed to a distinctive visual commentary on a wide range of subjects. The Bulletin may well have been the ‘Bushman’s Bible’, but it always built much more than a bush mythology. Literary realism and social satire targeted key social and political institutions: marriage, the church, the judiciary, politics and ‘society’. Art, journalism and literature were put to work as important instruments for the development and maintenance of a modern, egalitarian and democratic society. Blended together, they contributed to a vibrant mix of satire, news, gossip, illustration, sport and correspondence, and in this way the Bulletin became an irreverent, boisterous, argumentative and witty magazine. The Lone Hand (1907–21) was an illustrated monthly born of the Bulletin Publishing Company and modelled on the London Strand. Its four editors were Frank Fox (1907–09), A.H. Adams (1909–11), Bertram Stevens (1912–19) and Walter Jago (1919–21). The first issue was delayed by Archibald’s nervous breakdown, and he never edited the magazine. The name, however, was his preferred title for the Bulletin itself, and harks back to his formative experiences on the North Queensland goldfields in the 1870s. The lone hand was a solitary and enduring figure: masculine and independent, with a wry sense of the human condition. Though increasing competition saw it decline after the Great War, it participated in modern innovations such as celebrity columns and beauty contests, and from 1909 it pre-empted the Home and played an important early role in the reportage of beauty and fashion. The Bulletin declined in inspiration, circulation and influence after the Great War, though it continued—albeit in more modest forms—to provide space for succeeding generations of Australian writers. Under the editorship of James Edmond, writers such as C.J.  Dennis, (Dame)

REF: P. Rolfe, The Journalistic Javelin (1979). CHRISTOPHER LEE

B U R C H ETT, W ILFR ED G R AH AM (1911–83) Widely regarded as a communist propagandist and traitor, Wilfred Burchett was Australia’s most controversial journalist of the Cold War era. Born in Melbourne, he entered journalism in the late 1930s. Having travelled to Europe in 77

business and finance reporting government restored his passport in 1972. His final years were spent covering decolonisation struggles in southern Africa, the Cambodian genocide (1975–79) and the fragmentation of Sino-Vietnamese relations, and contesting hearsay allegations of KGB connections. Burchett wrote a two-volume autobiography, Passport (1969) and At the Barricades (1980). He died in Sofia, Bulgaria on 27 September 1983.

1937, where he witnessed Nazism’s anti-Jewish pogroms, he returned to Melbourne in 1939, publishing press accounts of his travels and warnings about Nazism. In 1941, Burchett travelled to New Caledonia, noting Japan’s growing influence in the Pacific, and by October he was covering the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). His reports filtered into the London Daily Express and he was appointed its Chungking correspondent. He covered the British retreat from Burma and wrote glowingly of General Orde Wingate’s Chindits. Wounded on Burma’s Arakan front in late 1942, Burchett was transferred to the Pacific theatre and reported on the fire-bombing of Japanese cities. His attitude changed in September 1945. Stealing into Hiroshima, decimated by the atomic bomb, he noted the ‘atomic plague’ afflicting the city. The experience prompted him to question the wisdom of a world dominated by unbridled American power. After the war, Burchett became the Express’s Berlin correspondent, but he grew critical of US foreign policy, while uncritically supporting Eastern Europe’s sovietisation. Resigning from the Express in 1949, he returned to Australia and campaigned against the Menzies Coalition government’s Communist Party Dissolution Bill. By early 1951, he was in China, praising the communist revolution, and in July crossed into North Korea to cover the peace talks for the French communist newspaper Ce Soir and the radical New York National Guardian. Burchett accused the US military of committing prison camp atrocities and waging bacteriological warfare. Branded a communist propagandist and traitor, he was refused an Australian passport. In late 1953, the Menzies government attempted to prosecute Burchett for treason, but the evidence was insufficient. In mid-1954, however, Robert Menzies permitted the US Far Eastern Command to wage a smear campaign against him. In 1957, Burchett was appointed the New York National Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, but by the 1960s his interests had shifted to Vietnam. He travelled extensively through South Vietnam’s communist-controlled areas, concluding that the Americans were embarking on an unwinnable war. Burchett’s access to Hanoi’s leaders increased his influence in the West. L.B. Johnson’s administration sought his assistance to secure the release of captured US pilots held in Hanoi, while during the 1968 Paris Peace Talks Burchett briefed American and British diplomats on the North Vietnamese position. Though allowed into Britain and the United States, Burchett was denied an Australian passport and barred from returning by successive Coalition governments. Refused passage on commercial airlines, he finally returned to Australia by private aircraft in February 1970. Finding no evidence of treason, the Whitlam Labor

REF: T. Heenan, From Traveller to Traitor (2006). TOM HEENAN

B U SIN ESS AN D FIN AN C E R EP O R TIN G Business and finance reporting in Australia is similar to that in many Western capitalist democracies—for example, the acquisition of Dow Jones by News Corporation in 2007 led to the Australian carrying material from the Wall Street Journal and the company’s newswires, while in 2012 the Australian Financial Review (AFR) entered into a content-sharing agreement with the United Kingdom’s Financial Times (FT). The transnational nature of business and finance reporting has its foundations in the expansion of global communications in the second half of the 19th century, as the electric telegraph was used primarily to transmit stock prices and market quotations. Australia was enfolded into a British imperial press system, and was declared ‘Reuters territory’ from 1859. The systematic application of journalism to business and finance information was evident from the middle of the 19th century. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser published trade and commercial information. In its first editorial in 1831, the Sydney Herald promised a focus on the ‘commercial … relations of Australia’. The Sydney Gazette concentrated on banking, and the Australian (Sydney, 1824–48) on trade. By the 1850s, papers were also publishing market and commodity prices, shares listings, banking and company data, industry intelligence and ‘commercial news’, as well as advertisements for stocks and shares. The Daily Commercial News (1891–99) specialised in shipping, trade, transport and logistics. By 1901, the Melbourne Argus was publishing columns with headings such as ‘Mining intelligence and stock and share market’. Newspapers responded to wealthier Australians investing in joint stock companies, saving with banks, taking out insurance and trading on state stock exchanges. In a review of journalism published at Federation, the Sydney Morning Herald noted the existence of ‘publications devoted to one or other of the chief interests of the colony—mining, agriculture, the pastoral industry, shipping, banking’. Almost 30 years later, the reporting of trade, transport, markets, tourism, mining and agriculture appeared throughout both the Herald and the Argus. 78

business and finance reporting A change occurred in the 1980s, with deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation. New specialist publications appeared, including Australian Business (1980–91) and Business Review Weekly (1981–2013), as well as Personal Investment (est. 1983) and Shares (1996), which later merged. In 1988, the John Fairfax Group established a trade publishing group, Australian Financial Press, jointly with David Koch. Television programs took off, including Business Sunday (1986–2006) and Money (1993–2002), hosted by Paul Clitheroe, on the Nine Network; Kochie’s Business Builders (2007– ), hosted by Koch, on the Seven Network; and Lateline Business (now The Business, 2006– ) on the ABC. Journalism in the 1980s addressed personal finance and property, and was obsessed by the idea of a business ‘boom’. One former editor estimated that the number of business journalists in Australia trebled in less than a decade. High-profile instances of damaging and even illegal business practices and corporate misconduct, as well as cyclical market fluctuations, intensified criticisms of the deficiencies of business journalism. Such was the dissatisfaction with the performance of business journalists in the 1960s mining boom that a subsequent Australian Senate inquiry led to them having to register their financial interests. Two decades later, more than a quarter of Australian business journalists believed that making personal financial gains from privileged access to information remained widespread. Nearly half felt there was a bias in reporting in favour of business, and a third said they would be more inclined to censor themselves when reporting on their own media owners. In another survey conducted in the 1990s, a half of business journalists reported experiencing improper managerial interference. The Herald’s Michael West blamed a failure to winkle out ‘greed, leverage, risk, suspect corporate governance and complex corporate structures’ on journalists partly on contemporary conditions where there were ‘Too many press releases, too little time, too many promoters and PR people in the world … [and] too little regulatory oversight’. Print journalist Alan Kohler translated his work into a brand, founding the online investment newsletter the Eureka Report in 2005 and co-founding the Business Spectator website in 2007; the company he headed was sold to News Limited in 2012 for $30 million. Kohler remained as editor-in-chief, and also continues to work for ABC Television. The uptake of digital technology, and particularly the internet, ensured that business and finance journalism became more transnational. By 2009, the Economist and Forbes were both reaching more readers in the Asia Pacific region online than in their print editions, and the FT had almost as many.

The situation did not change over the next 25 years, even though newspapers began to publish dedicated sections. However, boom–bust cycles, scandals and collapses, and the reliance of the Australian economy on inward investment from Britain and state-led economic development were problematic. The business section of the Bulletin (1880–2008) was sceptically headed ‘Business, Robbery, etc.’ until the 1960s. A new concentration on business journalism emerged as cheaper newsprint became more globally available and advertising boomed after World War II. Subsequently, business in its broadest sense became ‘big news’, and business journalism a major growth area. Not surprisingly, at the launch of the Australian in 1964, the owners, News Limited, announced that ‘Reporting business will be big business’, while News Limited declared that ‘business is an important factor in our daily lives’. The Australian catered for the emerging urban elite, not interested in the more technical coverage of the specialist AFR, which was transformed in the 1960s—first from a localised weekly to a bi-weekly publication in 1961 and then to a national daily in 1963. In 1971, the Australian recruited specialist staff from other papers and established publishing arrangements with the FT and the South African Financial Mail to launch Finance Week; it lasted only eight months. Business in the Australian was skewed towards human interest, profiles of people and companies, and burgeoning industries. Australian business reporting had changed from the dry noting of directors’ reports and company results to the presentation of entertaining stories. All the same, prior to 1970 there was little penetrating reporting of business. The Macquarie Network moved commercial radio into more serious finance coverage. In the mid-1960s, 2GB Sydney initiated a nightly AFR commentary by Michael Baume, while in the 1970s, 6IX Perth introduced shows targeted at small businesses. When revamping the finance component of its drive program, Sundown Rundown, 2GB looked for a balance between finance journalism and investment advice. David Koch went on to have his own nightly show, Money Talk. Media corporations themselves became objects of business reporting. The formation of media entities as global corporate enterprises was founded in part on the expansion of business advertising, which underpinned the growth in business journalism. The spread of shareholding completed a circuit in which advertising funded business journalism, which attracted readers, who were ‘sold’ to advertisers, who recruited them as investors. On the other hand, a resurgence of investigative journalism led to exposés of corporations, financiers and business practices. More popular papers began to adopt a position focused more on readers’ interests.

REFs: J. Henningham, ‘Characteristics and Attitudes of Australia’s Finance Journalists’, Economic Analysis

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buttrose, ita (1942– ) flagship magazine. Buttrose had first worked at the Weekly briefly after leaving school, aged 15, in 1957, before transferring to its stablemate, the Daily Telegraph, as a cadet journalist. After the creation of Cleo, Buttrose went on to become editor-in-chief of both the Weekly and Cleo, and fronted television campaigns for them. She served on the board of ACP, and in 1978 she was appointed the publisher of ACP’s Women’s Division. From 1981 until 1984, Buttrose was editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph (by then sold to News Limited)—a first for an Australian woman in a metropolitan newspaper—and also served on the company’s board. Since then, she has held numerous journalistic, consultancy and business roles, including spells on 2KY and 2UE Sydney (1986–87); founding her own publishing company and an eponymous women’s magazine, Ita (1989–94); and serving as editor-at-large of OK! magazine (2004–11). She has had a large number of philanthropic roles, most notably with the AIDS Trust Australia and Alzheimer’s Australia. Buttrose was awarded an OBE in 1979 and an AO in 1988, and named 2013 Australian of the Year. She has written or co-written 10 books, including autobiographies (1985 and 1998), works on health and fitness, and etiquette guides, and is a regular on the speakers’ circuit.

and Policy 27(1) (1997); J. Kitchener, ‘Investigative Business Journalism in the Age of the Internet’, Australian Journalism Review, 27(1) (2005); J. Schultz, Reporting Business (1992). MICHAEL BROMLEY

B U T T ROSE, I TA (1942– ) The daughter of journalist and editor Charles Buttrose (1909–99), Ita Buttrose has held key positions in two of the three main media empires in Australia: Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited and the Packers’ Australian Consolidated Press (ACP). A well-known media figure, Buttrose— as a career woman and working mother—was a role model to many Australian women of the 1970s; however, there is some tension between this image and other representations of women in the two quite different ACP women’s magazines she founded and/or edited in the 1970s. The first was Cleo, aimed at 20- to 40-yearold women. Buttrose created the magazine with Kerry Packer in 1972, and was the founding editor. The first mainstream women’s magazine in Australia to include articles dealing explicitly with women’s sexuality, as well as controversial nude male centrefolds, it was the subject of a television mini-series, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011). Buttrose is equally famous as editor in the mid-1970s of the Australian Women’s Weekly, launched by ACP in 1933 and regarded as ACP’s

CAROLYNE LEE

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C CABL E NEW S Cables of the latest news, sent by Morse code from Europe, began appearing in the British press after the opening of a submarine cable across the English Channel between Dover and Calais in 1851. In that same year, Paul Julius Reuter set up his agency in London as a collection and distribution point for telegraphic news. News cables published in London newspapers began to arrive in Australia from the 1850s. These brief snippets of information, often about the state of war in Europe, caused anxiety in the Australian colonies since their import was unclear until the arrival of another mail ship with full reports—usually a month later. Australia was linked to the rest of the world via the Overland Telegraph Line in 1872. News from Europe, which had previously taken up to 50 days to arrive, could now arrive in 24 hours. Major newspapers in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide formed alliances in order to jointly secure daily supplies of cable news from Reuters or other London-based sources. The high cost of telegrams limited such services to around 50 words per day. Regular cable breakdowns during the 1870s made the flow of news from London highly unreliable. Newspapers also complained that the introduction of cable news, while increasing their costs, had not greatly increased their circulation. While the timeliness of cable news was appreciated by readers, there was also persistent criticism. Former Argus editor and Victorian politician, George Higinbotham, commenting in the 1890s, thought that news in short telegrams was ‘absolutely worthless except to stimulate a feverish and unhealthy curiosity’. On the positive side, the advent of cable news shifted the focus of journalism on to factual rather than opinionated reporting. High telegraphy costs, charged on a per word basis, led news agencies to compress messages prior to transmission using what became known as ‘cablese’. These messages needed to be expanded by cable experts in newsrooms to make them fit for publication. This was still the practice in 1938 when Australian Associated Press (AAP) published a service manual illustrating the art of unravelling cablese. AAP’s use of cablese fell away after the opening of the high-capacity

Commonwealth Pacific Cable System (COMPAC) in 1964. From the 1870s to the 1940s, the Australian press consistently lobbied governments and international cable companies for reduced cable press rates, often appealing to the role the press could play in promoting understanding across the British empire. In 1886, a special press rate was set for cables between Britain and Australia of 2 shillings and 8 pence per word, which was less than a third of the prevailing ordinary rate. Dramatic reductions came after the advent of radio telegraphy. By 1935, the Empire press rate was 4 pence per word; in 1941, it was reduced to a penny a word. As long-distance communication improved, extended cabled reports largely replaced traditional correspondence. In a typical 1905 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald, cable news occupied two columns on page 6. It comprised about 25 brief reports of between one and four paragraphs. While these covered news from around the world, they were all date-lined London. In a typical 1950 edition, cable news, sourced from AAP and staff correspondents, included full reports of up to 20 paragraphs, which could—if newsworthy enough—be presented as prominently as domestic stories. Date-lines included the major cities of Europe, Asia and the United States. In the contemporary world of ubiquitous electronic communication, the term ‘cable news’ has become a redundant category, though news agencies, such as AAP, continue to play a major role in news production and distribution. REF: AAP, On the Wire (2010).

PETER PUTNIS

CA BL E T E L E V IS ION see pay television CA ME RON, JA NE T see Grant family

C AN B ER R A TIM ES The Canberra Times has been published in the national capital since 1926. Despite its relative low circulation, it is a quality broadsheet, with a thorough diet of local, regional, national and international news. It also provides extensive coverage of politics, public administration, 81

canberra times

Pringle was soon to return to Sydney and the Herald, and he took Bowman with him. Under the next editor, John Allan, the paper focused on covering the public administration as well as politics. It was to be some 20 years before British and American newspapers, starting with the London Times, began such a round. Allan also pioneered a regular corrections column. The newspaper was also developing specialist reporters, such as Bruce Juddery, David Solomon, Peter Samuel, Warwick Bracken and Gay Davidson (later to be the first female chief political correspondent in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery), as well as making use of its access to academic expertise at the Australian National University. The newspaper was generally regarded at the time as a ‘subs’ paper’, in the sense that around two-thirds of its material came from news services and outside sources other than staff. Allan left for London in 1972 and was replaced by Ian Mathews. The paper grew through the Whitlam years, but a local recession caused by a slowdown in federal expenditure from 1975 saw it become involved in efforts to broaden the economic base of the territory. It also reported on, and advocated for, the push for ACT self-government. In 1978, the Canberra Times became a sevenday-a-week newspaper, with the publication of the Sunday Canberra Times. Crispin Hull, the initial Sunday editor, was later to become editor of the whole publication for seven years, until he was replaced by David Armstrong— previously editor of the Australian—in 1992. Through Hull’s editorship, his deputy was Jack Waterford, who became editor in 1995. In 1989, the paper became the victim of a succession struggle inside the larger John Fairfax Group, with Warwick Fairfax Junior selling off parts of the Fairfax empire to partly finance his takeover. The Canberra Times was sold for $100  million, along with a string of Fairfax magazines, to Kerry Packer. Packer had no real interest in acquiring the Canberra Times—indeed, he on-sold it to Rupert Murdoch. But Murdoch was told by the then Trade Practices Commission (now the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) that it would not allow him to increase his interests in Australian metropolitan newspapers. Packer held on to his interest for a year or so, then sold it to Kerry Stokes. Stokes invested in new-generation colour presses and state-of-the-art computer production. He appointed veteran journalist Michelle Grattan as editor, but she was ultimately dismissed—not by Stokes personally, but by the managing director—and Jack Waterford was appointed editor. In 1997, Stokes sold the paper for $150 million to Rural Press Limited, which began to reduce editorial costs. At the peak of its readership in the mid-1990s, it was said that 85 per cent of all Canberra

business and sport, and literature, the arts and lifestyle issues. The paper’s market is skewed heavily towards the professional, managerial and administrative classes, which has led to higher advertising premiums. The Canberra Times appeared first as a weekly from 3 September 1926, and became bi-weekly a few days before the opening of parliament at the new national capital on 8 May 1927. On 20 February 1928, it became a daily. The Canberra Times was initially a Shakespeare family affair. Thomas Mitchell Shakespeare was chairman of Federal Capital Press of Australia Ltd. His eldest son, Arthur, was managing editor, Clarence was a reporter, and Jack and Bill managed and operated the presses and the business side of the paper. T.M. Shakespeare had owned the Grafton Argus and the Lachlander (Condobolin), but increasingly was focused on managing the affairs of the NSW Country Press Association, a news-sharing and syndication service for rural and regional dailies. Shakespeare was an ardent federalist who understood the special opportunities and challenges of the national capital. The design and the ambitions of the federal architects were for a developing city that would contain legislators, ministers, senior public servants, a military and diplomatic establishment, and ultimately a university. The Shakespeares wanted and expected their newspaper to be a champion of the people of Canberra and of the federal ideal, and of taking a national, rather than a sectional or sectarian or states-based, approach to the resolution of political issues. However, the growth and development of Canberra slowed substantially with the Great Depression and World War II, and its aftermath. Consequently, the paper struggled. It was not until 1955, when Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies reinvigorated the old plans and ambitions for the capital, that the paper—now a tabloid—began to prosper. Soon serious reinvestment in plant and equipment was needed, and there was no succeeding generation wanting to take over. Major media interests were starting to see the commercial and political benefits of publishing in Canberra. In 1962, Shakespeare agreed that John Fairfax & Sons could buy the paper on his death, or when it was clear someone was planning a rival. That challenge came from a young Rupert Murdoch, in the form of the Australian, which would be edited, prepared and printed in Canberra, with plates transmitted to the other capitals. Shakespeare triggered the agreement with Fairfax, which determined that the new newspaper had to be strangled at birth by a far better resourced and invigorated Canberra Times. J.D. Pringle, a distinguished British journalist who had worked on the Sydney Morning Herald, was appointed managing editor, with the existing editor, David Bowman, remaining in this position.

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cartoons and cartoonists Sons’ magazine group, remaining in the position for four years. He then became editor, and later editor-in-chief, of the Sydney Morning Herald. He revamped the paper, making it more appealing to women readers. He ended his 30 years at Fairfax on the boards of the Newcastle Herald and the Illawarra Mercury. Carroll wrote The Man Who Couldn’t Wait (1990), an account of the failed takeover of Fairfax by Warwick Fairfax Junior. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Macquarie University in 2013.

people aged 14 or over read a typical Saturday issue. Coalition Prime Minister John Howard described the Canberra Times as ‘like the ABC in print’. Michael Stevens became editor in 2002, and focused on local news, earning a Walkley Award for the paper’s coverage of the 2003 Canberra bushfires. He was replaced by Mark Baker, then Peter Fray and most recently Rod Quinn. The Canberra Times now has a heavy internet and social media presence. It is increasingly focused at Canberra-centric news rather than national or international coverage. The Canberra Times rejoined Fairfax Media in 2007 when John B. Fairfax parlayed his Rural Press holding into what was in effect a reverse takeover of the much larger Herald and Age newspapers. In 2013, the newspaper had a circulation of 26,153 on weekdays, 40,475 on Saturdays and 26,138 on Sundays. The Canberra Times has access, past its own resources, to the output of journalists from the Herald and the Age, as well as extensive news services— Australian and international.

REF: AFR, 25 November 2013. ANDREW CLARK

C AR TO O N S AN D C AR TO O N ISTS From the earliest times of European settlement, and especially since the gold rushes of the mid19th century brought prosperity and many printing presses, cartoons and cartoonists have adorned many Australian magazines and newspapers. Cartoons have been one of the most prominent ways in which artists have tried to articulate a distinctive colonial or Australian voice and stance; in particular, they have played a crucial role in the development of the larrikin myth within Australian media and culture. At the centre of this tradition lies the raucous, masculine, Anglo-centric nationalism of the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly cartoonists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their style of black and white drawing and egalitarian humour still influence 21st century cartooning in Australia. Cartoons have always been one of the immediately popular elements of newspapers and journals, with a good cartoonist commanding high wages and a loyal following. Some even develop cult-like status in particular markets: many discussions with Canberrans in the 1980s and 1990s turned to the topic of Geoff Pryor, and Michael Leunig’s following in Melbourne has an almost religious character. The first Australian-produced cartoons on record are woodcuts in the Cornwall Chronicle (Launceston) in 1836. It was not until the 1850s, however, that cartoons began to appear often in colonial publications. While there were some illustrations in pamphlets and broadsides that recall the savage vigour of Gillray and other British illustrators of the early 19th century, the dominant mode came from the more decorous London Punch. From 1857, the Melbourne Punch (1855–1925), which was soon imitated by Punches in Sydney, Adelaide, Ballarat, Hobart and Ipswich, brought to colonial politics and politicians the sort of detailed gag illustrations with elaborate captions that John Tenniel did in London. Tom Carrington (1843–1918) and S.T. Gill (1818–80) are among the more important and prolific comic illustrators of this period, and the technical sophistication of cartooning (both artistically and in printing processes) in colonial Australia was very high by world standards.

REFs: Canberra Times, 3 and 20 September 1976 and 25 September 2006. JACK WATERFORD

CARROL L , VI CTOR JOSEPH (1924– ) Vic Carroll is the undisputed giant of Australia’s post-war journalism. Through his editing of the Australian Financial Review (AFR) and the Sydney Morning Herald, and launch of the National Times, he displayed brilliant technical skills, a vast knowledge of Australian politics, economics and business, a remarkable grasp of world history, the ability to recognise and nurture talent, and an unmatched capacity to ask the right questions. Carroll’s understanding of Australia’s economic history is sharpened by the fact that he and the AFR were key players in that history. Born on 22 July 1924, Carroll was brought up in Mackay, North Queensland, and attended boarding school in Charters Towers. He joined the AIF in 1942, serving in New Guinea and Borneo. After the war, he studied commerce at the University of Queensland and in 1950 he joined the Brisbane stockbroking firm of Corser, Henderson and Hale. In 1952, Carroll joined Brisbane’s Courier-Mail as a finance journalist, and was company secretary for two years. In 1960, he became financial editor at the Sun-Herald, and also wrote for the bi-weekly AFR. In March 1964, five months after ‘The Fin’ became a daily, he was appointed editor. In 1971, Carroll became editor-in-chief of the AFR and the fledgling National Times. During this period, he gave great encouragement to the employment and advancement of women journalists. In 1975, Carroll was appointed chief executive of Sungravure Pty Ltd, John Fairfax & 83

cartoons and cartoonists these images: two white male workers building a skyscraper, one hanging from a beam and the other hanging from the former’s pants, laughing in the face of imminent and ludicrous death. Some of the major satirical artists of these years include Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) and Ted Scorfield (1882–1965), whose dark renditions of the menacing Germans (during the wars) and the communist peril (especially after World War II) reflected the Bulletin’s drift towards reactionary politics. David Lowe (1891–1963) stopped off in Australia between 1911 and 1919 on his journey from New Zealand to lasting fame in London as the cartoonist who gained editorial independence for the craft; he left behind a caricature image of World War I prime minister William Hughes that has lived more clearly in historical memory than any mere photograph or painting. Will Dyson (1880–1938) was perhaps the most prominent of a left-wing cartooning tradition that thrived particularly in workers’ newspapers, though much of his fame came from cartoons published in London. There were also many graphic humourists, intent on distracting readers from wars (hot and cold) and the Depression. As well as gag cartoons like Cross’s, Smith’s Weekly consolidated a tradition of strip cartooning in Australia that rapidly spread to newspapers—especially the Sunday editions—and pictorial journals. Nearly all the long running local series began and thrived in this era—for example, Ginger Meggs (1921– , invented by Jimmy Bancks), Bluey and Curly (1939–75, Alex Gurney), Fatty Finn (1923–77, Syd Nicholls) and The Potts (1920–2001, main artist Jim Russell). With increasingly sophisticated printing technology and growing markets for readers, newspapers became graphically more impressive through these decades. ‘The funnies’ were a crucial way of attracting readers in a prosperous but increasingly crowded marketplace, so cartoonists became famous and even occasionally well paid. While George Molnar (1910–98) was well established with his elegant social and political comedy at the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1950s, this was not a great decade for the art. Newspapers tended to have much more comic illustration than satirical commentary during the Menzies years; the humour often lacked edge. As the 1960s unfolded, this situation changed rapidly, with an anti-establishment satire boom that surged through the Western world, and was particularly strong in Australian cartooning. The fabled first thing Donald Horne did when he took over as editor of the Bulletin in 1961 was to remove ‘Australia for the White Man’ from the masthead. Just as consequential was his decision to appoint Les Tanner (1927–2001) as staff cartoonist and cartoon editor (1961–67), because he ushered in a generation that has transformed editorial cartooning in Australian newspapers and given

The normal practice was for cartoonists to be given ideas to illustrate rather than originating them. They were primarily illustrators rather than commentators, but this gradually changed. The cartoons of Livingston Hopkins (‘Hop’, 1846–1927) and Phil May (1864–1903, though only briefly in Australia in the 1880s) played a crucial role in developing the character of the Bulletin. This avowedly nationalist weekly encouraged a vigorous cartooning tradition with a mix of gag cartoons (often focusing on bush life, like much of the poetry and prose in the journal) and political commentary on issues of national more than of provincial significance. While Hop was especially influential, as he was a member of the editorial team, the Bulletin only ever had a handful of staff cartoonists, but invited contributions from readers and published the work of illustrators from all over the nation. These images sought to give voice to a nascent Australian identity, based on egalitarianism, the White Australia policy and scepticism about the motives of imperial governors. Cartoons have seldom, if ever, changed the course of history, but this body of work certainly played a substantial role in the making of a distinctive cultural identity in the decades leading to and following Federation. Cartoons provided vernacular images to go with the vernacular voice being built for the new nation in the Bulletin and other public media. They also, it must be remembered, gave us (or at least reflected) the images of Asiatics and Indigenous Australians that underpinned the new nation’s European and British sense of identity, most notoriously illustrated in Phil May’s ‘Mongolian Octopus—His Grip on Australia’ (1886), with its sinister stereotype of Asiatic influence. To the extent that it is possible to characterise the tenor of an era’s work, however, these cartoons tended to be wryly hopeful about the opportunities (and limitations) of the new era. The dominant facts of the decades after Federation in the Australian experience were the two World Wars, the Depression that split them and the Cold War that followed them. This is reflected in the cartooning tradition in two directions: first, a darkening of the mood of satirical cartooning commenting on public affairs; and second, a substantial growth in humorous cartooning, including the development of a significant Australian tradition of strip cartoons, especially for Sunday newspapers. As the Bulletin increasingly came in thrall to a reactionary rural-based conservatism, the main impetus moved to another periodical, Smith’s Weekly (1919–50), and to metropolitan newspapers. The image of Australian identity was no longer a classical female figure or Hop’s ‘Little Boy from Manly’, but rather the laconic bushman, soldier, labourer or even suburb-dweller. The single most famous image of this era, ‘For gorsake, stop laughing—this is serious!’ (5 August 1933), by Stan Cross (1888–1977), confirms all

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cash for comment venues, in journals and comic books, and increasingly in animation (which is beyond the scope of this entry). While the newspaper roles have tended to be dominated by a particularly fine generation of artists born just before or in the vanguard of the baby boomers, comic art in the late 20th century was more various in the experiences it explored. No longer could one talk of a dominant national larrikin style, though many cartoonists maintained various forms of oppositional stance that earlier practitioners of their art might have recognised. Cartooning has a habit of sharply delineating the tensions and contradictions in the stories a culture tells to itself. The introduction of colour in all media has meant that, in a literal sense, the Australian tradition of black and white art ended more or less with the 20th century. In some ways, this rupture is more than just a technical one. Cartooning for the first two centuries in Australia sought to speak to a wide public, and now digital media is fragmenting audiences into many different (if overlapping) publics. Cartooning continues to thrive in this crisis of mass media—in zines, animations, graphic novels, photo-montages and so on—but the rules of the game are changing. Cartoons drawn on electronic tablets with access to photoshopped photographs look different from cartoons drawn in pen and ink, then transferred to the page by woodcut or photolithography. More importantly, the nature of the audiences they can reach has also changed, as the notion of a single metropolitan or national audience dissolves, and cartoons on the web tend to seek more specialised (if potentially international) demographics. Australia has a particularly robust, often satirical tradition of cartooning that is living in interesting times.

many readers the (historically false) impression that it is an intrinsically left-wing and progressive business. While Robert Menzies was never seriously troubled by organised ridicule in the press, it fair to say that (Sir) John Gorton and (Sir) William McMahon were hounded out of the Lodge in part by the cartoonists and other media satirists who hilariously impugned their competence. After the Bulletin revamp came Rupert Murdoch’s adventure in national quality journalism, the Australian, and with it Bruce Petty (1929– ). His visually and ethically challenging cartoons were prominent at the Australian in its first years as a crusading paper (1964–76), when it shook up the nation’s dormant broadsheet market. Then Tanner went to the Melbourne Age in 1967; the paper built up an extraordinary stable of cartoonists—such as Ron Tandberg (1943– ), Michael Leunig (1945– ), Petty from 1976, John Spooner (1946– ) and Peter Nicholson (1946– ) —who constituted one of the most prominent elements of the Graham Perkin era at that paper. Those holding regular places in daily newspapers were just the most prominent exponents of a boom in comic and satirical illustration that pervaded mass and alternative media in the late 20th century. Advances in print and film technology allowed cartoons to spread into all sorts of shows and publications. Quite suddenly, in the 1960s, it became necessary for every metropolitan newspaper (and many regionals) to have a prominent editorial cartoonist or two, whose job it was to comment satirically on the passing parade of political and social life. This played out differently in different markets, and a cartoonist in a tabloid newspaper (for example, Jenny Coopes in the Sun-Herald, Warren Brown in the Daily Telegraph and Mark Knight in the Herald Sun) is required to fulfil different expectations from one working in broadsheets (for example, Larry Pickering or Bill Leak in the Australian, and Alan Moir or Cathy Wilcox in the Sydney Morning Herald). As successful cartoonists tend to have long tenures, those working in cities like Adelaide (Michael Atchison in the Advertiser), Perth (Dean Alston in the West Australian) and Brisbane (Sean Leahy in the Courier-Mail), which have become one-newspaper towns, have faced particular challenges in cartooning to wide demographics. The luxury British cartoonists enjoy of working for a paper that carves out a socially and culturally defined segment of a large national market does not exist in Australia—here a cartoon has to make sense to readers of all levels of education and engagement, which puts limits on experimentation with style and content. Cartooning did not just track the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s and beyond in daily newspapers. As the technologies of reproduction have become more available, comic art has flourished in commercial and underground

REFs: J. King, The Other Side of the Coin (1976); M. Mahood, The Loaded Line (1973); A. Turner, In Their Image (2000); http://www.daao.org.au. ROBERT PHIDDIAN

C ASH FO R C O M M EN T Centring on commercial radio, this was a scandal about media ethics. In May and June 1999, on ABC Television’s Media Watch, Richard Ackland claimed that John Laws, then a prominent Sydney talkback radio host, had ameliorated his previously critical comments about banks as a result of a secret agreement with the Australian Bankers’ Association. The Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) initiated a formal investigation to determine whether there had been any breaches of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA) or the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice. More allegations surfaced about other broadcasters and stations in Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. After a 19-day hearing, the ABA found that Sydney’s 2UE had failed to correctly identify political matter, had by withholding relevant facts compromised accuracy and fairness in current 85

celebrity affairs programs, and had presented advertising as program material. The hearing began before a panel of the ABA comprising David Flint, the chair of the ABA, and another member, Michael Gordon-Smith. During an adjournment the week before the republic referendum, Flint—who was also the convenor of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy—appeared as a guest on the programs of John Laws and Howard Sattler, another talkback host also being investigated. After widespread criticism, Flint stood aside from the hearing. Two other ABA members, Kerrie Henderson and Ian Robertson, joined the panel and Michael Gordon-Smith presided over the remainder of the hearing. The report found five breaches of the BSA and 90 breaches of the codes. The investigation revealed that the Australian Bankers’ Association had arranged to pay $1.35 million, split between John Laws and 2UE. Laws’ share was $500,000. Separately from 2UE, John Laws and another 2UE talkback host, Alan Jones, had entered into other contracts that affected their on-air behaviour. Both had contracts with Optus (Jones for $500,000; Laws for $825,000 per annum) and with Qantas (Jones for $100,000; Laws for $200,000). Jones had contracts with Walsh Bay Finance Pty Ltd ($200,000), the State Bank of New South Wales ($350,000) and the Walker Corporation ($250,000). Laws had contracts with the Australian Trucking Association ($200,000), the Registered Clubs Association of New South Wales ($200,000) and RAMS Home Loans ($250,000). The ABA imposed conditions on 2UE’s licence, requiring the disclosure of commercial agreements between sponsors and presenters. After further investigations found breaches at 6PR Perth and 5DN Adelaide, the ABA decided there was a ‘systemic failure to ensure the effective operation of the industry’s self-regulatory codes of practice’ and used its power under the Act to impose standards on the whole industry, requiring that advertisements be distinguished from program material, that presenters’ agreements be disclosed and that compliance programs be maintained. The scandal and the adverse findings had little effect on the ratings of the presenters or politicians’ support for their programs. In 2002, Jones accepted ‘a very significant equity offer’ and moved from 2UE to rival 2GB. 2UE changed hands, bought first by Southern Cross Broadcasting and then by Fairfax Media. When the BSA was amended in 2006, it provided the ABA’s successor, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), with a wider range of enforcement options, including the power to institute civil proceedings and to accept enforceable undertakings from licensees. Laws opposed the regulations and began ringing a cowbell when mentioning sponsors. His failures to comply with the regulations, including several on his last day on air

before (temporary) retirement, led eventually to the first civil penalties case under the Act and a pecuniary penalty of $360,000 imposed on 2UE. In 2004, after further controversy including the disclosure of letters between him and Jones dating from before the hearing, Flint resigned from the ABA. Questions about the transparency of other commercial agreements continue to surface on Media Watch. REF: R. Johnson, Cash for Comment (2000). MICHAEL GORDON-SMITH

C ELEB R ITY Famous people, persons occupying high public office and the social elite have always had the attention of the mass media. In Australian newspapers throughout the 20th century, they turned up in news items connected to their professional activities or in photographs taken at the latest charity ball in what were called the ‘social pages’. In contemporary media, we also have celebrity—a more extensive and intrusive form of public visibility. Celebrity is not necessarily the consequence of the public recognition of individual achievements in the way fame was. Rather, celebrity is a form of fame that is generated directly by media exposure: it is a product of the promotions and publicity industries rather than an outcome of public recognition. There are many celebrities who have little in the way of public achievements but who have achieved such a degree of visibility in the media that it makes them the object of public curiosity. Unlike the kind of curiosity that might have accompanied interest in someone who was famous for their achievements or their public or institutional roles, the curiosity that attends celebrity is directed towards the private life of the person in question; readers and viewers want to know what this person is ‘really’ like. Hence celebrity stories in the media focus on following shifts in relationships (particularly romantic or sexual relationships), uncovering details of domestic life, exploring secrets in the celebrity’s past and closely documenting any changes in personal appearance. Progressively since the 1980s, celebrity has become a distinct genre of media content. Initially, celebrity news and gossip emerged as a prominent component of the content of mass market women’s magazines—indeed, the development of the market for celebrity content rescued these magazines from potential oblivion during the 1980s, as earlier, more traditional modes of addressing a female audience lost their purchase. Gradually, celebrity has become a standard component of all media formats: on television, it is a regular element of news and current affairs, breakfast programming and chat shows; on radio, it is staple fodder for the talk formats; in the print media, it turns up in the glossy weekend supplements of the ‘quality’ 86

censorship South Wales Advertiser appeared in 1803, it did not claim to be free or independent; rather, it was published ‘By Authority’, and government officials controlled its content. The issue of freedom of the press only emerged in the 1820s with the publication of privately owned, free and independent newspapers such as the Australian (1824–48), the Monitor (1826–28) and the Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser (1825–27). In an attempt to restrain the publication of what he considered to be politically inflammatory, malicious and libellous articles, Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling proposed the licensing of newspapers (with the threat of cancelling licences) and the banishing of offending journalists. But the Supreme Court struck down these measures. The press remained free of political controls for the rest of the 19th century and beyond. The Commonwealth government introduced political censorship during World War I to restrain the pro-German or pacifist propaganda the War Office found in such publications as the Socialist (1906–23) or the Woman Voter (1909–19). The censorship power lapsed at the end of the war but the government then extended the reach of the Customs Act 1901 (by the ‘Hughes Proclamation’ of 1921) in order to ban communist and Sinn Fein publications deemed seditious. By 1937, the Book Censorship Abolition League had persuaded the government to reverse or liberalise some of its prohibitions. During World War II, the government again banned publications considered likely to undermine the war effort. In 1940, at the time of the Hitler–Stalin Non-Aggression Treaty, the Menzies Coalition government suppressed nine communist newspapers and in 1942 the Curtin government interned those responsible for the semi-fascist the Publicist (1936–42). Political censorship became a major public issue in 1944 when the Curtin Labor government censored, before publication, the articles of several Sydney newspapers. It had acted, it said, in defence of national security and public morale. But faced with a High Court challenge, it capitulated and withdrew its bans. Freedom of the press did not become an issue again until the new age of terrorism after 11 September 2001 and the Bali bombings of 2002. Although critics condemned the federal and state anti-terrorism legislation of 2004 and 2005 as ‘police-state’ restrictions on freedom of the press, its use has been limited to publications advocating terrorism. A 1995 amendment to the federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975 made it unlawful to offend anyone on the basis of that person’s race. In 2011, the Federal Court found the Melbourne Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt guilty under the revised Act and ordered the newspaper to publish a ‘corrective notice’. Following the revelations in 2011 that some London newspapers had hacked the voicemails of newsworthy individuals, the Commonwealth government appointed former

newspapers as well as on the front pages of the tabloids; and the online environment is heavily populated with fan sites, celebrity blogs and on the like. Turner, Bonner and Marshall (2000) charted the rise of celebrity news from the 1970s through to 2000 and found that in some instances—the current affairs program 60 Minutes, for instance—celebrity stories could occupy as much as 50 per cent of an individual edition. Whereas celebrity stories were virtually non-existent in television news bulletins in the 1970s, they occupied up to 20 per cent of bulletins by 2000. Media interest in celebrity is widespread—indeed, the rise of transnational celebrities such as David Beckham has become one of the key drivers of media globalisation. In Australia, the rise of celebrity is the consequence of specific local factors—most importantly, the expansion of the public relations, publicity and promotions industries. The origins of this expansion lay in developments in the media and entertainment industries over the 1970s and 1980s: the revival of the Australian film industry, the development of a local television production industry and the rise of a local popular music industry. These industries produced their own stars and personalities, thus generating demand for promotions and publicity professionals who could manage them and make them visible through the media. In the 2000s, this demand was further increased by the development of reality television formats. Reality television makes a particular contribution to the production of celebrity. Whereas earlier forms of celebrity were created by the media picking up individuals who had already established a level of public visibility elsewhere, reality television created that initial public visibility itself. It is aimed at generating audiences for advertisers, but it also constitutes a production line for the creation, exposure and disposal of celebrities. Each series of Big Brother, for instance, endowed its contestants with celebrity before superseding them with the cast of the next series. As reality television programs and formats have proliferated, however, the period of visibility enjoyed by such celebrities has shortened and the level of public attention they can expect has decreased. As the field of potential celebrities becomes more crowded, the life-cycle of each has shrunk. Yet, as a focus of interest for media audiences, celebrity itself shows no sign of disappearing. REF: G. Turner, F. Bonner and P.D. Marshall, Fame Games (2000). GRAEME TURNER

CENSORSHI P State prohibition of the publication of political opinions has played a small but highly controversial role in Australia. In the first 15 years of British settlement, there was no free press to censor. When the Sydney Gazette and New 87

censorship government and its Minister for Customs, Senator Don Chipp, began the abolition of literary censorship—a process completed in the early 1970s by the Whitlam Labor government. But the call for moral censorship emerged again with the advent of the internet in the 1990s. All governments have explored means of blocking internet websites that celebrate child sexual abuse, bestiality, or dangerous drugs. The Australian Communications and Media Authority may regulate Australian websites, but it has no power over foreign sites. Governments have proposed mandatory filtering, although critics claim that any system of filtering would easily be circumvented and, if successful, would establish a structure for wider controls, including political censorship. The criteria proposed are civilisation, decency or family values—a version of the ‘householder test’. No filtering legislation has yet been passed. Laws restricting blasphemous publications have played a small role in Australian censorship. In 1871, a Parramatta jury found an anti-Christian ‘soapbox orator’, William Orlando Jones, guilty of blasphemy. He was sentenced to two years’ gaol, but the public outcry led to his release after four weeks. From 1884 to 1904, Joseph Symes of Melbourne published a provocatively blasphemous threepenny weekly, the Liberator. In 1885, he was charged before the Supreme Court with failure to lodge recognisances as required by the Printers and Newspapers Act 1864. Found guilty, he refused to pay the recognisances but no further court action was taken against him. The Victorian Post Office refused to handle the Liberator, although the Victorian Railways continued to distribute it. After this legal and administrative muddle, the blasphemy laws remained dormant until 1919 when R.S. Ross, publisher of Ross’s Monthly of Protest, Personality and Progress (1916–23), was committed for trial in the Supreme Court in Victoria for attempting to bring ‘the Holy scriptures and the Christian Religion into contempt among the people’. But before the case came to trial, he was charged in a magistrate’s court with breaching the blasphemy provisions of the Commonwealth Post and Telegraph Act 1901. Although sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, a higher court reduced the penalty to a fine of £50. The Crown then dropped its action in the Supreme Court. This was the last case in which a publisher or writer was charged with blaspheming the Christian religion, although it may be an element in charges of offensive behaviour. But blaspheming Islam remains a contentious issue under statutes penalising religious vilification. In 2004, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found two Protestant pastors guilty of vilifying the Koran under the Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001. An appeal court overturned the conviction in 2005. These statutes, which mandate tolerance and civility, also proscribe the vilification of ethnic and other minorities.

federal judge Ray Finkelstein to inquire into the need to regulate the Australian media. He recommended a statutory News Media Council with the power to compel news media to publish corrections, apologies and retractions. However, no legislation to establish such a Council has been introduced so far. For the first century after European settlement, government authorities entrusted the censorship of obscene libels or indecent publications to editors and readers rather than to officials or police. An exception occurred in 1843, when the publisher, editor and printer of the short-lived but scandal-mongering the Satirist and Sydney Spectator were imprisoned for obscene libel. This remained an isolated case until the 1880s, when the new realism of French novels (Alphonse Daudet’s Sapho, Guy de Maupassant’s A Woman’s Life) and the new propaganda for contraception or ‘birth control’ (by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh) led colonial governments to reconsider their liberalism. Each Australian colony from Victoria in 1876 to Western Australia in 1902, and then the Commonwealth, passed legislation to contain or restrict obscene publications. Yet their early attempts to impose censorship remained half-hearted. In the first decades after Federation, the federal Customs Department banned only a handful of books, such as Honore de Balzac’s Droll Stories, along with a few lurid magazines. The poet Christopher Brennan, who advised the department, did not bother to read books referred to him before recommending that they be admitted to Australia. The state authorities were equally permissive or indifferent. But the spirit of liberalism was greatly weakened during the Depression years, considered ‘the heroic age’ of moral censorship in Australia. The Customs Department applied ‘the householder test’ under which it would only admit into Australia such publications as the ordinary householder would allow his family to read. It prohibited the importing of thousands of publications, mostly ephemeral novels or lewd magazines, but also some works by major writers—for example, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Norman Lindsay’s Redheap. Following widespread complaints from writers, journalists, academics, booksellers and readers, the conservative Lyons government in 1933 moderated its ‘householder test’ by establishing an advisory committee (later board) of scholars who persuaded the government to release over a hundred books, such as Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. The Customs Department still banned such works as Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It was not until 1969 that the Gorton Coalition

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central australian aboriginal media association ex-ABC equipment. The Australian Film Commission, private donors and the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations provided grants and training funds. By 26 January 1981 CAAMA was broadcasting one and a half hours Monday to Friday over the Central Australian Community College’s 8CCC, increasing to 30 hours a week by 1982. It also negotiated access to the ABC’s short-wave service. In August, anticipating the AUSSAT  1 satellite, CAAMA presented a submission to the Department of Communications to broadcast to 78 remote communities, ex-government missions and pastoral properties. John Macumba left CAAMA in 1981, and Philip Batty and Freda Glynn became directors. CAAMA Music began in 1981 when CAAMA distributed its recorded Aboriginal music as one-hour CAAMA cassettes to communities without access to radio. A mobile recording studio came next, and by 1990 CAAMA had established its music label, producing more than 800 albums in 15 Aboriginal languages. CAAMA Shops was established as a music and Aboriginal arts and crafts retail outlet. CAAMA emphasised that Aboriginal people develop media themselves to promote cultural identity, language and music, and to provide training, employment and income-generation. In May 1982, CAAMA submitted an expression of interest for an ‘S’ (special interest Aboriginal) public broadcasting radio licence with a terrestrial network to Ali Curung (Warrabri), Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa) and N’taria (Hermannsburg). The licence was granted in May 1984, the first in Australia. (In 1992 special interest licences were changed by the Australian Broadcasting Authority to community radio licences.) Since February 1985 CAAMA 8KINFM has broadcast news and music to listeners in Central Australia and beyond in English, Eastern and Western Arrernte, Pitjantjatjara, Luritja, Warlpiri, Kaytetye and Anmatyerr. The CAAMA Video Production Unit was established in February 1984, making videos to communicate between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. CAAMA Productions, the largest Indigenous production house in Australia, has won awards for magazine and documentaries Urrpeye (1985–88) and Nganampa Anwernkenh (2008), short films Cold Turkey (2002), Green Bush (2005) and My Colour Your Kind, and children’s drama Double Trouble (2007), and co-produced the Cannes International Camera d’Or award-winning Samson & Delilah (2010). In a legendary battle, CAAMA won the commercial television licence for Imparja Pty Limited, began broadcasting on 15 January 1988, and remains a major shareholder. In 1995, it built its own premises and studios. In 2010, CAAMA reincorporated under the Corporation (Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006. John Macumba died in 2010; in 2012, CAAMA

In 2007, the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal found that two Sydney broadcasters, John Laws and Steve Price, had vilified homosexuals on air in 2005, but the issue was dropped when the broadcasters apologised. In 2009, the tribunal found that another broadcaster, Alan Jones, had vilified Lebanese Muslims active in the ‘Cronulla riots’ of 2005. Jones unsuccessfully appealed the decision. Cartoons have been among the first and last battlegrounds of government censorship. The first action against a cartoonist in Australia was in 1803 over ‘seditious drawings’ circulated as ‘pipes’, which an indignant Governor Philip Gidley King referred to a General Court-Martial. The case fizzled out in technicalities. Over the ensuing 200 years, cartoonists have been sued for libel but almost none has been subjected to official action. An important exception was the case of the artist Martin Sharp, who in 1964 published a cartoon in OZ magazine satirising the coarse habits of an ocker surfie. A magistrate sentenced Sharp to four months’ imprisonment for indecency. An appeal court overturned this verdict. In 2005, a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed, but Australian newspapers, acting in the name of tolerance and civility, refused to republish them. Self-censorship of this kind by editors and journalists is a return to 19th-century practice before the introduction of restrictive legislation. In the never-ending contest between censors and writers, the former stand, variously, for law and order, national security, morality, civilisation or even truth, while the latter stand for freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the rights of citizens and the birthright of Australians. Dr Samuel Johnson summed up this continuing debate in his Life of Milton (1779) more than two centuries ago: ‘The danger of unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve.’ REFs: P. Coleman, Obscenity Blasphemy Sedition (2000); P.H. Johnson, On Iniquity (1967); F. Moorhouse, Days of Wine and Rage (1980); N. Moore, The Censor’s Library (2012). PETER COLEMAN

CENT RAL AUST RALIAN ABORIGINAL M EDIA ASSOCI ATI ON The first fully owned Aboriginal radio service in Australia, the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), was dreamt up by two men: John Macumba, a Pitjantjatjara man, and Philip Batty, a teacher at Papunya. 8HA in Alice Springs gave them the 9 p.m. Sunday timeslot to present the Aboriginal Half Hour; they were joined by Freda Glynn (Thornton). On 12 May 1980, CAAMA was incorporated under the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976, and began producing programs in an old Telecom building in Alice Springs, using 89

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the newspaper’s editorial independence, others welcomed the superior technological resources. Photographs were now set in Alice Springs rather than Adelaide, and the occasions when the Advocate was printed on butcher’s paper rather than on newsprint came to an end. Circulation increased dramatically, resulting in a decision in 1973 to double the floor-space of the plant and offices. From 1990, the newspaper was printed locally on equipment that survived Darwin’s Cyclone Tracy. Since 2013, printing, sub-editing, graphics and advertising design have been outsourced by News Corp Australia. The Advocate’s most famous editor (1948–54) was Jim Bowditch, who later edited the Northern Territory News. A passionate champion of social justice and an often controversial Territory larrikin, Bowditch has been described as Australia’s ‘last crusading editor’. In 1954, beginning a tradition, he concocted a headline-grabbing story about the sighting of a flying saucer that was officially investigated by the Royal Australian Air Force and reported worldwide. A 1980s story about Alice Springs’ mayor flying to Venice to find out how to stop a new pedestrian mall from sinking prompted Darwin’s mayor to express his sympathy. The Advocate’s ‘jokes’ are usually published on April Fools’ Day. Significant local stories covered by the Advocate included the life and times of Albert Namatjira, the Sundown murders (1958), protests against the Joint Defence Space Research Facility near Alice Springs (1960s), the hijacking of an aeroplane bound for Alice Springs (1972), the Azaria Chamberlain trial (1982), one of the world’s biggest hot air balloon crashes, which killed 13 people (1989), and the disappearance of English tourist Peter Falconio (2001). The absence of positive Aboriginal stories and a dearth of Aboriginal employees was cited as a reason for the establishment, in 1980, of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Australia’s first Aboriginal-owned media organisation. In 1983, the Northern Territory Supreme Court ordered the destruction of an edition of the Advocate because it breached traditional Aboriginal cultural protocols by printing photographs of a camp where someone had died during protests against the construction of a dam on a local Arrernte women’s sacred site. The Advocate has been published bi-weekly since 1981.

opened the John Macumba Training Room in his memory. CAAMA celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2011. REFs: W. Bell, ‘The Totem of the Clan’ (PhD thesis, 1984) and A Remote Possibility (2008). WENDY BELL

C E N TRAL I A N A DV OCATE The Northern Territory’s oldest post-war newspaper was founded by C.H. ‘Pop’ Chapman (1874–1955), a Queensland well-sinker who had made his fortune at The Granites, a remote Central Australian goldfield, during the Great Depression. Launched in Alice Springs, the Centralian Advocate replaced the Dead Heart?, a small community newspaper launched 10 months earlier. The Advocate’s editor, Walter Allan, an experienced journalist from Ballarat, had to assemble the press before printing the first edition on 24 May 1947; it was sold as a ‘souvenir’ in anticipation of the ‘sentimental value’ it would carry when the Northern Territory became a ‘flourishing state’. Optimism about the economic and political growth of the Territory was matched by the newspaper’s belief in the potentially pivotal role of Central Australia in Territory progress. The masthead declared the Advocate ‘a weekly journal devoted to the advancement of the Northern Territory and the interests of its people’. It was a role befitting Alice Springs’ position as the Territory’s administrative capital during World War II. Early editions advocated for local services like a fire brigade, flights to Adelaide and a municipal council. The first edition also supported atomic tests at Maralinga, suggesting that test opponents were communists. On 16 January 1950, fire gutted the paper’s premises. The Advocate’s Territory-wide ambitions were abandoned in 1959 with the appointment of an editor from the Riverland, Ted Williams, who described the Advocate as ‘the voice of the Inland’. The newspaper, which had absorbed the Tennant Creek Times the previous year, got a new masthead with no tag-line and a designated women’s section. The editor reassured readers that the Advocate would continue to be ‘at the forefront of every progressive move for the development of the vast territory based upon Alice Springs’. The newspaper’s advocacy role disappeared entirely several decades later, when the paper acquired the historically descriptive tag-line ‘Serving the Centre since 1947’. In 1966, the Advocate—which had been owned by various consortia of locals since its establishment—was purchased by News Limited and partnered with the Sydney Daily Mirror. The change brought large-font headlines and front-page photographs of bikini girls, as well as syndicated comics like Andy Capp. In 1968, the paper acquired block-making facilities, and its plant was upgraded and expanded. While some worried that the new ownership reduced

REFs: Centralian Advocate, 13 June 1997, 31 July 2007; P. Donovan, Alice Springs (1988). MEGG KELHAM

C H ASER , TH E Created by an Australian satirical comedy troupe, The Chaser began life as a student newspaper in 1999, before migrating to radio, television and stage while maintaining a vigor90

children and the media has evolved particularly in commercial broadcasting and tabloid journalism, where there is often fierce competition for major stories. While not illegal, it raises ethical issues for journalists. Interviewees may be tempted to enhance or distort their stories to increase their news value, while for journalists it may impact on issues of balance, impartiality and objectivity. There is also concern about commercial considerations influencing the news agenda: if a story is in the public interest, it should not be disseminated on the basis of affordability. Payment for stories is particularly contentious when it involves associates of criminals or witnesses in criminal trials whose participation may interfere with the conduct of a case before the courts. However, the other side of the coin is that, as well as benefiting financially, the interviewee also has greater control over how their story is represented, and other media outlets are discouraged from harassing them. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s Code of Ethics takes a pragmatic view: rather than proscribing the practice altogether, it urges journalists to strive for full disclosure. News organisations vary in their approaches: the Sydney Morning Herald’s Code of Practice warns explicitly against offering money for stories, while others focus on the need for full disclosure of any commercial arrangements. Attitudes have changed over the years as pragmatism has impacted on interpretations of ethical principles. Chequebook journalism was explicitly proscribed in the ABC’s editorial policies up to 2009, but there is no reference to it in subsequent revisions. Instead, journalists are encouraged to engage in practices that maintain the ABC’s independence and integrity.

ous online presence. The original members of the group were Charles Firth, Dominic Knight and Chas Licciardello, who were joined at the University of Sydney by Craig Reucassel, Julian Morrow, Chris Taylor and Andrew Hansen. After two years producing The Chaser newspaper, the group attracted the attention of media figure Andrew Denton, who acted as executive producer and script editor for their first ABC Television series, The Election Chaser (2001), set in a simulated tally room. This was followed by CNNNN (2002–03), satirising the formats of 24-hour news broadcasters. Subsequent television shows included election specials such as The Chaser Decides (2004, 2007) and Yes We Canberra! (2010), as well as shows incorporating comedy sketches and pranks with political commentary such as The Chaser’s War on Everything (2006–09) and The Hamster Wheel (2011). The Chaser has often been the subject of media attention. The team members have specialised in stunts involving infiltrating the media (press conferences, doorstops and so on) in order to subvert the whole news-gathering process. A prime example was the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Summit stunt in September 2007, which saw Julian Morrow and Chas Licciardello stage a mock motorcade for The Chaser’s War on Everything that breached APEC’s elaborate security arrangements. While the APEC stunt was viewed somewhat indulgently by the press and the public, the ‘Make A Realistic Wish’ skit in June 2009— which satirised the ways in which terminally ill children become the focus of charitable endeavours—was not so well received, with the ABC and The Chaser team making a public apology and the show being pulled off air for two weeks. In 2011, The Chaser was again taken off air when its planned commentary on the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was cancelled amidst speculation that pressure had been brought to bear by the Royal Family. The Chaser’s media empire has also seen the publication of a number of Chaser Annuals (2005–10) and a raft of other satirical television shows, including Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure (2009) and The Checkout (2013). The troupe has also presented live stage shows, including The Chaser’s Empty Vessel (2011). Individual members—including Morrow, Firth and Licciardello—have also been involved with other television productions.

REFs: J. Hurst and S.A. White, Ethics and the Australian News Media (1994); S. Tanner, G. Phillips, C. Smyth and S. Tapsall, Journalism Ethics at Work (2005). GAIL PHILLIPS

C H ILD R EN AN D TH E M ED IA Children’s sections were included in many newspapers from as early as the 1870s, developing into important vehicles for writing aimed specifically at younger audiences. In South Australia, the regional Farmers’ Weekly Messenger began a children’s section around 1874, while the South Australian Chronicle followed suit with its ‘Little Folks’ column. The practice of writing for children really took off in the early 20th century. Between the wars, many publications featured dedicated children’s pages, including ‘Our Children’s Page’ in Perth’s Daily News, ‘Children’s Corner’ in the Albury Banner and Wodonga Express and Aunt Kath’s ‘Children’s Section’ in Lismore’s Northern Star. The novelist Ethel Turner began as a contributor to children’s pages, in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and the Bulletin. She also edited ‘The

REF: S. Turnbull, ‘On with The Chaser’, Metro, no. 154, 2007, pp. 74-79. SUE TURNBULL

CHEQUEBOOK JOURNALISM Chequebook journalism is the practice of news organisations offering money for access to persons of public interest to gain exclusive rights to broadcast or publish their stories. The practice 91

children and the media quickly became a popular model. ABC Melbourne’s 3LO programmed the Budgeree Club, whose membership qualifications were based on a good deed done at home. While technological issues such as transmission range and unreliable interstate relays ensured that most programming was local, the development of the ABC into a national broadcaster (1932–39) resulted in more federal oversight. ABC executives turned their attention to creating a citizenship-building children’s session, able to unite children from regional and urban areas. 3LO children’s presenter Nina Murdoch created the concept of an Argonauts Club, whose members were allocated to ships to engage with ancient Greek hero, Jason, in his quest to find the Golden Fleece. Argonauts, known only by their number in the crew of their ship, gained rewards for contributing writing, art and music, demonstrating the long provenance of audience participation. 3LO’s The Argonauts Club launched in 1933, with nearly 3000 children enrolled within a year. Although the program closed in 1934, the concept was revived in 1941 as the cornerstone of a reinvigorated national Children’s Session. It offered children a late-afternoon entertainment session comprising elements of the programming mix offered to adults in the evening: music, drama, educational talks, variety and serialised fiction. By the 1950s, there were over 50,000 members of the Argonauts’ Club. It became one of the ABC’s most popular programs, running six days a week until 1969. Like its successful television successor in the years to come, Play School, the children’s sessions were structured to include educational segments on different days of the week—often incorporating children’s contributions. Just as early variety, popular music and talk formats were able to make the transition from stage to radio, studio-hosted children’s sessions made the transition to television, introduced first in Sydney and Melbourne in 1956. Realising that The Argonauts Club would not make the crossing, the ABC’s Children’s Department created new programs to compete both with commercial offerings and their own successful radio Children’s Hour. These made use of elements suited to the new media, including puppetry, photography and film appreciation. From the outset, programmers demarcated different audience demographics, with the youngest children well served by the ABC’s long-running puppetry, drawing and live-action program, Mr Squiggle (1959–99), created and performed by Norman Hetherington, and hosted from 1960 by Patricia Lovell (‘Miss Pat’). Preschool programming included Kindergarten Playtime (1957–66), replaced in 1966 by a format acquired from the BBC, Play School, which remains the ABC’s main in-house preschool production. Younger adolescents were recognised as a cross-over audience with light entertainment, popular

Children’s Corner’ for the Australian Town and Country Journal, one of the first broadsheets to feature a dedicated children’s space. Other important works of youth fiction were serialised in major newspapers: several of Louisa Lawson’s children’s poems from the ‘Dolly Dear’ series first appeared in the Sydney Mail in 1907–09, while Mary Grant Bruce’s A Little Bush Maid (1910) first appeared in Melbourne’s the Leader. In the mid-20th century, Irene Gough, a well-known journalist and writer of children’s fiction, became the editor of the Adelaide Mail’s children’s page. The publication of periodicals increased exponentially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Children’s Friend, launched in London in 1824, was one of the first. Later international publications, such as the Boy’s Own Magazine (est. 1858) and Girl’s Own Paper (est. 1880), were conceived as wholesome antidotes to the so-called ‘penny dreadfuls’. Australian fiction for children had previously appeared in general magazines, including those published in Britain. One of the first stories for young people related to the Australian goldfields was Frank Layton: An Australian Story by George E. Sargent, serialised in London’s the Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation in 1854. The first magazine for children published in Australia was the Children’s Hour (1899–1963), originally produced by the South Australian Education Department. Many stand-alone youth-oriented publications of the period did not enjoy such longevity. For example, the Children’s Newspaper: A Monthly Journal for Young Folks, issued under the authority of the NSW Education Department, began in 1899 but ceased production the following year. The Australian Boys’ Paper: A Monthly Journal of Instruction and Amusement for the Boys of Australia, published by W.M. Forster of Melbourne, only ran from 1898 to 1907. The early 1920s through to the 1950s are considered the heyday of Australian children’s magazines. Titles appearing at this time included Pals (1920–27), a weekly publication of the Victorian Boy Scouts; Fatty Finn’s Weekly (1934–35), based on the popular Syd Nicholls comic strip; and the Silver Jacket, published in the mid-1950s. From the 1950s, the market for local magazines declined due to an enormous influx of mass-produced comics and back-dated magazines from American syndicates, as well as the introduction of television. Early radio broadcasts for children followed models from England, with children’s hours or sessions, featuring talks, singalongs and storytelling, often hosted by Aunts and Uncles with names such as Bobby Bluegum. In the early 1930s, 3AW Melbourne hosted Chatterbox Corner, its presenter adopting the persona of a Ginger Meggs cartoon character. The children’s ‘club’, which invited active listener participation,

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children and the media The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s 1978 inquiry into self-regulation introduced a ‘C’ classification for children’s programs, as well as the establishment of a Children’s Program Committee (CPC), with a brief to formulate standards relating to children’s television productions. The Children’s Television Standards (CTS), first codified in 1984, introduced reforms to increase the amount of dedicated, Australian-produced children’s programs screened on free-to-air commercial television. The C program category was defined as one that ‘contributes to the social, emotional or intellectual development of children’ and ‘is appropriate for Australian children, not assuming too much of the culture, dialect or environment of some other country’. The CTS required commercial television licensees to broadcast a quota of special P (preschool) and C programs (for children up to 14 years) during times of day nominated by the broadcaster within set C and P ‘bands’. In addition, the CTS mandated scripted Australian drama of high production value. The 1984 CTS were not restricted to issues of programming. Criteria delimiting the screening of advertisements during C time were also set. More than a decade later, responding to the rising rates of child obesity, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) launched a review of the CTS. Attempts to extend existing broadcast regulation to online media resulted in two major reviews that issued final reports in 2012: the Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy’s Convergence Review and the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Content Regulation and Convergent Media Review. The former recommended maintenance of Australian children’s content regulation across platforms and production subsidies for converged media. With the defeat of the Labor government in 2013, however, most of the Convergence Review’s recommendations were shelved. The CTS remain in force and are currently monitored and reviewed in a co-regulatory relationship with the industry. Their quotas for new drama production and production quality guidelines facilitated the development of a national production industry that has become a significant international player in children’s screen media markets. A key early player in children’s media production and advocacy was the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF), initially conceived as a broker to, and supporter of, the independent production industry, with a brief to facilitate the involvement of Australian writers, directors and producers in children’s projects, and to provide information to governments, industry stakeholders and the public. It is also a lobbyist for new production and distribution opportunities in children’s programming. The ACTF’s production credits include the early

music programs and, modelled on the BBC’s success with Dr Who, science fiction series such as The Stranger (1964–65), Andra (1976) and two co-productions with ATN7 in Sydney: The Interpretaris (1966) and Vega 4 (1968). As a national broadcaster, the ABC took advantage of being able to centrally pre-record programs, such as its Children’s TV Club, for other city markets. By the 1960s, the club was replaced by a range of programs, with what would become a typical mix of filmed and live segments, mostly produced in Sydney and rebroadcast in other places from telerecordings. On the other hand, commercial television offerings—such as GTV9’s children’s session, the Tarax Show, or TVW7’s Children’s Channel Seven—were local, with appearances by children as performers or audiences, featuring sponsorship by local advertisers. These programs mixed variety, comedy sketches and exhibitions of ‘young talent’. In addition to cheaper, locally produced children’s shows, commercial licensees had the advantage of a ready-made stock of high-quality imported programming, largely from the US market. The Walt Disney company had proved that children could become a valuable demographic for advertisers, consumers of spin-off merchandising generated by its highly successful Mickey Mouse Club. Having recouped their production costs at home, this program and others could effectively be dumped into small media markets like Australia at a fraction of the cost to broadcasters of Australian content. Many cartoons and other high-quality filmed dramas that originally had been produced for US network family viewing—Westerns (Rin Tin Tin) and sit-coms (Gomer Pyle USMC, McHale’s Navy, Bewitched)—became staples of after-school schedules on commercial television from the 1960s to the 1980s. However, innovative programming for younger children was also a feature of commercial broadcasting, particularly at Channel 0 (later 10). The Magic Circle Club, produced by Godfrey Philip for ATV0, combined elements of pantomime, fairytale, music and much-loved characters. It won a Logie for Outstanding Contribution to Children’s Television in 1966. When it ceased production, the ABC recruited the team for its own Adventure Island. Regulation to ensure Australian content has been a major driver of children’s cultural production across a range of media. The 1953 Royal Commission on Television addressed submissions from parents and teachers concerned with the predicted dominance of American programs on Australian television, and the effects on children of violence and commercialism. In 1956 the Australian Broadcasting Control Board established the Children’s Advisory Committee. Advocacy for appropriate cultural content for children gained momentum with the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972.

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citizen journalism Catch-up television applications and program-based apps have developed as broadcasters focus on the lucrative online and mobile device market. The ABC’s iView led the way in 2008, developing dedicated embedded players for streamed children’s video on its ABC3 and ABC4Kids websites.

anthology series Winners (1986) and Touch the Sun (1988). More recently, ACTF series such as Round the Twist (1989–2001) have sold strongly internationally. The ACTF increasingly has become involved in developing or co-financing Australian–international co-productions such as The Genie from Down Under (1996–98) and Dance Academy (2010–13). Other independent producers, such as Jonathan M. Shiff, have enjoyed international sales. Child advocacy groups also play an ongoing role in monitoring the quality and social impact of children’s content. The Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) is a not-forprofit community organisation focused on issues of child well-being associated with media. First established in 1993 as Young Media Australia, it became the ACCM in 2009. It also sponsors and circulates research and provides guidance to parents on issues such as violence, advertising and sexual content in the media. Pay television broadcasting from 1995 introduced multi-channel services, including packaged children’s channels from global media corporations such as Disney, Nickelodeon and, later, CBeebies (the BBC’s preschool brand). At the same time, media deregulation worldwide and the advent of the internet fragmented markets. Commercial terrestrial broadcasters responded by scheduling adult programs in the late afternoon. The children’s channels became subscription drivers. Digital terrestrial television commenced in 2001; however, only the national broadcasters were permitted to multi-channel until 2009. The ABC operated a combined children’s and youth digital channel, ABC Kids/ Fly TV, from 2001 until 2004, with a largely imported schedule but significant online synergies. From 2004, ABC2 scheduled a substantial daytime preschool block. In 2009, following concerted lobbying—particularly from the ACTF—the federal government allocated new funding for a dedicated school-age children’s channel (ABC3), facilitating new content commissions and in-house production for the first time in decades. Networks Nine and Ten also introduced youth-focused free-to-air digital channels (Go! and Eleven) in 2010–11. Digitisation of media companies worldwide and the dramatic rise in internet use has seen cross-platform deployment of content by most Australian broadcasters. ABC Online was an early pioneer of television–web synergies, with youth-focused music, science and news sites. A 2007 restructure created a new division, ABC Multiplatform. Much preschool and youth drama—for example, dirtgirlworld—is now commissioned or acquired together with rich multimedia applications, or associated websites with games or social media tools. ABC3’s Studio 3 is an example of a fully integrated multiplatform concept, mobilising content from television, online and the ABC’s Triple J youth radio network.

REFs: S. Cunningham and E. Jacka, ‘Production Companies II: Children’s Television Producers’, in Australian Television and International Mediascapes (1996); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983); V. Lindesay, The Way We Were (1983). LEONIE RUTHERFORD

CHRIS T IA N ME DIA A S S OCIAT ION see religious

broadcasting

CIRCUL AT ION see audience research; Audit Bureau of Circulations CIRCUL AT IONS A UDIT BOA RD see Audit Bureau of

Circulations

C ITIZEN JO U R N ALISM Citizen journalism came to the fore most strongly in the final decade of the 20th century, understood either as a description of radical anti-establishment reporters working outside the mainstream media corporations (such as IndyMedia reporters providing alternative coverage of the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999) or as altruistic volunteers eager to ‘have their say’ in the newspapers, broadcast news or web pages of the day. The rise of the blogosphere, mainly in the United States and Asia, allowed hitherto occasional citizen reporters to become more systematic in their approach, setting up ‘web logs’ of news, events and opinions; the term was shortened to ‘blog’. The Australian history of news blogging is much more recent, and more prone to debate about who is a blogger—and even about who may blog. The one-time public servant Greg Jericho, who blogged under the pseudonym ‘Grog’s Gamut’, found himself at the centre of exactly that kind of debate in 2010, and subsequently left the Australian Public Service to continue blogging and for a career as a media researcher. Elspeth Tilley and John Cokley’s Deconstructing the Discourse of Citizen Journalism (2008) describes some of the myths that have developed around citizen journalists: they are ‘Crusoe-like Lone Rangers, free from commercial pressures and organisational loyalties and offering an independent voice of the people’; they are ‘noble citizens’ who champion truth and objectivity; and citizen journalism offers a ‘perfect plurality’, many more voices as a counter-balance to perceived bias in corporate media. Other less complimentary descriptions depict citizen journalists as dangerously unqualified

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clarke, marcus andrew hislop (1846–81) rejecting institutional stages of production where ‘editing’, ‘approval’, ‘production’ or ‘quality assurance’ take place. The creative producers— be they citizen journalists, or musicians using iTunes, farmers using local markets or online shopkeepers using eBay—emphasise the intrinsic value of their creativity, even if it turns out raw and less perfectly structured than the manufactured variety.

amateurs, or as freelancers threatening the professional market share of employed journalists. Accepting its contested nature, citizen journalism in Australia has roots deeper than the 1999 WTO riots or even the 1980s phenomena of civic journalism and public journalism, which are both forms of consultation of citizens by professional journalists, and not to be confused with citizen journalism. Many citizen journalists here sprang from the emergence in the 1970s and 1980s of vocational tertiary journalism education programs. A new group entered the news production sphere, trained in the practices of institutional journalism but never having worked in established newsrooms where the ‘cadetship’ model had dominated. They began producing news and feature products (including photography) as part of their studies, and were encouraged to sell their work into the established media market. New ‘street’ publications and the community radio and television sector, enabled by the gradual democratisation of journalism technologies such as electronic phototypesetting and desktop editing and publishing, created a market for many. This has continued to the point where more paid journalism positions now exist in Australia outside major newsrooms than within the media establishment, without the total number of positions having been drastically reduced. A related understanding of citizen journalism includes those who once worked within institutional frameworks such as newspapers, but have then established themselves as independent journalists or commentators. Charmian Clift left the newspaper establishment in the mid-20th century but was re-engaged as a casual columnist on the basis of her dual fame as a novelist and the wife of an even more famous novelist, George Johnston. Filmmaker and journalist John Pilger, and writers Wilfred Burchett, Stephen Mayne, Margaret Simons and Margo Kingston, have been among the best-known Australians in this model. Australian citizen journalists contribute to online news communities such as Wikinews, an offshoot of the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikinews defines itself as ‘a news source written entirely by its users’, and maintains that its content is neither ‘press releases [nor] source documents, advertisements, scientific papers, encyclopedic articles or editorials’. Also in the mix is ‘user-generated content’—that layer of words, images and sounds encouraged by publishers who find production more cost-effective when they advertise for audience members to send in their own words, pictures, audio or video recordings, to accompany reports by staff journalists or other ‘freelancers’. Taking a wider view, citizen journalism in Australia is part of a general global movement among creative producers to take their work direct to paying markets and intended customers,

JOHN COKLEY

C LAR KE, M AR C U S AN D R EW H ISLO P (1846–81) Marcus Clarke was an iconoclastic ‘man of letters’ in Melbourne in the 1860s and 1870s. He entertained and informed that city’s burgeoning middle class with his satirical newspaper sketches and columns, journalism, essays, plays, pamphlets and fiction. His best-known literary work, For the Term of His Natural Life (1874), was initially written as monthly installments in the Australian Journal. A catalyst for Melbourne’s post-gold rush cultural florescence, Clarke helped to establish a string of literary clubs, notably the Yorick and Cave of Adullam, and promoted a new artistic identity—the urban bohemian writer. Clarke began a journalistic career in 1867 at the Argus. With his column, the ‘Peripatetic Philosopher’, a blasé, cynical observer of the goings-on of Melbourne society and types, he succeeded in Australianising the Parisian flâneur, a wandering recorder of urban life and spectacle. He subsequently worked as a freelance journalist for the Melbourne Herald, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and the Melbourne Age, simultaneously serving as sub-librarian of the Melbourne Public Library. Clarke self-published and edited the Colonial Monthly in 1868–69; it was a vehicle for emerging writers and illustrators, later absorbed into the Australian Journal (1865–1962), which he edited for a time. For the theatre, he wrote adaptations of French classics, as well as pantomimes, burlesques and comic musicals. Clarke’s sense of the cutting edge was apparent in his slum journalism, drawn from incognito forays into Melbourne’s ‘lower bohemia’ of homeless shelters, brothels and criminal warrens. A growing interest in the psychological and social effects of punishment, and the legacy of convictism, inspired a documentary series of articles on the penitentiary at Port Arthur, and then his novel. In 1881, an insolvent Clarke lost his position at the library, forfeited his home and died suddenly at age 35. His enduring contribution to the late 19th-century Australian press was the refinement of a modern style of journalism to describe, celebrate and critique the colonial city. REFs: L.T. Hergenhan (ed.), A Colonial City (1972); A. McCann, Marcus Clarke’s Bohemia (2004). TONY MOORE

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colour in print media printed flat. Eleven months later, the 78-year-old weekly closed. After the war, the proprietors of the Australasian envisaged re-launching it as the Australasian Post with ‘All rotogravure. Good splashes of colour’. The British firm that bought the parent Argus in 1947 spent a fortune on new equipment, including a pair of colour offset presses during 1950–51, making it the only Australian daily to offer advertisers colour printing on its news pages. On 28 July 1952, it established a world first by synchronising offset on one side of the page with letterpress on the other in perfect register—at least as far as that quality was then accepted. However, the spoilage rate remained astronomical and the process was extremely costly. Despite this, the Argus produced news photographs in full colour during the 1954 Royal visit. In 1958, advertisers experimented with colour sheets to counter the punch of black and white television. Yet obstacles remained: pre-prints consumed time and colour pages had to be printed separately. Even using its Giganticolor, the Melbourne Herald needed more than 40 hours to produce a wrap-around for the 1967 Victorian Football League (VFL) Grand Final. Nonetheless, between 1967 and 1968 the sheets from John Fairfax & Sons’ Giganticolor increased from 53 to 90 million. With longer production times and smaller runs, magazines took the lead. Kenmure Press achieved striking colours for Man Junior covers from 1948. In the inaugural Australian Home and Garden Annual that year, 19 of its 116 pages used more than one colour. Of the 132 pages in the 1963 edition, 30 carried colour. The printing quality remained poor, however, as the full-colour front cover and advertisements provided very little definition of faces or figures, the tonings looked bleached and most pages with more than one colour were ‘pick-out’. Art and Australia was among the first glossies to appear, in 1963. Shortly afterwards, colour printing on quality stock moved from the luxurious to the everyday, aided by jet freight to Dai Nippon in Hong Kong. Developments in several fields came together for the launches of POL in 1968 and Dolly in 1970. As with all aspects of mass media advertising, the impetus for more colour of a higher quality came from those who paid the printer. Consumer surveys indicated that full-page, full-colour advertisements gained the attention of 60 per cent of magazine readers. Early in 1958, Southdown Press began planning to increase the colour in New Idea and TV Week by switching from letterpress to web offset before 1963. In 1964, Woman’s Day introduced state editions so that firms could publicise products regionally in colour. The production manager at the Land acknowledged that his weekly had ‘decided to go in for a web offset plant because of growing enquiries from advertisers for the use of colour’.

CODES O F E TH I C S see ethics

C O L O UR I N PRI NT M EDIA Two of the earliest colour pages in the Australian media appeared as supplements in the Christmas 1883 issue of the Australasian Sketcher. From the 1860s, chromolithographs by Troedels in Melbourne had demonstrated that an Australian printer could create the finest-quality publicity posters. An equivalent standard in books began with the 1915 memorial volume for J.J. Hilder, which led the Smith and Julius Studios to publish Art in Australia from 1916 and the Home from 1919. Despite such achievements, quality colour publications remained showpieces for another 50 years. Until the installation of web offsets in the 1960s, colour printing in newspapers and periodicals usually meant one colour in addition to black. When two or more colours were applied, they almost never overlapped—or even touched—because the registration process (positioning the colours exactly) was so inaccurate. The favoured method was known as ‘pick-out’, as in comic strips. Australians saw their first local comic book, the Comic Australian, appear in 1911 (continuing until 1913) with colour on four pages. In the late 1930s, Smith’s Weekly sought to reclaim its readership with a coloured comic using a single overlay, and in 1939, (Sir) Frank Packer designed the new Sunday Telegraph around 16 pages of coloured comics shipped from California—until war forced their replacement with local ‘pick-out’ strips. Brisbane’s Courier printed two- or three-colour supplements from 1903 and the Orange Advocate (NSW) managed two-colour advertisements in 1927 without special equipment. In 1926, the Melbourne Argus installed a web offset capable of printing in four colours, which it used for art reproductions and coverage of the Melbourne Cup. Additional plant made the Argus printery capable of 9500 sheets per hour in two or three colours, which it confined itself to using for the Australasian Pictorial Annual from 1933 and advertisements in the Argus Week-End Magazine from 1938. Colour in the daily press remained so much a novelty throughout the 1930s that Newspaper News reported its every appearance—such as when the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial used a four-colour process for a pair of display advertisements in 1934. More typical was the 1931 decision by Sydney’s Sunday Sun to abandon its rotogravure because of a scarcity of suitable inks. The Sydney Mail scored ‘a great advance in four-colour letterpress halftone pictorial reproduction’ in January 1938 to depict the Sesquicentenary procession; it did so by using a special camera and producing copper stereotype blocks in seven hours, rather than the usual seven days; in another innovation, the pages were

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comics new medium. For Smith’s Weekly, the comic strip provided a new outlet for its highly acclaimed roster of illustrators and cartoonists, whose work was already a key selling point. The comparatively staid Sydney Morning Herald, however, did not introduce comic strips until 25 years later, with the debut in 1945 of C.S. Gould’s comic-strip canine, ‘Shaggy’. However, any newspaper proprietor who doubted the circulation-building capacity of the comic strip need have looked no further than James (Jimmy) Bancks’ backyard urchin, Ginger Meggs. Beginning as a minor character in Bancks’ strip, ‘Us Fellers’ (Sunday Sun, 1921), Meggs quickly became the undisputed star, whose adventures were compiled into books (The Sunbeams Book series, 1924–51; thereafter Ginger Meggs Annual, 1952–59) and adapted for the cinema (Those Terrible Twins, 1925). When ‘Ginger Meggs’ (as it was now called) was briefly moved from the front page of the ‘Sunbeams’ comics supplement, Bancks successfully claimed breach of contract and took ‘Ginger Meggs’ to the Daily Telegraph, published by his friend (Sir) Frank Packer, in 1951; he was followed by an estimated 80,000 former Sunday Sun readers. The ‘funnies’, as they came to be known, eventually broadened their humorous parameters; the adventure serial demonstrated the comic strip’s capacity to sustain readers’ interest in lengthy storylines, thereby compelling them to purchase each daily or weekly edition for the next episode. Oddly enough, women’s magazines did much to popularise this new format by using pivotal American examples of the genre, such as Lee Falk’s dual heroes, ‘Mandrake the Magician’ (commencing in the Australian Women’s Weekly, 1934) and ‘The Phantom’ (Australian Woman’s Mirror, 1936). These characters enjoyed iconic status among generations of Australians. Both series were distributed by the Yaffa Syndicate, established in the early 1920s and the Australian representative of the Hearst-owned King Features Syndicate, and symbolised the gradual inroads being made by American comics during the 1930s. Local publishers’ preference for cheaply syndicated American content drew the ire of the Australian Journalists’ Association, which claimed they robbed Australian writers and illustrators of work. Consolidated Press Ltd’s decision in November 1939 to include a 16-page comic supplement, with considerable American content, in the new Sunday Telegraph almost resulted in a split in the Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia. The situation was briefly reversed during World War II, when the Commonwealth government levied import licensing restrictions on non-essential goods from the United States, which blocked the importation of American comic books and syndicated comic-strip artwork intended for publication in Australia.

This commercial imperative came to the dailies late in 1960, with an eight-page tabloid liftout in the otherwise broadsheet Brisbane Courier-Mail to promote a real estate project on the Sunshine Coast. The next year, the Melbourne Herald published the first retail page in full colour for Coles. By July 1965, the Herald could produce 535,000 coloured sheets for New World Supermarkets with a wastage rate less than 2 per cent. Although the Australian Women’s Weekly had included colour from December 1936, its concern during the 1950s was to hold readers who might otherwise watch television. The Women’s Weekly also anticipated the competition for revenue from colour television by colouring its news pages in three regional editions in 1967. However, technical difficulties persisted. Web offset presses designed for national magazines were too expensive for most printers, so manufacturers reduced their size. The Caringbah Shire Pictorial had rolled off from an early example from 1954. Of the 35 offset plants operating in Australia by early 1966, 23 had been installed during the previous three years, with a further 14 in operation by 1970. During the 1990s, colour news photographs became the norm in virtually all dailies. HUMPHREY McQUEEN

COLOUR TRANSMISSION see commercial television C O M E D Y, R A D I O see radio comedy C O M E D Y, TE LE V I SIO N see television comedy

COMI CS The earliest incarnations of newspaper and magazine cartoons in Australia typically juxtaposed self-contained illustrations with typeset captions placed beneath them. The key difference between these single-panel cartoons and ‘comics’ is the latter’s dynamic integration of text and image within a consecutive series of illustrated panels. This greatly enhanced the medium’s potential for sequential narratives, which found their initial expression in newspaper comic strips throughout the 1920s and 1930s before migrating to the comic-book format in the 1940s. American comic strips provided the visual template for the first generation of Australian comic-strip illustrators. The publishers of Smith’s Weekly provided Stan Cross with recently purchased samples of the American series ‘The Gumps’ (1917–59), as the model for his own comic strip, ‘You & Me’ (1920–40). In 1951 it moved to the Sun News-Pictorial as ‘The Potts’, which adapted the domestic comedy to a recognisably Australian setting. The public acceptance of comic strips in Australia frequently depended on the editorial receptiveness of individual newspapers to this 97

comics rehabilitation—an ongoing process that may yet see the comic book prove to be more resilient than its newspaper forebear. Early Australian children’s magazines, most notably Pals (1920–27), were modelled on British children’s papers, which emphasised illustrated stories; however, these gradually gave way to a new generation of children’s weeklies, such as The Kookaburra (c.1931–32) and Fatty Finn’s Weekly (1934–35). But it was The Adventures of Buck Rogers (1936–53) that gave Australian readers their first glimpse of the modern comic book, consisting solely of comic-strip stories dedicated to a single character—which had been appearing in New Idea since 1934. Despite wartime newsprint rationing and embargoes on new ongoing periodicals, firms such as NSW Bookstall Co. and Frank Johnson Publications, drawing on their respective expertise in publishing paperback novels and popular magazines, produced some of the earliest Australian-drawn comic books, including Jimmy Rodney on Secret Service (1940) and Amazing (1941). The late 1940s saw publishers re-enter the field to exploit consumer demand for escapist reading matter. Australian-drawn comics were soon forced to compete with growing numbers of American and British titles being reprinted domestically under licence, thereby sidestepping the ongoing ban on imported comics. By the mid-1950s, every major newspaper and magazine publisher utilised its editorial, printing and distribution networks to claim a share of this booming market, which was reportedly generating ₤3.25 million in annual sales revenue. Smaller firms, unable to source foreign content, commissioned locally drawn equivalents of popular American genres, such as Len Lawson’s masked cowboy, The Lone Avenger (1946–57), and Arthur Mather’s superhero, Captain Atom (1948–57). A mounting public outcry about these ‘American-styled’ comics led to state government censorship and industry self-regulation designed to prohibit, or otherwise regulate, the sale of comic books and other forms of objectionable literature throughout the 1950s. These pressures, coupled with rising newsprint costs, competition from television broadcasting from 1956 onwards, and the re-admittance of imported comics in 1960, forced all but a handful of Australian publishers to quit the industry. The emergence of Australian comic-book fandom throughout the 1970s and 1980s had profound consequences for the local comics industry. For decades, K.G Murray, Page Publications and the Federal Publishing Company had, by turns, monopolised the Australian market with cheap versions of American comics. However, they were now competing with comic shops, whose sales of imported American comics gradually outstripped the circulations of their equivalent Australian editions. Unwilling

These sanctions created openings for Australian adventure comic strips, including Reg Hicks’ intrepid aviator, ‘Tightrope Tim’ (Sunday Sun, 1941–49), and Kathleen O’Brien’s curvaceous heroine, ‘Wanda the War Girl’ (Sunday Telegraph, 1943–51). The war also reinvigorated the vogue for ‘Digger’ humour, most visibly in Stan Cross’s ‘Wally and the Major’ (Melbourne Herald, 1940–79) and Alex Gurney’s much-loved larrikins, ‘Bluey and Curley’ (Sun News-Pictorial, 1941–75). However, audiences’ growing preference for radio and television news steadily eroded newspaper circulations and hastened newspaper mergers and closures, which dramatically reduced publishing opportunities for Australian cartoonists. Nonetheless, new series gained traction with readers, including John Dixon’s outback adventure, ‘Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor’ (Sun-Herald, 1959–86) and Monty Wedd’s comic-strip biography of ‘Ned Kelly’ (Sunday Mirror, 1974–77). Australia’s exotic fauna remained a popular subject, as seen in Ken Emerson’s ‘The Warrumbunglers’ (Sun-Herald, 1977–2010), Gary Clark’s ‘Swamp’ (Sunshine Coast Daily, 1981– ) and Sean Leahy’s ‘Beyond the Black Stump’ (Courier-Mail, 1988– ). By the early 1980s, however, Australian comic strips remained vastly outnumbered by foreign content in all metropolitan and national newspapers. Australian cartoonists rarely had access to newspaper syndication opportunities. This situation changed with the emergence of domestic syndicates specialising in Australian comic strips. Sol Shifrin’s Inter Continental Features secured national and international sales of Gerry Lants’ ‘Basil’ (Melbourne Herald, c.1970–80) and Allan Salisbury’s ‘The Old Timer’ (thereafter ‘Snake Tales’, Daily Telegraph, 1974– ), while Auspac Media (est. 1988) currently syndicates numerous Australian comic strips, including Roger Fletcher’s ‘Torkan’ (Sunday Telegraph, 1976– ). Comic strips served as a bridge between cinema and television, attaining their peak popularity during the inter-war decades. The relative decline of Australian comic strips in the post-war era is ironic, as newspapers resorted to more illustrative layouts to compete with television and, more recently, online media. Yet, by ignoring the graphic appeal of the comic strip, Australian publishers have neglected the very medium that once lent visual dynamism to newspapers and commanded the loyalty of thousands of readers. Despite its superficial resemblance to the comic strip, the comic book has proven to be a far more controversial medium, enduring periodic bouts of official sanction and social condemnation while fending off economic challenges posed by foreign imports and rival electronic media. Yet its tumultuous history has been punctuated by episodes of creative innovation, audience regeneration and cultural

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commercial radio first public demonstration of radio in Australia, and soon organisations began agitating for the introduction of regular broadcasting services. Australian broadcasting officially commenced in 1923. A conference the following year agreed to a bifurcated system, with A-class stations maintained by revenue from listeners’ licence fees and some advertising, and B-class stations— very much a residual category—continuing to do little more than broadcast radio concerts. In 1932, the A-class stations were nationalised to form the basis of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). B-class (or ‘commercial’, as they preferred to be known) stations, many of which had passed into the hands of newspaper, religious and political interests, were allowed to continue and some new licences were granted. In 1930, they formed what became the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (FARB), now Commercial Radio Australia (CRA). By 1935, Australia had more than 60 commercial stations. They were heavily reliant on the importation of American transcription discs containing music, dramas and even advertisements. The popular Australian radio serial Dad and Dave launched in 1937; partly inspired by the American serial Amos ’n’ Andy, it was designed to promote Wrigley’s chewing gum. Most stations had ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunts’— homely, comforting and wise personalities who appealed to adults as well as children. Commercial stations and the ABC both provided ambitious staged broadcasts of cricket Tests between England and Australia. The commercials formed relays to cover special events, such as the 1932 opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, broadcast some parliamentary sittings and installed themselves in election tally rooms. These were ‘prestige’ broadcasts, explicitly designed to challenge the ABC’s claim to be the national broadcaster. In 1938, the most enduring commercial network, Macquarie (with 2GB Sydney as its linchpin), was formed to appeal to advertisers wanting a national reach. The state’s role increased in World War II, with the new Department of Information monitoring and censoring programs on security grounds. Following the recommendation of a Parliamentary Joint Committee, a single Act was passed regulating the commercial sector and guaranteeing the ABC’s independence. The Broadcasting Act 1942 stipulated that at least 2.5  per cent of radio time be devoted to the work of Australian composers; this Australian content quota was to become a constant irritant to the commercial industry. Newsprint rationing and restrictions on the importation of American transcription discs heightened radio’s appeal to advertisers and encouraged a local production industry. Steering the shape and prosperity of commercial radio in the 1940s were major advertising

to cater to the niche fan market, and steadily losing casual readers to colour television, videos and computer games, Australia’s remaining comics publishers ceased operations by the mid-1980s. Frew Publications’ long-running series, The Phantom (1948– ), is now the last surviving remnant of Australia’s once-thriving comic-book industry. The vacuum created by their departure was filled by a new generation of Australian artists, galvanised by their exposure to international comics culture through comic shops, fanzines and conventions. Their works ranged from visceral horror (Vampire, 1975–79) and experimental anthologies (Fox Comics, 1984–90) to ‘ocker’ variations on superheroes (Southern Squadron, 1987–89). The popularity of Japanese comics (‘manga’) became evident in Australian comics, most notably in ‘Hedrax’ (serialised in Eureka, 1988) and the locally-drawn ‘manga’ anthology, OzTaku (2004–07). However, these publications were largely self-funded ventures, and suffered from irregular publishing schedules and erratic distribution, thereby limiting their exposure to wider audiences. Denied access to the commercial publishing infrastructure that once underpinned Australia’s comic book industry, local artists have turned to alternate channels to reach their audiences. Dillon Naylor’s anarchic comic, Da’n’Dill (1992–99), was distributed via showbags, while the resurgent popularity of children’s magazines, led by K-Zone (2000– ), has provided new outlets for Australian comics. Ironically, Australian children’s literature— long upheld as an antidote to the pernicious influence of comic books—has fostered the current vogue for ‘graphic novels’. Early examples of these long-form comics date back to Syd Nicholls’ Middy Malone: A Book of Pirates (1941), but the critical and commercial success garnered by Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006) has spurred interest in ostensibly ‘adult’ works, such as Nicki Greenberg’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby (2007). REFs: L. Foyle, ‘The Evolution of Comics in Australia’, Australian Jnl of Comedy, 8(1) (2002); J. Ryan, Panel by Panel (1979); A. Shiell (ed.), Bonzer (1998). KEVIN PATRICK

COMMERCI A L RADIO The Wireless Telegraphy Act 1905 granted Australia’s fledgling federal government control of the developing field of radio-communications. Amateur experimenters and professional engineers interested in the two-way, point-to-point possibilities of radio telegraphy competed with, and were gradually vanquished by, retailing, manufacturing and other business interests, which saw greater commercial possibilities in providing regular content on a point-to-multipoint basis. In Sydney in 1919, Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) sponsored the 99

commercial radio agencies. The Australian arm of the American behemoth J. Walter Thompson, handling the Lever Brothers account, introduced the Lux Radio Theatre and Australia’s Amateur Hour, while George Patterson established the Colgate Palmolive radio production unit. A local star system was created, serials were recorded live—usually in front of an audience—and Macquarie formed a production arm, ARTRANSA, to export programs to New Zealand and South Africa. Quiz and game shows, with their heavy reliance on listener involvement, remained hugely popular. In 1949, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) was created as a statutory authority to regulate the industry, although the Postmaster-General’s Department retained powers to award and revoke licences. The ABCB survived by trying not to offend the government or powerful interests, and rejected thousands of applications for new commercial licences, citing a shortage of available frequencies. Inspectors visited each station regularly to ensure the provision of ‘adequate and comprehensive’ programs, making recommendations rather than rulings. The Broadcasting and Television Act 1956 legislated for a dual television system, as with radio, and doubled the local music quota to 5 per cent. In 1958, the 34-page Broadcasting Program Standards introduced self-regulatory codes. Television displaced radio as the sole medium of electronic entertainment in the home, and introduced a new competitor for advertising revenue. Several commercial radio stations hedged their bets by buying into commercial television. The decision to allow television transmission in parts of the VHF band usually designated for FM radio effectively insulated AM stations from the major new threat. In a 1956 memo entitled ‘Television Counter Measures’, a Macquarie executive wrote of the need to intensify local advertising and an active interest in community affairs, promote microphone ‘personalities’ and encourage the sale of car and transistor radios. Radio changed from being a family to a highly individualised medium, with one radio for each person over the age of 16 by 1962. Broadcasters began targeting separate audiences instead of the whole family. In 1958, the first Australian ‘Top 40’ music program had been introduced to 2UE by Bob Rogers, and many other stations rushed to follow suit. Weather and traffic reporting improved. Most commercial stations became increasingly interested in ‘actuality’ broadcasts, with reporters using telephones to directly broadcast news stories and on-the-spot interviews. The success of ‘conversation’ programs in the United States also demonstrated to Australian radio executives that the telephone had other uses, and in 1967 the Broadcasting Program Standards were amended to allow the recording and rebroadcasting of telephone calls. Established radio presenters like Norman Banks could now

legally take open-line calls; they were joined by a new generation of talkback hosts, including John Laws. In 1956–57, with the advent of television, radio profits fell, but resumed a sharp upward spiral the following year. By 1960–61, only three of the 110 commercial stations were making a loss. Radio drama was the biggest casualty, as writers, producers and audiences turned to television. In the 1950s many commercial stations moved into ethnic broadcasting (particularly in Greek and Italian), with advertising support from local businesses. This programming increased the range of music and sports news available to Australian listeners until the late 1960s, when some station managements began withdrawing from the field because of rising program costs and competition. Managements also wanted a more uniform station image. Between 1947 and 1971, Australia’s population nearly doubled, but only 13 new commercial stations were licensed—principally in the regions. The Whitlam Labor government spearheaded the licensing of FM and new AM stations, the awarding of experimental licences for non-profit community access stations and the abolition of listeners’ licence fees. The community radio sector expanded due to delays in the awarding of commercial FM licences, for which FARB’s lobbying was partly responsible. When commercial FM finally debuted in 1980, playlists were more varied than the Top 40 format, the rate of rotation was low and the number of advertisements was restricted. As AM stations were prevented from simulcasting in FM, in the mid-1980s they switched to broadcasting in stereo to improve their sound quality, but listeners showed little interest in acquiring stereo receivers. With its superior sound quality and appeal to younger audiences, FM radio came to be associated with music and comedy, and AM radio with news and talk. AM stations increasingly vied for ratings success by signing up talkback hosts with strong, sometimes deliberately provocative, opinions. In 1985, the beleaguered 2GB, which had adopted ‘Newstalk’ as its slogan, lured John Laws from 2UE to host the morning session for a salary in excess of $1 million. ‘The King’ of Australian radio lifted the station’s advertising receipts by more than 50 per cent and substantially increased ratings. By 1986, with the opening of the frequency spectrum, Australia had 139 commercial stations. Changing community values and a move towards deregulation saw the 1958 Program Standards cut from 34 to four pages and the removal of the advertising time limit (18 minutes per hour) in competitive markets. The Macquarie Network formed MACSAT to transmit program content to 32 stations. Commercial stations also syndicated music programs and formats. Since 1984, the radio production

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commercial radio australia house mcm entertainment has been producing Take 40, a countdown of the country’s most popular songs, from 2Day-FM. In 1988, the Hawke Labor government announced the National Radio Plan for metropolitan services. It involved the conversion of two AM stations to FM in each mainland capital city and the staggered introduction of new commercial FM stations in these cities. New licences would be awarded by tender, with the licence going to the highest bidder rather being awarded than on the basis of commercial viability. More than half of Australia’s metropolitan commercial stations changed hands in 1986–89, with record prices paid. The radio industry was collectively in debt in 1990–91. The Macquarie Network was sold off in pieces, but some newer players expanded quickly: licence auctions in 1989 allowed Austereo to form the first national FM network. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 removed restrictions on foreign ownership, as well as the cap on the number of stations a company could own. As a result, station ownership consolidated rapidly, and in the mid- to late 1990s there was considerable overseas investment. The Act also ushered in a new industry-based self-regulatory regime, the limitations of which were demonstrated by the ‘cash for comment’ scandal of 1999. Australian music quotas were as high as 25 per cent for formats such as contemporary rock and pop, but as low as 5 per cent for niche programs. These quotas did not induce commercial stations to program new Australian artists or to broaden the mainstream musical base. Top 40, middle-of-the-road and easy-listening formats dominated metropolitan music stations on the AM band. Commercial FM was dominated by album-oriented rock. Twenty-five- to 39-yearolds, rather than teenagers, came to be seen as the safest source of advertising revenue, and managements competed for this audience through on-air personalities rather than music content. The number of journalists employed in commercial radio fell by as much as a third between 1986 and 1996. By 2003, Southern Cross Broadcasting was sending its metropolitan news bulletins to 177 commercial stations. The provision of news and current affairs was effectively abandoned in favour of talkback. By 2000, half of all metropolitan stations and 38  per cent of all large regional stations carried talkback. The advent of mobile phones increased the genre’s popularity. FM networks such as Triple M moved towards talk-oriented programming, with more news, sport, entertainment and gossip, and personality-driven shows around ensembles such as Kyle and Jackie O, Merrick and Rosso, and Hamish and Andy. By 2004, CRA could classify only 10 per cent of commercial stations on air as independent. There were three major metropolitan owners:

Austereo, the Australian Radio Network (ARN) and DMG Radio Australia. In 2011, Southern Cross Media purchased a majority of Austereo. Australian radio stations faced the challenge of remaining attractive to audiences and advertisers as portable audio devices such as MP3 players grew in popularity. The ‘block’ programming of many ABC stations meant they adapted better to the environment of podcasting than commercial stations, with their continuous ‘flow’ programming. In addition, the capacity to create new revenue streams by selling music downloads was limited by copyright. Many commercial stations, networks and presenters moved to audio stream their programs and use their websites to provide program and personality information, conduct promotions and interact with listeners. The introduction of digital radio to Australia was—perhaps predictably—protracted, with concern about the most appropriate technology, the cost of infrastructure and receivers, and the role of existing commercial licensees. In 2004, the Australian Broadcasting Authority announced a five-year moratorium on the issue of new commercial digital licences in order to protect the incumbents and signalled that digital radio may never fully replace analogue services. In 2006, the government unveiled plans for a staged roll-out of digital ABC, SBS and commercial services, which commenced in the major capitals in 2009. While trials began in Canberra and Darwin the following year, the digital roll-out to regional Australia remains in the planning stage. REF: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

C O M M ER C IAL R AD IO AU STR ALIA In 1929, an association of B-class radio stations was formed under the chairmanship of 2KY’s Emil Voigt. At a meeting in Sydney in November 1930, around 33 B-class stations formally constituted the Australian Federation of Broadcasting Stations. 3KY’s M.B. Duffy was elected president, and offices were established in Sydney and Melbourne. At a time when A-class stations were being taken over by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, the federation agitated for higher transmitter power and against government censorship, and took a lead role in negotiations with the Australasian Performing Right Association. Although there were occasional fractures, the federation succeeded in representing nearly all B-class (commercial) stations. A good part of its success lay in its federal structure, with executives formed in each state. Office-holders conducted early US study trips and buying missions. As commercial radio expanded, along with its political clout, federation annual conventions became increasingly grand affairs. The Postmaster-General (PMG) usually opened the convention; the

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commercial radio australia speeches of politicians and regulators required tact when prickly issues such as Australian content quotas and advertising limits were raised. Journalists found it essential to be briefed on the different blocs: the network rajahs, the independent metropolitan delegates, and country station representatives. The federation consistently called for a statutory broadcasting authority separate from the political whims of the PMG, and advocated self-regulation. In 1936 it tackled disquiet about ‘over-commercialisation’ by agreeing to a flat agency commission on advertisements and recommending time limits on advertising. It also developed a Code of Ethics, centred on the need to prevent broadcasts of offensive or deceptive material. Although networks were generally responsible for organising relay broadcasts, the federation was sometimes deputed to do so, as during the 1938 Sesquicentenary celebrations. During World War II, the federation was preoccupied with censorship regulations; the shortage of overseas transcription discs, due to currency restrictions; and the provision of news services by members, the ABC and Australian Associated Press. Anxious to demonstrate its social utility, the federation formed the Radio War Service Committee. With broadcasting a hot political issue after the war, the federation again took the initiative, issuing its own Standards of Broadcasting Practice covering children’s programs, medical and Sunday advertising, and political broadcasts. Anxious to protect the interests of incumbent broadcasters, it warned the government against ‘premature decisions’ about FM radio in 1945. Initially sceptical about audience research, it established a Listener Survey Committee in 1949. The federation published a radio magazine, Broadcasting Business (renamed Commercial Broadcasting), and, more briefly, the Broadcast Bulletin. When the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) was established in 1949, the federation created a liaison committee. By 1955 meetings were reducing in frequency due to what the ABCB apologetically described as ‘other urgent business’—television. Over the next few years, the federation launched Radio Week, established the Australian Radio Advertising Bureau, promoted the sale of car and transistor radios, and established the Australian Record Awards (superseded by the ARIA Awards). After E. Lloyd Sommerlad was elected federal director of the re-named Federation of Australian Commercial Broadcasters in 1962, he noted that it enjoyed an ‘unusually favourable relationship’ with the Menzies Coalition government. Things were less cosy under the Whitlam Labor government’s media reforms. In response, the federation established a government relations committee, and introduced a somewhat anodyne Fairness Code for Broadcasters. In October 1975, the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters, as it was now, sought legal

advice on how the Department of the Media had licensed experimental community stations. FARB’s wily federal director, Des Foster, was relieved by the election of a Coalition government in December 1975. However, over the next few years the introduction of community radio, the Special Broadcasting Service and commercial FM radio, and a restriction denying many AM operators more than 15 per cent ownership in an FM licence, led to complaints about shortterm planning. There were also some histrionic warnings about the dismantling of ‘free enterprise’ broadcasting. In 1977, FARB opened a Canberra office. The organisation sought greater co-operation with the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (now Free TV Australia) and commercial broadcasters overseas and, in 1982, became an associate member of the National Association of Broadcasters in the United States. FARB worked with the Public Broadcasting Association of Australia and the ABCB’s successor, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, to define the parameters of fundraising and sponsorship for community stations, and periodically accused community stations of engaging in advertising. In 1986, seven FM members dissented from FARB’s submission to a government inquiry advocating the right for AM operators to convert to FM licences. As plans for the expansion of radio services were considered, FARB sarcastically declared that it was doubtful the ABT ‘could justify the renewal of its [own] metaphorical licence’. With massive industry upheaval and ownership changes as a result of the 1987 stockmarket crash, an advertising slump and the costs entailed in converting to FM, FARB threatened to run an on-air campaign before the 1990 election unless the Hawke Labor government introduced ‘rational planning’ for broadcasting. Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, industry groups were to be responsible for program content. FARB registered six codes of practice and was obliged to provide quarterly reports to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) on how complaints had been handled. FARB disagreed with the ABA’s critical 2001 report into cash for comment. To FARB’s chagrin, the ABA imposed three new standards on commercial radio licences relating to commercial agreements. Commercial Radio Australia (CRA), as FARB was known from 2002, persisted with the old listener diary method when soliciting tenders for ratings contracts because it wanted to see new electronic methods proven overseas. CRA successfully argued that incumbent broadcasters should be protected from new entrants to the digital radio market in return for industry investment in the technology. The Howard Coalition government chose CRA to conduct some digital trials from 2004, and in 2009 the CRA appointed the SMART agency to promote the digital rollout.

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commercial radio networks In 1988, the Commercial Radio Awards (‘RAWARDS’) had been introduced; in 2002 came a Hall of Fame. The annual awards ceremony and National Commercial Radio Conference were increasingly flashy affairs, with celebrity imports such as Clive James and Buzz Aldrin. Janet Cameron was FARB’s first female president in 1985–86. Joan Warner has been CEO since 2001. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (1999); FARB Papers (NFSA). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

COMMERCI A L RADIO NETWORKS Australian radio networks can be traced back to the 1920s, with the introduction of radio to Australia. Here we look at the development and current state of networking in Australia, and the regulatory system that propagated its growth. In the mid-1920s, the Postmaster-General’s Department settled on a system of A- and B-class stations. The regulator reasoned that this dual system would give listeners a choice of stations. The A-class stations were funded mostly through listener subscriptions, and in 1932 they became the government-funded ABC. The B-class stations were funded through advertising, and became the commercial stations we have today. This period from the 1930s, described as the golden age of radio, also saw the introduction of radio networks. The Australian Broadcasting Act 1942 controlled the allocation of frequency, content and ownership, but it did not make any provisions for the networking of radio. Networking has never been legally regulated. The commercial stations began to form networks because they were viewed as the best way to deliver large audiences to advertisers. To many stations, especially those in regional areas, this was also a way to lower expenses. Australian broadcasters were closely watching the establishment of two American networks, NBC and CBS, and were keen to follow this trend to prepare for the perceived dominance of the ABC as a national broadcaster. In 1930, Oswald Anderson, manager of 2UW Sydney, spearheaded the formation of the Federal Radio Network, later renamed the Commonwealth Broadcasting Network. Consisting of 2UW, 3DB, 4BC, 5AD, 6ML and some country stations, it was designed to split copyright and landline charges, and increase the stations’ appeal to advertisers hitherto deterred by the limited transmitter power of commercial stations. That year, 2UW and 3DB joined forces to provide a ‘ball-by-ball’ coverage of the Ashes Test matches in England. Two years later, Anderson presided over the coverage of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on 20 stations. In 1935, the powerful Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) entered into negotiations to lease 2CH Sydney from the NSW

Council of Churches as a hub for relays to its country stations. In October that year, the Lyons Coalition government introduced regulations designed to limit control by any one person or company to five radio stations throughout Australia. One minister estimated that two corporations—AWA and the Herald and Weekly Times—controlled 24 stations between them. The commercial industry, backed by newspapers with interests in broadcasting, erupted in protest; in a sign of the industry’s growing political clout, the government substituted a more lenient set of regulations providing for a maximum of eight stations to be owned by one company. Most of the networks in existence by 1938, including the Argus network in Victoria, the Advertiser network in South Australia, the Whitford Network in Western Australia and the Findlay Tasmanian Network/Tasmanian Broadcasting Network, were organised at the state level. This was partly because linking up even capital cities through landlines was expensive. There was one genuinely national network, the Major Network, which was centred on 2UE, 3DB, 4BK, 5AD and 6IX and later 7HT. The network virtually organised its stations on lines parallel with the placement of national features by Australia’s two dominant advertising agencies in broadcasting, J. Walter Thompson and George Patterson Pty Ltd. In 1938, the Macquarie Network arose from a restructure of Sir Hugh Denison’s newspaper interests. It comprised 20 member stations and five cooperating stations, with a potential audience of 94 per cent of Australia’s population. There was a parliamentary and public controversy in 1951 when London’s Bartholomew newspaper group, which had bought the Argus and its associated radio stations, purchased a controlling interest in Macquarie. The establishment of these networks was not viewed positively by the regulator, which proceeded to place ownership limits on the industry. Since networks such as Major and Macquarie could own, or have a controlling interest in, any number of stations, the PMG set an ownership limit of one station in a capital city, four in a state or a total of eight stations in the Commonwealth. While this limited the ownership of licences, it did not curtail the establishment of a network. When West Australian Newspapers, which already controlled four radio stations, made a bid for a substantial holding in another four stations in 1968, the Broadcasting and Television Act 1965 was amended to include radio. No person or company was to hold an interest in excess of 15 per cent in more than four commercial radio stations in any one state or eight in Australia, reinforcing the spirit of the 1935 legislation. The introduction of commercial FM radio in 1980 sowed the seeds of a new network. One of the original stations, 2MMM Sydney, bought EON-FM in 1986; it became 3MMM in 1988.

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commercial television Triple M stations in Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Auckland also emerged. By 1986, the Macquarie Network had spent $3 million on developing MACSAT to transmit program content—news bulletins, music, a midnight-to-dawn program and John Laws—to eight of its own stations, and another 24 subscribing stations. A sophisticated computer system triggered cue signals to input ostensibly ‘local’ news, weather, advertising and time calls. That year gave rise to a new company owned by Kerry Packer, Consolidated Broadcasting Corporation. But the bold, expensive talk format linking 2UE in Sydney with 3AW in Melbourne was a miserable failure, with audiences unable to adapt to the lack of local content. Under new cross-media ownership laws in 1987, an owner was effectively stopped from acquiring more than 15 per cent of a radio licence if it published a newspaper or owned a television station in the same service area. However, the limits on the scale of holdings in any one medium were loosened: operators could now own up to 16 radio stations. By now, three powerful commercial radio groups—each with interests in at least three metropolitan markets and a range of regional ones—had emerged. The Australian Radio Network, half owned by the American behemoth Clear Channel, had evolved from Alberts radio interests, with 2UW and 4BC as its linchpins. Hoyts Media was backed by the established cinema chain. It, in turn, had a strategic 14.9 per cent shareholding in its main network rival, Wesgo Holdings Ltd. Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA), the limit of ownership of radio licences in competitive markets was increased from one to two on the basis that the number of radio services had grown. Restrictions on foreign ownership were also lifted. As more FM licences became available, other FM networks—such as DMG Radio (owned by the London Daily Mail Group)—started to form. Adding to its regional network, DMG Radio was the successful bidder at the auction of two FM licences, one each in Sydney and Melbourne. In 2004, DMG opened Star 104.5 FM (Central Coast) and Nova 91.9 (Adelaide) and won the auction for further licences in the licences in an auction held for additional FM licences in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. DMG’s competitor, Austereo, owned FM stations in the capital cities and shares in regional stations in Newcastle and Canberra. A new player in regional radio also emerged. Macquarie Regional RadioWorks (now Southern Cross Austereo) purchased 32 stations owned by RG Capital and 57 owned by DMG. The rise of networks was rapid and the old networks gave way to new players. Macquarie Regional RadioWorks and the 2SM Super Network became two of the largest regional radio networks in Australia. The proliferation of networked program on a daily basis into regional Australia led to an

investigation by the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) to address the concerns of listeners to regional radio. They felt they were losing their local regional broadcasting content. The 2001 Inquiry into Regional Radio found that networks were not servicing their licence areas by providing enough local voices and content. The industry argued otherwise, with the Federation of Australian Broadcasters (now Commercial Radio Australia) stating that networking met ‘community needs, competitive issues, economic necessity and programming variety’. Concerns about an over-supply of networked programs to regional areas were addressed through proposed amendments to the BSA in 2006. The ACMA’s subsequent Local Content Levels Investigation made several recommendations that were directed only at regional radio and in particular the networks that owned the licences concerned. The amendments to the BSA introduced in 2007–08 effectively re-regulated regional radio to ensure a degree of local content. REFs: H. Criticos, ‘The Centralisation of Regional Radio: City versus Country in the Super Radio Network’, in M. Mollgaard (ed.), Radio and Society (2012) and ‘From Deregulation to Regulation: A Change for the Better for Regional Radio’, in C. Anyanwu et al. (eds), Refereed Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Conference (2013); B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009). HARRY CRITICOS

CO M M ER C IAL TELEVISIO N The origins of commercial television in Australia lie mainly in the evolution of the dual system of national and privately owned radio broadcasting between the two World Wars. When radio expanded dramatically in the 1930s, it was provided by the government-run ABC and a series of advertiser-supported private stations licensed by the government. The Australian government began considering the introduction of television in the late 1920s, but rejected its introduction until after World War II. In 1949, the Chifley Labor government decided to introduce television as a state-run service managed by the ABC, but lost office before this decision could be implemented. The subsequent Menzies Coalition government gave television a low priority, but in 1953 it decided it would be introduced as a dual system after a Royal Commission. Television broadcasting commenced on 16 September 1956. The first commercial services were licensed by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) in Sydney and Melbourne to consortia mainly made up of established newspaper, radio and electronic equipment manufacturers. Experience in a related field of entertainment was a key criterion. The dominant media groupings at the time were the Herald and Weekly Times (HSV7, Melbourne), the Fairfax family (ATN7,

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commercial television Sydney) and the Packer family (TCN9, Sydney). The government had decided it could afford to build the studios and transmitters for the ABC, but not for the commercial stations, so these interests invested heavily in the establishment of televisions. While the ABC looked to the BBC as its model, the first commercial stations looked to the United States. They paid attention to television stations in US cities of equivalent size to Sydney and Melbourne. The first commercial broadcasters were pleasantly surprised at how quickly television took off and the strong demand for advertising. They were all making a profit by 1959. In 1960, the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (now Free TV Australia) was formed. Government policy was to introduce television gradually to Australia. In 1959, two stations started in each of Brisbane and Adelaide and one in Perth. Despite the ABCB trying to license stations drawn from local interests, the Brisbane and Adelaide stations went to companies associated with the Sydney and Melbourne licensees—except for ADS7 in Adelaide, which went to a young Rupert Murdoch. A brief tussle occurred over how to bring television to regional Australia. The Sydney and Melbourne stations wanted country television to be a relay of city television, so that each centre could have two commercial television services. This did not eventuate, as the government decided it wanted country services to be independent and owned by local interests. As a result, between 1960 and 1965, commercial television services commenced in eastern regional Australia, with further regional services commencing up until 1988, when television commenced in Alice Springs. Commercial television is financed almost exclusively by advertising. The stations rent time to advertisers so they can broadcast commercials and the stations charge for that time, based on a notional audience. A market was thus created in which, over time, broadcasters found more and more sophisticated ways to dynamically price the stock of time they had available to extract the maximum possible from advertisers. They were aided by regulations designed to restrict advertising time to protect viewers, but which also meant that demand for advertising almost always exceeded supply. In order for this market to operate efficiently, there needs to be a stable convention between the broadcaster and the advertisers as to how this notional audience is calculated. From the beginning this convention has been that a representative sample of the potential audience will be surveyed as to what they watched and a statistical calculation then made as to the likely total audience. Methods of undertaking this research have changed with time, from door-to-door surveys, to diaries, to the current people meter method, in which sets in use and people watching are monitored electronically.

The broadcasters have always exerted a high degree control over the measurement system, paying for the bulk of the survey costs and determining when the surveys were conducted. This has caused friction between the broadcasters and advertisers from time to time, particularly before the start of the people meter. OzTAM, the current data provider, is a joint venture of the commercial and national broadcasters. By the mid-1960s, demand for advertising time was high and so were station profits. Pressure began to mount for a third commercial station in the capital cities to introduce more competition. Accordingly, the ABCB licensed new stations in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, which commenced in 1965. The increased competition between stations drove up the cost of programming and dampened increases in advertising rates, meaning the new stations struggled until the early 1970s, when the phenomenal success of Number 96 caused a turnaround in fortunes for the 0-10 Network. The first commercial broadcasters intended to be both program producers and aggregators of programming sourced from elsewhere. They not only built transmitters, but state of the art studios in which to produce local programs. They were determined they would retain control over their own programming and not cede it to advertisers, as had happened in commercial radio where a number of popular programs had been made by advertising agencies and sold to the stations. Initially local programming had to be live, until videotape recording and intercity coaxial cables became available in the early 1960s. The introduction of commercial television also coincided with a shift in the nature of US television programming, away from live programming beamed from New York network centres to filmed programming made in Hollywood and sold to the networks or syndicated to independent stations. This meant a large amount of US programming was imported for screening on Australian television, and proved to be very popular. Concern about this led the government from 1960 to start regulating for minimum levels of Australian content on commercial television. Broadcasters produced local studio-based programs themselves, such as news, current affairs, variety and talk shows, or did outside broadcasts of sporting events. However, they also started to use independent program packagers who delivered finished programs. Reg Grundy and Hector Crawford were among the first packagers, and their enterprises formed the start of an independent television production sector that expanded dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly as locally produced drama found larger audiences. The resurgence of the local feature film sector developed the creative infrastructure, and allowed a larger range of producers to take advantage of the popularity of mini-series

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commercial television and made-for-television movies in the 1980s. Underpinned by content regulation, government investment in production and the increasing demand for programming as pay television expanded in the United States and Europe, Grundy and Crawford, as well as new companies like Southern Star Entertainment and Beyond International, found they could produce television for both the domestic and international markets. Also in the 1970s, Kerry Packer revolutionised the presentation of news and current affairs as well as sport on commercial television, demonstrating how they could attract large audiences and dramatically increase advertising revenue. Commercial television and major sporting codes became increasingly enmeshed as sports broadcasting rights helped to pay for the cost of making previously amateur sports into professional businesses. Although the United States went to colour in 1954, the Australian transmission standard was the European PAL system, so Australia needed to wait until a PAL colour system was developed in the 1960s. Even so, the government remained cautious: colour did not start until March 1975. The transition to colour was one of the fastest in the world. Penetration reached 60 per cent in two years, and almost 80 per cent by 1979. It also led to a jump in homes using television that flowed through to increases in advertising revenue for broadcasters. The first satellite broadcast into Australia was a two-hour program beamed live from Expo ’67 in Montreal in June 1967, but the most significant use of satellites was the live broadcast of the first moon walk on 21 June 1969. An international network of satellites was being built that greatly facilitated communication and the distribution of television between nations. In 1973, under Labor Postmaster-General Lionel Bowen, the government began to consider the introduction of a domestic satellite for Australia, but it was not until 1986 that the first national satellite was launched. The impact of satellite broadcasting was profound. More than ever before, it allowed audiences to be bound together in both time and space, highlighting one of the great strengths of television: its ability to aggregate a large national audience for a live event. It also put in place the technology that allowed for the biggest restructure of commercial television since its commencement. The satellite made it possible for the Hawke Labor government to consider how it could extend television services to the whole of Australia, and how people in regional Australia could get access to the same level of services as those living in capital cities. At the same time, the government also considered changing the ownership rules from the two-station rule that had applied since the commencement of television. The satellite was used to introduce direct broadcast television services to remote Australia. Then, to equalise city and country television,

the government decided on the aggregation of regional licence areas so that the majority of the population had access to three commercial television services. Finally, in 1986, it introduced a prohibition against cross-media ownership while freeing up commercial television ownership by abolishing the two-station rule in favour of the 75 per cent national audience reach rule. Two things happened as result of these policies. First, the power of the Sydney and Melbourne stations was reinforced as they became the centre of national networks and gained power over regional television programming and access to some of their revenue streams. Aggregation was initially an economic disaster for regional television, which took at least five years to adjust and required the government to grant rebates on licence fees to assist with the transition. Second, the ownership changes coincided with the height of the 1980s asset price bubble that had already attracted some highly geared entrepreneurs like Christopher Skase, Alan Bond and Robert Holmes à Court into the television business. The stockmarket crash of 1987, a bidding war over foreign programming that inflated the cost of that programming and the overvalued nature of the assets in commercial television sent the sector into the red as the banks foreclosed on their debts. Kerry Packer, who had sold out to Bond for a vastly inflated price, bought back into the Nine Network at a discount. The other two networks were run by their bankers for two years until their debts were recovered and they returned to profit in the early 1990s. On 1 January 2001, commercial television commenced the latest technology conversion with the start of the transition to digital terrestrial television. The method of its introduction was controversial, depending on HDTV as the driver of take-up, along with the gift of additional spectrum during the transition period. The original analogue switch-off date of 2008 proved unworkable, and in 2006 a new date of 2013 was set. The national and the commercial broadcasters were also allowed to provide additional channels as a means of driving conversion. As the debt crisis was resolved, the government introduced a major reform of broadcasting law (Broadcasting Services Act 1992) that included an end to publicly contested licence renewals for commercial television and more self-regulation in program content, except for Australian content and children’s television. Further relaxation of ownership rules was being contemplated by the Abbott Coalition government in 2013–14. While the transition to digital television increasingly transformed production up to the present time, the government closely supervised the transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting. Each commercial channel now provides three additional channels of programming. In late 2013, the last analogue signal was switched off.

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commercial television networks In the 21st century, commercial television faces increased competition for eyeballs from pay television, internet television, and other forms of screen entertainment, but while its future may be uncertain for the moment, it remains a viable medium for the aggregation of audiences sufficiently large to attract advertisers. REFs: S. Hall, Supertoy (1976); N. Herd, Networking (2012). NICK HERD

COMMERCI A L TELEVISION NETWORKS Networking in commercial television is such an ordinary part of life that it is particularly difficult to understand that it was once seen as such a threat to the public interest. The rise of the internet and mobile communications has delivered a world in which many people are immersed in electronic networks that can deliver news and information. Networks in commercial television refer to groups of stations that are linked by any or all of common ownership, common programming or a common sales force to sell advertising. Throughout the history of commercial television in Australia, the attitude of the government towards networks has been variously oppositional or benign. To a large extent, this has been due to changing policy settings on two related policy issues: media ownership and control, and localism. The latter refers to the idea that stations should be providing services that are designed primarily to meet the needs of the licence area they serve. It is not hard to see why networking is attractive to broadcasters. First, it is a natural inclination for industrial markets of most kinds to move towards concentrations of ownership, if for no other reason than to reduce competition and maximise returns. Second, there are economies that can be made by pooling the cost of program acquisition and production—particularly when local production costs have always been greater than those of importing programs. Third, networks allow for greater strength in negotiation with national advertisers. This imperative has only increased since the rise of national buying agencies since the 1980s. For the government and public-interest groups, the opposition to networks has been primarily about fears that concentrations of ownership and control will increase the power of media owners and their degree of influence on news and information, and on public debate. This fear is not unreasonable, since those with media power have not refrained from using it from time to time—thus the concern with promoting diversity of ownership and encouraging localism as means of contesting concentration. Localism also springs from the fundamental idea that the spectrum is a public resource and the broadcasters have an important public duty to understand and meet the needs of the public,

not only for entertainment, but also for information and education. Fear of networking and promotion of localism arose with radio. The creation of a national network of ABC radio stations controlled by the government was to be a counterpoint to the essentially local nature of commercial radio. In 1935, rules were enacted to limit ownership to one station in a market and no more than two nationally. When television commenced, this rule was applied and the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) given the power to regulate networking in commercial television. There was no common ownership between the first four commercial stations in Sydney and Melbourne, but this did not mean there were no ties of common interest. These surfaced fairly quickly. In 1957, the owners of the four stations started talking about how they might be able to extend their interests into Brisbane when television started there. When applications were called, all applicants were associated in some way with the Melbourne and Sydney stations. In the first test of the ABCB’s power to regulate networking and support localism, the ABCB decided to reject all the applicants and call for fresh applicants. However, the government overruled the ABCB and the licences went to companies associated with John Fairfax & Sons and the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT). In Adelaide, Rupert Murdoch was the only genuine local applicant to get a licence, the other licence being associated with the HWT. In 1960, Sir Frank Packer extended his reach by gaining control of GTV9 in Melbourne. The first four-city network was established in 1962 under the name Network Seven, consisting of ATN7 (Sydney), HSV7 (Melbourne), BTQ7 (Brisbane) and ADS7 (Adelaide)—all connected to the HWT and Fairfax interests. The purpose of the network was to co-operate in the areas of live national programming, foreign program purchases and advertising sales. However, this degree of cooperation did not mean there was a single network programming feed, and member stations’ program schedules varied considerably. The expansion of commercial television to regional and rural Australia in 1959–60 brought a confrontation between the established broadcasters and the government over networking and control of program distribution. The Sydney and Melbourne broadcasters argued strongly that programming for the new broadcasters should be networked from the capital cities— and indeed they were associated with many of the applicants for the licences. Their case was that this would be a cheaper way to provide a service, and the new licence areas would get two commercial services instead of one. However, the preference for localism by the government prevailed, and each new market was licensed for only one commercial station, free from any control by the city stations.

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commercial television networks When country television started, the stations formed a company, Australian Television Facilities (ATF), to acquire and distribute programs. This was a form of cooperation that fell far short of networking. However, the new stations in Newcastle (NBN3) and Wollongong (WIN4) faced a problem because they were adjacent to Sydney, and many households had been watching Sydney television for years. Although they could produce their own local programming and ATF had purchased rights to foreign programming, the Sydney stations owned the prints of film programming and would not release them. In early 1963, the Postmaster-General issued an order designed to prevent this happening, but it was struck down shortly after by the High Court. The impasse was broken by Rupert Murdoch. In 1963, he bought into WIN4, and then outbid the Sydney stations for new US programming, threatening to start broadcasting into southern Sydney from Wollongong in competition with the Sydney stations. To avoid this, Frank Packer invited Murdoch to buy into TCN9, and together they bought into NBN3. With these deals, programming was released to the country stations. The issue of networking came up again in 1964, when the licences were awarded for the additional commercial channels in the capital cities and the companies holding the licences were listed on the stock exchange. A round of trading between Frank Packer, (Sir) Reginald Ansett and others resulted in Ansett having an ownership interest in more than two stations. At the same time, John Fairfax & Sons bought into CTC7 in Canberra. This seemed to be in breach of the ownership and control rules until it was found that ownership of any number of non-voting shares was permissible. The Menzies Coalition government changed the legislation to introduce the concept of a prescribed interest, set at 5 per cent of all classes of shares; however, it could not undo the ownership changes that had already taken place. Between 1964 and 1980, there were few significant changes in the ownership structures of commercial television. The capital city stations continued to develop programming and sales networks, while the country stations grew increasingly more profitable from their local monopolies. But in 1980 the question of networking came under intense public and legal scrutiny as a result of the acquisition of ATV in Melbourne and Ten in Sydney by Rupert Murdoch’s interests. This situation occurred as a result of the takeover of Ansett Airlines by Murdoch and Sir Peter Abeles, which put them in control of the stations. Although there was no breach of the ownership rules, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) ruled against the transaction on the basis that it was not in the public interest for one company to dominate the Ten Network. The appeal to the Adminis-

trative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) turned into a full review of networking and the government’s policies towards it. The AAT ruled not only that the transaction was not illegal, but that both cross-media ownership and networking were not against the public interest. The launch of the first domestic communications satellite in the mid-1980s greatly facilitated networking, and it was strongly advocated by the commercial television sector that one of its main uses be the distribution of television. In policy terms, the Hawke Labor government was motivated to see television made available to all Australians. Thus arose the idea that people in regional Australia should have access to the same level of services as those in the capital cities. In 1984, prior to the launch of the satellite in 1986, the ABT conducted an extensive inquiry into satellite program services. This inquiry highlighted two things. One was that, despite the very profitable nature of regional television stations, the diversity of programming was less than in the capital cities. The other was referred to as a ‘structural imbalance’ in the commercial television sector, which gave greatest power to the stations in Sydney and Melbourne. The Hawke government considered both how to ‘equalise’ city and regional services and how to address this structural imbalance through changes in the ownership rules. In 1985–86, Communications Minister Michael Duffy proposed a plan to restructure the ownership of commercial television. This plan would have created a series of regionally based networks and held in check the interests of the larger media companies. It may also have moved the commercial television sector to a structure similar to that in the United States, where network power is balanced by independent stations and a viable market in syndicated programming. However, this plan proved to be politically unpalatable. Instead, Treasurer Paul Keating’s political solution was adopted to abolish the two-station rule and replace it with an audience reach rule, meaning that individuals could control stations that reached up to 75 per cent of the Australian population. At the same time, a prohibition was introduced on cross-media ownership. The solution to equalisation was at first thought to be allowing regional stations to apply for supplementary licences, but this was rejected in favour of aggregation of markets in eastern Australia. Remote Australia began to be served by a direct satellite broadcast system. This meant that what had previously been three separate markets were made into one, and the stations were allowed to broadcast to the whole market. The effect of these two changes was the immediate entrenchment of networking of ownership and programming. The audience reach rule, combined with the need for companies like John Fairfax & Sons, the HWT and News Limited to divest their television interests,

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community broadcasting association of australia created new capital city networks of ownership. The stations in the newly aggregated markets also had to affiliate with one of the capital city networks in order to guarantee a supply of programming. These affiliation agreements usually required the network to supply the programming in return for a share of the advertising revenue of the affiliate. The government also had to provide financial relief to the regional stations so they could undertake the capital work involved in aggregation. These changes set the pattern we see today, in which there are three national programming networks, three capital city ownership networks (the Nine Entertainment Co., Seven West Media and Ten Network Holdings) and three regional ownership networks (WIN Corporation, the Southern Cross Media Group and Prime Media). The capital city networks control almost all the programming across the commercial television system. The variations from a national feed are mainly for insertion of local news and weather, local advertising and delayed coverage of live sporting events. Localism as a part of broadcasting policy has all but disappeared. In the period of public licence renewal inquiries from 1975–92, a great deal of attention was paid to this as measure of performance. Licensees were required to demonstrate they had undertaken research to ‘ascertain’ the needs of the community they served and then demonstrate how they had acted upon this. REF: N. Herd, Networking (2012). NICK HERD

COMMONW EALTH PRESS UNION The Commonwealth Press Union (CPU), formerly the Empire Press Union (EPU), was founded in 1908 to foster interchanges between newspaper journalists across the British empire. In 1909, the EPU held its first Imperial Press Conference in London, attended by journalists and managers who were warned of impending war with Germany. At this event, the Indian, Australian and New Zealand sections of the EPU began to address the disadvantages of distance and achieved early success in reducing press cable rates, a credo to which the organisation remained committed. Subsequent conferences concentrated on reducing cable rates, improving telecommunications and developing wireless for imperial purposes. After World War I, the conferences became regular five-yearly events, hosted by the Dominions (Canada 1920, Australia 1925, South Africa 1935) as well as Britain (1930). Between the wars, Australian conference delegations, led by members of the Fairfax family (1909, 1920, 1925), Theodore Fink (1930) and Delamore McCay (1935), played an active role in lobbying for further reductions in cable rates. Australian nationalism became more pronounced over the

period, most notably on matters of broadcasting policy (1925) and trade (1930). In the years leading up to World War II, annual conferences (1936–39) were convened in London on issues of technical production, training schemes for journalists and expanded airmail services. With the outbreak of war and the nationalisation of the imperial telecommunications carrier Cable and Wireless, the EPU’s long campaign for penny press cables was eventually realised. Immediately after World War II, the established five-year conference cycle of the EPU resumed but, as British leadership faltered, the organisation began redefining itself in the newly formed Commonwealth. In 1950, it was renamed the Commonwealth Press Union and assumed a new role as the watchdog of Commonwealth press freedom, while retaining its previous commitment to cheap communication rates for member countries. Conferences in India-Pakistan (1961) and the West Indies (1965) confirmed its commitment to decentralised operations and training programs for journalists in developing Commonwealth countries. As the Cold War intensified, the Australian section adopted a forthright libertarian stance under Sir Keith Murdoch in opposing Commonwealth moves towards self-regulation and codes of journalistic ethics. With the appointment of (Sir) Vincent Fairfax as chair of the Australian delegation and 1955 Australian conference, the organisation achieved stability as a voice for publishers, including in South Africa, until the latter left the union in 1961. Despite the death in 1981 of Gavin Astor, its post-war British figurehead, the CPU continued its post-war role as Commonwealth press watchdog, while the Australian section maintained a strong anti-regulatory stance at home and towards the Asia-Pacific region. A conference in Delhi in 1984 attracted 100 delegates from 20 countries and addressed issues of press freedom in the developing world. The oldest organisation of its kind, the CPU announced its closure in 2008. REFs: D. Cryle, ‘Interdependent or Independent? Australian British Relations at the Melbourne Imperial Press Conference’, in K. Darian-Smith et al. (eds), Exploring the British World (2004) and ‘The Press Union at the End of Empire: Anglo–Australian Perspectives, 1946–65’, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, 12(8) (2011). DENIS CRYLE

C O M M U N ITY B R O AD C ASTIN G ASSO C IATIO N O F AU STR ALIA When the Commonwealth government started showing a serious interest in a non-profit third sector of radio broadcasting, known as ‘public broadcasting’, those interested held a conference in July 1974 to discuss the best way to lobby government for suitable licences. They formed the Public Broadcasting Association of Australia

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community radio (PBAA). The leaders of the PBAA, including Professor Peter Pockley, were part of an educated elite who did most of the early lobbying, tending to marginalise ‘grass-roots’ members. Once the first batch of licences was issued in 1976, this differentiation in membership became enshrined in a new constitution, which stated that only licensed stations could be full members of the association. The interests of these two groups were very different. Licensed stations—which had paid staff—were concerned about the nature of their licences and the development of sponsorship, while aspirants— who were largely volunteers—just wanted to be allowed to broadcast. This division in the interests of different members was reinforced when funding was obtained for a secretariat with Michael Law from 2MBS FM as part-time executive director. The aspirants failed to assert themselves, but a growing band of ethnic public broadcasters, who were receiving increased government funding with the developing policy of multiculturalism, found a voice and left the PBAA to form their own organisation, the National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council. By the end of the 1980s, Indigenous and Radio for Print Handicapped (RPH) groups had also left the PBAA and secured their own funding, which was more substantial than that available to general public broadcasters. By 1992, the PBAA found itself in considerable financial difficulties. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 was passed, changing the name of the sector to from public to community broadcasting, and the association became the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA); at the same time, the receivers decided to attempt to trade out of financial difficulties. The situation gradually improved as more stations were licensed and, with Michael Thompson as general manager, the CBAA became involved with aspirant community television groups. During the 1990s, satellite services were developed for use by member stations. Before the end of the decade, a dispute arose with the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) about royalty payments under the Copyright Act 1968, which was not finally resolved until the end of 2001. As the new century unfolded, some stations were broadcasting illegal advertisements. This led the CBAA to work with the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to produce a new clear set of community broadcasting sponsorship guidelines to reduce the number of stations that broke the rules. The CBAA’s attention also turned to the development of digital radio, and to lobbying government for funding to make this possible. By 2013, the CBAA had 246 full and 41 affiliate radio and television member stations. REFs: P. Thornley, ‘Broadcasting Policy in Australia: Political Influences and the Federal Government’s Role in the Establishment and Development of Public/Com-

munity Broadcasting in Australia—A History 1939 to 1992’ (PhD thesis, 1999); http://www.cbaa.org.au. PHOEBE THORNLEY

COMMUNIT Y NE W S PA PE RS see suburban

newspapers

C O M M U N ITY R AD IO Radio reaches about 95 per cent of Australians. Australia’s broadcasting system emerged in the 1920s, but it was not until the 1970s that public (now known as community) radio first emerged on the new FM band. Non-profit broadcasting enterprises around the world are variously described as ‘community’, ‘public’, ‘citizens’, ‘local’, ‘access’, ‘radical’, ‘alternative’ or ‘rural’. In Australia, ‘community radio’ is the preferred title, stemming from the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA), where the term ‘community’ was officially sanctioned. Australia had established a dual broadcasting (radio) system by 1932, consisting of the publicly owned and funded ABC and commercial radio. This arrangement remained relatively unchanged until 1972, when grassroots movements and other political forces joined to campaign for a third tier in Australia’s broadcasting environment. Dissatisfied with existing broadcasting services, four groups representing quite diverse interests—ethnic communities, fine music enthusiasts, radical political groups and educational institutions—aligned in the progressive era of the early 1970s to lobby for a ‘public broadcasting’ sector that could deliver specific content not currently provided by either commercial or nationally funded broadcasters. The Whitlam Labor government initially granted a range of 12 temporary licences to educational institutions in 1972, with temporary licences also distributed to fine music stations and ethnic community stations in 1974. The work of the Whitlam government in developing the modern community radio sector—then known as ‘public broadcasting’—was continued by the incoming Fraser Coalition government, with temporary licences remaining in place until the sector was finally enshrined in formal legislation in 1978. Australia’s first FM station, 2MBS FM, resulted from lobbying for a ‘fine music’ outlet with significantly better broadcast quality using the new FM spectrum. As a lobby group, the fine music enthusiasts had little in common with ethnic communities and radical political activists, but they did contribute a strong argument around the enhancement of Australian cultural life through fine music. In 1991, the Australian Fine Music Network was established for marketing and other purposes. Fine music stations with a broader definition than ‘classical music’—now including jazz, blues, folk and light opera—now exist in

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community radio every state in Australia. 4MBS FM is one of the country’s most successful community stations. As a second pressure group, ethnic communities sought access to the airwaves to ensure broadcasting in languages other than English, and to disseminate their own culturally relevant programming. In 1975, ethnic broadcasting stations 2EA and 3EA went to air, operated by the Department of the Media. They were later absorbed by the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 1977. In 1979, 4EB went to air as a community-based ethnic radio station in Brisbane, followed the next year by 5EBI in Adelaide. The third impetus for the development of community radio came from educational institutions. In 1972, the University of Newcastle and the University of Adelaide became involved in community radio, and this sub-sector was indeed the first to be granted temporary licences by the Whitlam government. Today, the list of stations associated with universities includes 2SER Sydney, 2MCE Bathurst, 2NCR Lismore and 6UVS Perth. The station associated with the University of Adelaide, formerly operating under the call sign of 5UV but known as Radio Adelaide since 2003, has become one of Australia’s largest community radio stations. Stations with an educational background cover a broad range of interests, providing access to many communities including ethnic, Indigenous, youth, gay and lesbian, and music. The final catalyst for the development of community radio in Australia was a conglomerate of politically progressive activists. Stations in this group included 4ZZZ Brisbane, 2SER Sydney, 2XX Canberra, 3RRR and 3PBS Melbourne, and 5MMM Adelaide (now known as Three D Radio following a ‘buyout’ of the 5MMM callsign by the Triple M network in 1993). These early politically progressive stations enabled access for groups such as Indigenous Australians, gays and lesbians, environmental, youth and radical political activists, and remain a strong element of the sector. It may appear that these diverse groups have little in common. However, community radio is about community access and participation. A ‘community’ may be defined in terms of interest, geographical or cultural boundaries. However defined, enabling local access to the airwaves is a consistent and central theme. Globally, community radio tends to be associated with environments where communities are denied access to existing forms of mass communication—such as post-apartheid South Africa. The emergence of community radio is seen by many as a counter to the negative impacts of globalisation and commercialism, by enabling local communities to identify more strongly with local cultural issues. In many sites around the world where community radio is embedded in community social structures, the barrier between audiences and producers is

either weakened or completely absent. This is particularly evident in Australia’s Indigenous and ethnic communities. Australia’s community broadcasting system is different from those in continents such as Africa, Asia and Latin America where the state maintains tight control. Australia and New Zealand have legislated for discrete community broadcasting sectors with provision for access and participation. In Australia, the BSA now provides the legislative framework for community broadcasting. Among other principles, the Act requires that community stations be not-for-profit, represent their identified communities, and encourage their communities to participate in their operations and production of program content. Unlike other media, community radio considers all of its listeners as potential volunteers. Biennial audience surveys since 2004 reveal that around 29 per cent of Australians over the age of 15 tune in to a community radio station at least once a week (based on 2013 figures). This is the highest per capita listenership of any community radio sector globally. The first national audience study of the community broadcasting sector completed in 2007 showed that metropolitan and regional radio station listeners perceive community radio to be accessible and approachable. Audiences prefer community radio because it provides local news and information (an increasing rarity on regional commercial radio) and diverse music formats. It also provides audiences with programming that is representative of their communities, from news of local events to community ‘gossip’, and may use local people as presenters. Community radio supports a significant level of Indigenous and ethnic community programming, with audiences identifying this as an essential service in the absence of alternatives. For these marginalised communities, their local stations help in maintaining social networks and play an important education role. Audiences identify a lack of stereotyping and the role of community radio in promoting cross-cultural dialogue and assisting new immigrants. Indigenous and ethnic broadcasting stations also play a crucial role in supporting local music and culture. In its short 40-year history in Australia, the community broadcasting sector has experienced phenomenal growth. It makes a significant contribution to Australian culture and its economy. The sector has around 23,000 volunteers contributing around $340 million each year in terms of volunteered work. Around one-fifth of all volunteers are under 26 years of age. Community radio is a major industry training site, with more than 8000 people participating each year. In 2013, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) listed 519 licensed independent community owned and operated broadcasting services in Australia.

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community television This included 355 long-term licensed community radio stations broadcasting more than 46,000 program hours per week, and 95 aspirant community radio broadcasters operating with temporary licences. This compares with 273 licensed commercial radio operators. The vast majority of community radio content (77 per cent) is locally produced. Music makes up almost three-quarters of program output with around 36 per cent Australian content. The sector is Australia’s most diverse, with community radio stations producing many thousands of hours of relevant programming each week in around 100 Indigenous and ethnic community languages. Across the sector, community radio stations address a range of audiences and their needs: youth, senior citizens, the arts, fine music, Australian music, Indigenous, ethnic, Christian and so on. There are two national community radio news services—the National Indigenous News Service and National Radio News—along with three satellite-delivered distribution services catering for generalist, Indigenous and print-handicapped audiences. Diversity is articulated in the community broadcasting sector’s Code of Practice, which identifies a mission to ‘present programs, which contribute to expanding the variety of viewpoints in Australia and enhance the diversity of programming choices available to audiences’. This resolution is particularly important in Australia where regional coverage and perspectives are vital to many communities. The dispersal of community radio audiences in Australia has meant a reliance on satellite delivery of program content as a central organising element of national networking. Australia first launched its own domestic communications satellite, AUSSAT, in 1985 following pressure from commercial television stations. The community radio sector established its own satellite distribution network, ComRadSat, in 1993. It offers a range of core programs to community stations that subscribe, along with a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week national feed for participating stations. Around 180 community radio stations access ComRadSat in varying degrees. Stations pay a quarterly flat fee to access available programming. Funding for the sector has always been an issue, and this has led to debates about the ability of community radio stations to vie for advertising dollars. Community radio stations do not pay for their broadcast licence, and as a result are not permitted to attract advertisers—this is due to the fact that their commercial counterparts can sometimes pay more than $100 million for their commercial licence to broadcast. Community radio broadcasters are permitted to run ‘sponsorship’ announcements; however the quantity of sponsorship announcements is regulated by the ACMA and limited to five minutes per hour on community radio and seven minutes per hour on community television. This

regulation is designed to ensure the sponsorship gained by community radio does not impact upon competing commercial radio services in the same broadcast footprint. The Community Broadcasting Foundation (CBF), an independent body that oversees funding to the sector, reports that in the 2013–14 year the sector will receive $17.7 million in government funding. For most stations, government funding comprises only a small proportion of their income (usually less than 20 per cent), with most income gained through sponsorship announcements, membership subscriptions, routine fundraising and revenue from special events. The core funding received from the government includes an allocation to facilitate the introduction of digital radio. The community radio sector has taken advantage of digital advances, with 38 digital radio services currently offered in major metropolitan areas. The Australian government granted a total of $11 million over four years to facilitate community radio’s participation in digital radio. This funding was not intended to facilitate the replacement of existing analogue services with digital radio, but rather to enable the community radio sector to participate in digital broadcasting. Community radio continues to pioneer new ways of accessing existing and often marginalised audiences. It remains a first level of service for Indigenous communities and provides diverse cultural groups within the Australian community with information and programming relevant to their lives. As an example, in 2005, 4MBS FM pioneered the spread of community radio into aged care facilities in Brisbane. The initiative is called Silver Memories and uses a spare carrier wave to distribute specialised programming—music and shows from the 1920s to the 1950s—to aged audiences, who have been shown to respond positively to hearing the music from their youth. REFs: ACMA, Communications Report 2012–13 (2013); A. Bear, ‘The Emergence of Public Broadcasting in Australia’, Australian Jnl of Communication, 4 (1983); House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications, Transport and the Arts, Local Voices (2001); M. Meadows et al., Community Media Matters (2007). SUSAN FORDE and MICHAEL MEADOWS

C O M M U N ITY TELEVISIO N Community television has evolved in diverse settings, across broadcast, satellite, cable and broadband platforms. Today, the sector includes free-to-air digital television channels, known colloquially as ‘Channel 31’, as well as remote Indigenous television services. These stations represent a decades-long effort by community television groups to secure access to the airwaves. Community television was established to provide non-professional video makers with

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community television a means to reach local audiences. For some groups, this symbolised structural change within a media landscape dominated by commercial and public service players. However, community television has struggled to maintain its foothold on the free-to-air broadcast television platform, due to competing demands for broadcast spectrum. The stations have nonetheless been an important provider of local programming, content innovation and broadcast training. Community television emerged out of the video access movement of the early 1970s. Affordable and portable videotape technology enabled non-professionals to experiment with video production, and to record events or stories that were outside the purview of the mainstream media. In 1974, 10 video access centres were established with support from the Australia Council, prompting a campaign for channels to distribute community screen content. In the early 1980s, groups in Melbourne commenced test transmissions, available only to the small fragment of households that could receive Channel 47. Melbourne’s video access centre, Open Channel, also screened two community television ‘windows’ on SBS in 1982. Melbourne’s St Kilda Access Television (SKA TV) conducted Australia’s first full test transmission on a channel known as the ‘sixth channel’ (Channel 31) in 1989. The test was granted on the understanding that the channel was reserved for a fourth commercial network, and not intended for community use. At the same time, a Bill was passed in parliament that allowed for sponsorship on test transmissions, allowing groups to explore the viability of self-funded stations. Spectrum access, sustainability and a suitable licensing framework were to become the core issues in the community television campaign over the next three decades. Despite the persistence of metropolitan groups, the first community stations to get off the ground were located in central Australia. Indigenous television commenced in the mid1980s in the townships of Ernabella (EVTV) and Yuendumu (Warlpiri Media Association). American anthropologist Eric Michaels worked with Kurt (Leonard) Japanangka Granites and Francis Jupurrurla Kelly to establish the Warlpiri Media Association station in Yuendumu. At the same time, educators Rex Guthrie and Neil Turner worked with the people of Ernabella, including Simon and Panjiti Tjiyangu, to establish EVTV. The stations, which commenced as pirate (unlicensed) broadcasters, were awarded licences under the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS) from 1987. By the late 1990s, the remote Indigenous broadcasting sector was sharing video content using a portion of Imparja Television’s satellite transponder capacity. This service was formally established as the Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) channel in 2001.

Other attempts to establish community television included a cable television experiment, organised by Telecom (now Telstra) and Metro Television (now Metro Screen) in Sydney’s Centennial Park in 1993, which included more than 80 hours of locally made programming distributed to 300 homes. Although pay television providers Optus and Foxtel would eventually run their own locally oriented channels, these remained under the control of the commercial operators. While community television experimented with various delivery platforms and business models, its fate ultimately was tied to the sixth high-power channel—the only remaining nationally available channel in the spectrum plans. In 1992, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Transport, Communications and Infrastructure assessed the suitability of various non-commercial services, including community access, education, parliamentary broadcasts, Indigenous broadcasting and independent film. Although the committee preferred educational use of the channel, it recommended that the sixth channel be made available for community television on a trial basis. Groups in Sydney, Lismore, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth were licensed from 1993. Two additional licences awarded in Bendigo and Hobart failed to get off the ground. The groups were licensed as temporary open narrowcasting services under what became known as the ‘community television trial’. The community stations were required to be not for profit, and were expected to be guided by community broadcasting licence restrictions if they were to progress beyond the trial phase. However, the open narrowcasting licence meant that the regulator could not enforce sponsorship conditions, allowing stations to enter into financial relationships that did not technically fit within the guidelines of community broadcasting. The trial commenced without government funding for infrastructure or programming. Stations sold airtime to help pay for transmission, as well as relying on investment from university partners. A series of unresolved inquiries and government reviews ensued, including the Australian Broadcasting Authority’s Sixth Channel Report, which supported community television but was never tabled in parliament. The community television ‘trial’ lasted for a decade. The delay was largely caused by the introduction of digital television, which placed new pressures on spectrum planning. The initial suggestion from government was that community television be ‘carried’ by a new type of television service called ‘datacasting’. When datacasting was thwarted by a lack of commercial interest and a change of government, community television was effectively sidelined. The sector’s peak body, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA),

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competitions began lobbying for an end to the trial, hoping that if full community broadcasting licences were issued, arrangements for simulcasting in digital would have to follow. A statutory review of community television was tabled in parliament in June 2002. It recommended greater regulatory certainty as well as stronger accountability and governance mechanisms. New licensing arrangements were put in place later that year, and Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth received permanent analogue community licences in 2004. The Sydney and Adelaide licences were not awarded to the incumbent stations, but to new applicants, with Adelaide remaining on a temporary (trial) licence. Lismore’s LINC TV also remained on a temporary licence. The number of community television stations has remained relatively low compared with community radio. This is in part because of the expense of running television stations. Moreover, although the sixth analogue channel was reserved for community television at the start of the trial, in 1999 that reservation was revoked, which meant that only those areas with an incumbent service could be guaranteed use of the channel. The Australian Broadcasting Authority did agree to make analogue channels available on a case-by-case basis in regional areas, where there was still spectrum available. As a result, a group in Mt Gambier, Bushvision, received a trial licence in 2005. Novacast, located in Newcastle (the largest non-capital city in Australia), applied for a community television licence that same year but was informed that there was no spectrum available in the area. The group instead joined Satellite Community Television, a group of program providers whose work is available on the UBI World TV package. LINC TV in Lismore attempted to extend its transmission reach to the densely populated coastal areas, but discovered that the sixth channel reservation had been deleted in a 2002 Licence Area Plan. In 2005, the CBAA conducted a survey of the four metropolitan stations operating that year. It revealed that these stations were screening 164 hours of locally produced programming a week, including 61 hours of news and 33 hours of ethnic programming. By 2006, the sector was reasonably well established in urban areas, with a combined national audience estimated by the CBAA at 3.8 million accumulated monthly viewers. Despite a long sequence of reviews and amendments to the 1998 digital television legislation, there is still no policy or resolution regarding the future of community television. In 2009, Melbourne’s C31 claimed to have lost 20 per cent of its viewers due to households migrating to digital. In November, the Labor Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, decided to allocate the vacant spectrum known as Channel A (which had been reserved for datacasting by the previous government) to community television for digital transmission.

The government also allocated $2.6 million to support digital transmission costs. However, spectrum was only allocated to community television until the end of 2013. At the time of writing, the future of the channel remains uncertain. Alternative uses of the spectrum were the subject of much debate in the digital dividend and convergence reviews, including mobile broadband and mobile broadcasting. Access 31 in Perth ceased transmission in August 2008, due to financial difficulties. West TV (WTV, formerly CTV, a group that had been producing programming for Access 31) was awarded a digital-only trial licence in November 2009, commencing broadcasts in April 2010, leaving only three stations with full community television licences. Sydney’s TVS was the first to commence digital transmission in March 2010. Melbourne and Brisbane commenced soon after. As a result of the government’s decision to provide digital television via the satellite-direct-to-home VAST platform, the vast majority of community television licences serving remote Indigenous communities were switched off in 2013. (By early 2014, the only remaining terrestrial Indigenous station was Mulka TV in Yirrkala.) In order to maintain community television content distribution for remote Indigenous communities, Senator Conroy granted ICTV transponder capacity and resources to transmit on the VAST platform. Despite being a narrowcasting satellite service, ICTV remains community controlled, and works closely with the remote Indigenous broadcasting sector. Three Indigenous television services are run as not-for-profit terrestrial narrowcasting services: an Indigenous station in Broome, GTV, run by a not-for-profit organisation and community radio licensee Goolarri Media Enterprises, received an open narrowcasting television licence through competitive tender in 1997; Ngarda TV in Roebourne (Western Australia) and Larrakia TV in Darwin also operate as Indigenous-run terrestrial narrowcasting television services. In 2008, metropolitan community television stations formed their own peak body, the Australian Community Television Alliance, out of concern that the CBAA reflected its majority radio membership. Community television was also excluded from access to Community Broadcasting Foundation funding until 2012, when the first television content funding round was announced. REFs: K. Howley (ed.), Understanding Community Media; M. Meadows et al., Community Media Matters (2007); E. Rennie, Community Media (2006). ELLIE RENNIE

C O M P ETITIO N S Australian broadcasters have been running programs with a competitive element—from talent, quiz and game shows to reality television programs—for more than a century. There is

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competitions also a long history of media outlets conducting competitions or contests to boost their profiles and engage with, and reward, their audiences. Several competitions have had a cultural dimension and, indeed, a real cultural impact. The Bulletin’s first novel competition (in 1928) brought to light Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw’s A House is Built and Katharine Susannah Prichard’s Coonardoo as equal winners. In 1933, as broadcasting hours and thus the demand for content increased, two commercial radio stations—2UE Sydney and 4BH Brisbane—conducted drama competitions in an effort to uncover play scripts. In 1941, the Australian Women’s Weekly, facing a shortage of fiction due to wartime import restrictions, conducted a £2000 fiction competition. In 1945, the Lux Radio Theatre and the rival Authors’ Playhouse (backed by 2UE) conducted play competitions. These were followed by the Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph competing to offer the most generous literary prizes. The 1946 Daily Telegraph novel competition, which Florence James and Dymphna Cusack’s Come in Spinner should have won, became a protracted controversy. From the same company, the Women’s Weekly staged an annual portraiture competition (1955–58), with the cash prizes worth more than the Archibald Prize; winners included Judy Cassab and William Dobell. Since 1979, the Australian has been co-sponsoring the Vogel Literary Award for unpublished manuscripts by writers under the age of 35. On SBS Television’s Race Around the World (1997–98), competitors were chosen from video auditions and undertook a brief course in documentary filmmaking; the experience established John Safran’s career as a documentary maker, comedian and radio presenter. Competitions were not just the preserve of major metropolitan media outlets; in the 1960s, 6VA ran an annual art competition for artists living within 100 miles of Albany. R.C. Packer at the Sydney Daily Guardian inaugurated the popular Miss Australia contest in 1926. In mid-1933, the fledgling Women’s Weekly and Hollywood’s Paramount Studios staged a film and beauty competition to find ‘the most perfect young man and woman in Australia’. Magazines like the Women’s Weekly played a crucial role in promoting the studios and keeping movie stars as studio ‘products’ prominent in the everyday lives of fans. The magazine also benefited by aligning itself with ‘modernity’, helping it break the mould of traditional women’s magazines. That quintessentially modern medium, radio, found ingenious ways to excite listeners. In 1933, the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) joined with the Commonwealth Broadcasting Network to reward the person who took out Australia’s 500,000th listener’s licence. The winner of £75, possibly to the network’s disappointment, was an elderly woman who

posed for photographs in a dowdy hat. Radio magazines such as Wireless Weekly conducted their own competitions to reward readers. Just like the Daily Telegraph, radio stations discovered that competitions could have unexpected consequences; a jumbled words competition at 5KA Adelaide was partly responsible for the Jehovah’s Witnesses station being closed down as ‘an essential measure of National Security’ in 1941. That year, the Women’s Weekly managed to combine self-promotion with aiding the war effort. Gretel Packer coordinated a lottery that raised £50,000 for the Red Cross; the winner of the specially designed ‘Dream Home’, valued at £5000, was again, alas, an elderly widow, not a young homemaker. After the war, in 1950, 2UE conducted a bold quest to find the typical ‘Mr and Mrs Australia’—who would then be sent on a tour of England. In 1958, with radio feeling pressure from the glamorous new medium of television, the Federation of Radio Broadcasters (now Commercial Radio Australia) sponsored Radio Week. At the centrepiece was a competition, ‘What Radio Means to Me’, with the winner awarded a car and a trip to Britain. By the 1970s radio and television jackpots had increased. Melbourne radio stations were reported to constitute Australia’s most competitive radio market due to the industry’s predilection for giving away money, calculated at $150,000 in cash and prizes in 1973. In 1978, Sydney’s 2SM ran a promotion telling listeners it was going to take a jumbo under the Harbour Bridge. Expecting to see a giant plane perform aerobatics, thousands turned out to watch, and still applauded as an elephant was floated on a barge under the bridge. ‘I don’t think giving away $100 an hour on the telephone is valid any more’, remarked the station manger, Ian Grace. But still the competitions came, with both large and small prizes, on radio (often talkback radio) and to some extent television. Broadcasting executives seemed convinced that audiences enjoyed hearing or seeing people win money. Newspapers ran competitions which involved readers cutting out coupons (and therefore buying the paper) to redeem prizes. In 1989, the Canberra Times joined with Capital Television (CTC10) to run a competition rewarding winners with colour televisions. Sometimes prizes weren’t necessary. In 1987, TV Week and Network Ten’s Neighbours ran a ‘Living Together Promotion’, canvassing readers’ views on whether popular teen characters Scott and Charlene should live together. During its long life, the ‘Red Faces’ segment on Hey Hey It’s Saturday (Nine, 1971–99) provided fun and foolery rather than money. Roy and HG’s The Cream (Seven, 2003) ran a video competition for the best Australian Haka. Two years earlier, the comedy duo had sent up both television

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convergence competitions and quiz shows with the shortlived Win Roy and HG’s Money (Seven). By the early 1990s, radio promotions were going off the boil. A 1991 survey by Quadrant Radio Strategies found that 89 per cent of respondents would not change to a different station in response to a competition; older listeners actually turned off the radio when the competition was announced. It also found that young people generally wanted cash, while older people wanted travel. At Nine, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush proved hugely expensive and lasted only one season (1995), with each member of the audience obliged to bring to the studio their passport and a packed suitcase. Early in the 21st century, commercial radio unleashed edgier stunts. In Sydney in 2003, 2MMM hosted a promotion in which a private investigator kept a listener under surveillance for a week, and the controversial Kyle and Jackie O on 2Day-FM asked listeners to record themselves peeing into a plastic bucket. A few years later, someone from the marketing department at the same station proposed that a celebrity, such as the singer Guy Sebastian, donate his sperm for the winner to impregnate herself. The competition did not eventuate. By 2014 a reality television website was promoting 22 audition competitions of a kind similar to the Women’s Weekly and Paramount competition 80 years earlier. There is a dedicated Australian website, TV Competitions—Win Free Stuff. Most media competitions now involve social media which optimises the potential for related advertising and targeted promotions. REF: SMH, 24 May 1982. BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY and CHRIS LAWE DAVIES

CONT E M P T O F C O U R T see court reporting CONT E S TS see competitions

C O N V E RGE NCE One of the most protean forces driving restructuring in Australian media is convergence. Typically, it describes the activities of a communications company such as Telstra—once the monopoly supplier of fixed telephony (the ‘Plain Old Telephone Service’, or POTS)—now with ‘convergent’ interests in pay television (50 per cent ownership of Foxtel), fixed and mobile telephones, online video (Telstra T-Box) and internet provision (BigPond). While convergent dynamics have always been an element in media industries, the digitisation and globalisation of media technologies, products and services have made it a central feature today. There are at least four dimensions to convergence: the convergence of technologies, industries, policies and content. Technological convergence, enabled by technologies of digiti-

sation, refers to the increasing ability to carry and convert ‘content’—sound, data, image or text—into multiple formats. For example, the same piece of music might be used in the form of a CD played on the home sound system, or downloaded on to the home computer or as a digital file on an MP3 player. Such technological capability has facilitated industry convergence, where formerly separate sectors of the media industries and the communications economy (such as broadcasting, telecommunications, computing and publishing) have sought to merge or form alliances. These shifts have necessitated significant modifications to the policy regimes used to regulate the industries concerned. These might be understood better if we think of the history of media and communications regulation and policy as going through three distinct stages. The first stage, which lasted for most of the 20th century, was based on scarcity, and saw protection, universal service and public interest come to the fore. The second stage, which is now coming to an end, was based on abundance, and focused on liberalisation, competition, efficiency and diversity. The third stage is still emerging, but it will reflect the decentralisation of the communications infrastructure, and it is likely to begin to place the media and communications industries within the broader and more generic regulation of the services industries. This presages far-reaching changes to the social, political and cultural role of media in society. One of the trickier aspects of convergence is ‘content convergence’. Content, as the term is used today, could refer to a television program, the information on a website, or that in an app or an email message. As the corporate organisation of the media and communications industries changes, and as competition between media sectors increases, there is growing pressure to gain the maximum use from the content being produced. In practice, this means exploiting the capacity to present the same content, with the necessary modifications, on as many platforms of delivery and distribution as possible. In the movie industry, a new title will carry a raft of spin-off products—from t-shirts to computer games to theme park rides. In radio, it means establishing a website that offers everything from an online version of radio programming and archived transcripts of broadcasts to fan websites, chat rooms and gig guides. The comfortable sectoral differentiations that once existed no longer hold, and competition is extraordinarily comprehensive as every medium competes with every other medium. The fact that convergence also brings media companies into ever-wider business relations means that conflicts of interest are rife. Sport, for example, has become a driver of innovation, growth and profitability in television—especially pay television. Media organisations have taken up commercial interests in the sports them-

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cook, bertie stuart baxter (1877–1968) selves, as well as in their coverage. An example of this is the role played by News Limited as a part-owner of Rugby League in Australia since the Murdoch-sponsored Super League intervention, which split the code for a short while in the late 1990s, as well as its ownership of Super15 Rugby, shown exclusively on pay television. Convergence was the subject of a major federal government review in 2011–12. It proposed the creation of a new category of ‘Content Services Enterprises’, which placed the big broadcasters, telcos and ISPs together for regulatory purposes. It found itself dealing with the regulation of journalism, the future of Australian content quotas on television, spectrum allocation and resale, ownership and control, matters touching on innovation and competition policy, and much more. Convergence touches on virtually everything. For contemporary policy and regulation, the key issue arising from convergence is the manner in which it breaks the link between media content and delivery platforms. Convergence points towards a shift from vertically integrated industry ‘silos’ (print, broadcast, telephony, etc.), and the associated need for sector-specific regulation, to a series of horizontal layers, of infrastructure, access devices, applications/ content services and content itself. In an overview of Australian broadcasting and telecommunications regulations undertaken for the Convergence Review, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (2011) identified 55 ‘broken concepts’ in current legislation, including the concept of ‘influence’ in broadcasting; the concept of a ‘program’ in broadcasting; and the distinction between a ‘content service provider’ and a ‘carriage service provider’ in relation to the internet. The review concluded that not only were policies on new media required, but a new approach to media policy overall was also required. With a broadly deregulatory thrust, the review identified three enduring areas that justify ongoing regulation of media and communications: media ownership; media content standards across all platforms; and the production and distribution of Australian and local content. In determining ‘who’ or ‘what’ should be regulated in a converged media environment, the review proposed a regulatory framework based on size and scope, departing from the tradition of regulating around particular delivery platforms. For the first time, the big broadcasters, telcos and ISPs were grouped together for regulatory purposes and defined as ‘Content Service Enterprises’ (CSEs) that had control over ‘professional content’ (televisionand radio-like services, newspaper content and so on). They would be subject to regulation once they had met a certain threshold. This approach would replace the current system of Australian content quotas that commercial broadcasting is required to meet.

The Labor government that commissioned the review did little to enact its recommendations. It remains to be seen whether any Australian government will be able to deal effectively with the now well-identified challenges of convergence. One thing is sure, though: industry and technological change will continue to increase, and that will require a policy response. REFs: ACMA, Broken Concepts (2011); Convergence Review: Final Report (2012); J.V. Pavlik, New Media Technology (1996). STUART CUNNINGHAM

C O O K, B ER TIE STU AR T B AXTER (1877–1968) Bertie Cook was the driving force behind the founding of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance). Cook started his career as a copy boy at the Melbourne Herald. Journalists were underpaid and industrially powerless, and proprietors tolerated journalists’ associations only if they showed ‘no sign of militancy’. With some like-minded colleagues, Cook formed the Melbourne Press Bond in 1906. It had 74 members, but soon fell apart under pressure from proprietors. Cook realised that any journalists’ association would need the legal protection manual workers’ unions had gained under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904. He unsuccessfully lobbied Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, then resolved to form a union first and apply to have it registered later. On 10 December 1910, Cook convened a meeting in Melbourne, attended by more than a hundred journalists. A vote resulted in the formation of the AJA: Cook had already drawn up a constitution. He became the inaugural member; (Sir) Keith Murdoch and C.E.W. Bean were also foundation members. Other state branches followed, and registration was granted in May 1911. In May 1917, the Arbitration Court’s first AJA award established a grading system, limited the working week to 46 hours and guaranteed paid sick and holiday leave. Cook was AJA president from 1916 to 1918; he then organised the first federal press bureau in the Prime Minister’s Department. The following year, he became an industrial officer in Broken Hill, before helping to form the Victorian Central Citrus Association, becoming general manager. In 1929, he was appointed financial editor of the Argus. In 1935, he became organiser of the publicity branch of the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria. He retired in 1939, but remained active in AJA affairs. In 1960, Cook was appointed MBE for services to journalism. REF: B.S.B. Cook Papers (NLA).

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C O O L GA RDI E MI NER In the final decade of the 19th and the first of the 20th century, 60 newspapers sprang up in the goldfields towns of Western Australia. The first was the Coolgardie Miner, launched by William Edward Clare (c. 1862–1940) as a weekly on 14 April 1894, 19 months after gold had been discovered in the district. A committee had been formed in the eastern goldfields town to start a paper, but Clare had become impatient with the endless discussions and decided to go it alone. He hiked from Coolgardie to York to acquire a crude printing plant, and the delay in its delivery to Coolgardie was so lengthy that he was going broke and had to sell the calico tent that had been intended as the future office of the newspaper. He produced the first issue from surroundings that were ill-equipped, inelegant, unsanitary and insecure. On 12 September 1894, the Miner became a bi-weekly because it had competition from a new weekly; on 23 October, it become a tri-weekly after a daily sprang up; and on 25 March 1895 it became an afternoon daily before switching to morning issue four weeks later. On becoming a daily, the Miner introduced a sister weekly, the Coolgardie Pioneer. Competition was fierce: Kalgoorlie, Boulder, Kanowna and Menzies were other WA goldfields centres that published dailies in the 1890s. The gold rush ‘brought in its tide men of literary mark and wide newspaper experience, as well as commercial men, printers and mechanics of highest grade’, and Clare freely availed himself of their talents. They made it ‘unquestionably the most vigorous and attractively written daily’ in the colony. Clare’s financial return from the newspaper was much healthier than the returns of most gold prospectors. He earned between £3000 and £4000 a year. One journalist, Edwin Greenslade Murphy (1866–1939), known as ‘Dryblower’, wrote satirical verse that soon became an institution in the Miner. Murphy wrote ‘The Fossicker’s Yarn’ to ‘squash and squelch the objectionable “Jackeroo” system obtaining on Bayley’s Reward Mine’. Clare appointed Frederick Charles Burleigh Vosper (1869–1901) as the second editor of the Miner. In Queensland, Vosper had been acquitted on a charge of seditious libel after penning a challenging editorial, ‘Bread or Blood’, in a Charters Towers newspaper during the 1891 shearers’ strike. At Coolgardie, Vosper wrote like an English Chartist, wanting the diggers to lead a social revolution in Western Australia. Vosper was elected to the Western Australian parliament in 1897. The Coolgardie Miner, which closed on 16 June 1911, resumed publication as a weekly on 1 March 1913, and continued until 29 December 1917. It emerged again on 12 April 1935 and appeared weekly until its final closure on 27 June 1957. Today, Coolgardie is almost a ghost town.

REFs: N. King, The Voice of the Goldfields (1995); R. Kirkpatrick, ‘When the Miner was Born in a Tattered Bag Shanty’, PANPA Bulletin (February/March 2004). ROD KIRKPATRICK

C O P YR IG H T Copyright law has played a consistent, albeit changing, role in relation to Australian media since the start of the 19th century. While Australian law initially was governed by imperial legislation, later this was overlaid by colonial copyright statutes. Australia developed its own copyright legislation following Federation, but this largely imitated British law. It was not until around the 1970s that Australian law had matured enough to develop its own identity (although it was still constrained by international copyright). There have been a number of consistent themes in Australian copyright law, including whether and how various ‘new’ types of media should be protected. When newspapers were established in Australia at the beginning of the 19th century, British law was clear: articles written in newspapers were protected as literary works. While protection eventually was extended to drawings and photographs that appeared in newspapers, it did not cover newspaper headlines. During the 20th century, copyright law was asked to protect other types of media, notably radio, television and the internet. While there were some failures—such as the attempt to establish copyright in program formats for television game shows and reality television programs—and a number of struggles concerning the radio broadcasting of phonogram records, for the most part copyright law was able to protect new media. Copyright protection was extended to television broadcasts in 1968. This law was transplanted from the United Kingdom, where broadcast copyright had been introduced in 1956 to get more sporting events on television. But while British law failed to prevent third parties from filming events from neighbouring properties, Australian law prohibited television stations from broadcasting sporting events from outside sporting grounds. While the government prevented over-the-fence broadcasting by television stations, it rejected an amendment that would have brought radio stations under the same law because the ‘government did not wish to interfere with an established practice which had already proved satisfactory’. Since the 1980s, Australian copyright law has grappled with the changes brought about by digital technologies. While there is still some uncertainty about the liability of internet service providers, there was never any doubt that online material was subject to copyright, and thus potentially protected. At the same time as decisions were being made about whether new

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country press associations types of media should be protected by copyright, questions also arose about the applicability of pre-existing defences to the new media. Questions arose, for example, as to whether fair dealing applied to machine-based copying (yes); whether ‘infotainment’ could be classified as ‘reporting of news’ for the purposes of fair dealing (yes); and whether the time-shifting defence instigated to allow time-poor viewers to use their video cassette recorders to record and view television programs at a later, more convenient time also applied when television broadcasts were recorded in the cloud and played on portable devices such as smartphones and tablets (ongoing). Another challenge for copyright law has been the development of new ways of transmitting, copying and relaying pre-existing media services. While this has usually manifested as an issue about the adequacy of existing modes of protection, historically this has not always been so. For example, to encourage organisations to invest in the infrastructure needed to establish a telegraph system in Australia, most Australian colonies passed legislation around the turn of the 20th century that rewarded investors with exclusive rights in the news for a very limited period of time (usually between 12 and 24 hours). Importantly, and contrary to established legal doctrine, telegraphic copyright extended to the facts that were relayed and not, as is the case now, to the way in which those facts were expressed. Over the course of the 20th century, the advent of the tape recorder, the photocopier, the VCR and other copying devices fundamentally altered the places where copying occurred, the people who did the copying and the amount that was copied. The fact that the new copying technologies were disparate, remote and difficult to control meant that copyright owners were unable to monitor where and how their works were copied. While they might have been able to identify the occasional infringer, it was practically impossible and economically unfeasible to pursue all of them. Suddenly, rather than having to think about a relatively small number of known copiers or users, copyright owners were faced with a situation where they had to contend with a large number of people copying in a range of different locations. The decentralisation of copyright was also evident with radio, film and television. As well as altering the relationship between live performers and their audiences, radio, film and television also created new audiences, which necessitated the establishment of new networks. The problem here, however, was that the end-users who consumed copyright works were widely dispersed, difficult to identify and even harder to control. In this sense, the problems created by radio, film and television were similar to those created by the tape recorder, the VCR and the photocopier—namely, how to ensure that copy-

right owners were able to be compensated when their works were copied or used. A number of strategies were adopted to respond to this problem. After an attempt to impose taxes on copying devices was declared unconstitutional, copyright owners shifted their attention to the party that supplied the copying devices (and thus authorised the infringing activity), rather than the person who did the copying. This was followed by statutory licences that imposed legally sanctioned networks, which linked the relevant parties, and the establishment of collecting societies that monitored and administered copyright, such as the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society. The ensuing bureaucratisation of copyright played, and continues to play, a pivotal role in the way Australian copyright law regulates press, radio, television and new media. APRA vigorously pursues copyright royalties for its members, leading in 1970 to a dispute in which commercial radio stations refused to play songs from the six major record labels. It also battled the ‘parallel importing’ amendments in 2002 and changes to the Copyright Act in 2006. REF: B. Sherman and L. Wisemen (eds), Copyright and the Challenge of the New (2012). BRAD SHERMAN

C O U N TRY P R ESS ASSO C IATIO N S From as early as the 1870s, in New South Wales and Victoria, country press proprietors talked of organising themselves so they could argue the case for legislative change with governments. They wanted the government to subsidise the cable press charges from Europe and to abolish or reduce postage charges on newspapers mailed to subscribers. Twenty-two Victorian newspapers and four interstate ones formed the Provincial Newspaper Union in December 1883. The union, which supplied some capital-city advertising, cable news and other copy, soon became primarily a commercial undertaking rather than a professional association. The Provincial Newspaper Press Association of New South Wales was formed at a meeting in Sydney on 23 August 1890, mainly to fight the imposition of a postage tax on newspapers. Both of these early organisations survived only a few years. The Country Press Cooperative Company Limited was formed in Melbourne on 22 December 1891, with 60 country newspaper proprietors joining. It provided shareholders with telegraphic news, feature articles and supplements, and advertising from Melbourne firms. Provision was made for 85 shareholders. The company still operates. Opposition to the libel laws finally helped trigger the formation in October 1900 of an enduring organisation in New South Wales, the NSW Country Press Association (NSWCPA), the

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main objectives of which were to watch over and protect the interests, rights and privileges of the country press of New South Wales, and to assist in promoting its greater efficiency and influence; to watch legislation and administration of laws affecting the rights and privileges of the country press; and to promote and safeguard newspaper interests in regard to the law of libel, to initiate such libel reforms as may from time to time appear necessary, and to provide mutual help, legal opinions and advice to members seeking them. Within a few years, the NSW body was so successful that it became the inspiration and model for similar associations in other states. First, however, separate organisations were formed in Queensland—one in 1901 (for northern newspapers) and a second in 1907 (southern newspapers). They amalgamated in August 1908 to form the Queensland Country Press Association. The Victorian Provincial Press Association was formed in September 1910 after a meeting called by members of the Country Press Cooperative. It incorporated in 1957 to become the Victorian Country Press Association Ltd. The Provincial Press Association of South Australia was formed in March 1912, and within weeks all but three of more than 40 country newspapers had joined. A Western Australian Provincial Press Association was formed in October 1918. At the 1906 NSW annual conference, 163 press representatives, including some from Queensland and Victoria, ‘unanimously affirmed the desirability of establishing a Commonwealth Country Press Association’. Called the Australasian Press Association (to include New Zealand), its objects were ‘to promote the general interests of the members in relation to advertising rates, cable and telegraphic services, the laws relating to newspapers, and any other matters of mutual concern to the newspapers of Australasia’. The first president was Thomas Temperley (Richmond River Times, Ballina). New Zealand did join the association, but its membership faded when it formed its own national association after World War I. Meanwhile, ‘Provincial’ had been inserted into the title of the Australian-based organisation, and from 1925 it became known as the Australian Provincial Press Association. In 1986, it became Country Press Australia. In 1926, the NSWCPA adopted a Code of Ethics to guide its members on how to conduct their newspapers, and later made compliance with the code a condition of membership. It introduced a system of district councils in 1914 to give members—especially those distant from Sydney—a stronger voice in the association’s affairs. Victoria introduced a similar system in 1916; however, the system faltered before being re-established in 1924 with new impetus, then having to be revived again in 1933. In 1950, the councils were renamed ‘groups’, and they have continued with varying success.

Among the hard-working, inspirational individuals who took charge of the state associations’ business affairs at the beginning were Thomas Mitchell Shakespeare (NSW, 1904–28), Abraham Edgar Joseph (Queensland, 1910–38), William Holmes Waddell (Victoria, 1910–49) and Charles Bernard O’Reilly (South Australia, 1914–51). Shakespeare also served as secretary of the national organisation (1906–29, 1931–38). Ernest Christian Sommerlad became the manager of the NSW Country Press Cooperative Co. in 1929 when Shakespeare retired—and when New South Wales split the association secretary’s role and the management of the Coop. He transformed the business operations of the NSW organisation in the mid-1930s, converting the Coop to a limited-liability company, hiving off the news agency, Country Press Uttings, as a separate company and establishing a new advertising service company, Gotham Australia Pty Ltd, which soon developed international working arrangements. In 1916, daily newspaper representatives established a sectional committee of the NSWCPA to work out how to improve advertising revenue and news services for the dailies. The dailies in Tamworth, Murwillumbah, Lismore and Grafton formed a marketing arm, the Associated Northern Dailies, in 1923, and Maitland joined them in 1931. At the 1933 Australian Provincial Press Association (APPA) conference, three Queensland representatives put the dailies’ case forcibly. Queensland secretary Joseph warned that unless the APPA gave the dailies a fairer deal, there would be a split. One of the Queensland dissidents, Henry John Manning (Mackay), was elected president of the APPA in 1936, the year in which the Australian Provincial Daily Press Ltd was formed. It became the Regional Dailies of Australia Ltd (RDA) in 1969 and ceased to function in 1997 because the major companies had established their own marketing arms and had withdrawn their newspapers from RDA membership. Since 1961, the APPA/Country Press Association has been located variously in Melbourne (1961–80, 1998– ) and Sydney (1980–97), depending on whether the Victorian or NSW association was providing the secretariat for the national body. Since January 2010, the Victorian association has administered the NSW association. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000) and Bold Type (2010); E.L. Sommerlad, Serving the Country Press 1900–2000 (2000). ROD KIRKPATRICK

C O U R IER -M AIL Brisbane’s daily newspaper, the Courier-Mail, began life as the four-page Moreton Bay Courier on 20 June 1846, established only four years after Brisbane was declared a free colony. It was the work of founding editor Arthur Sidney

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Lyon (1817–61) and Sydney-based publisher James Swan. While the population of Brisbane at the time of the newspaper’s establishment was small (around 1000), increasing industry and shipping activity dominated the pages. Like all newspapers of the era, the Moreton Bay Courier featured entirely classified advertisements and notices on its front page, and it was not until 1938 that news replaced them. In the early years, the main news—which usually began somewhere on page two—dealt with the politics of the colony, addresses from senior figures in Great Britain, news from the Catholic Church, horse racing results and comments on attendance at recent race meets. An initial readership of an estimated 200 only 12 months after the Moreton Bay Courier was established had increased fivefold in 10 years to about 1000 in 1858. In 1861, the newspaper changed its masthead to become simply the Courier, and while originally published as a weekly, it evolved in the ensuing years to become a daily under the ownership of Thomas Blacket Stephens. He also changed the four-page newspaper into a six-page publication. Stephens quickly changed the masthead again after only three years, to the Brisbane Courier. Well-known editors during the formative years of the newspaper in the late 19th and early 20th centuries included Theophilus Pugh, who created Pugh’s Queensland Almanac (1862–1927), and John James Knight, who wrote a descriptive history, In the Early Days (1895), covering the publication’s formation and development. In 1933, the Brisbane Courier saw a significant change, when former war correspondent and newspaper proprietor Sir Keith Murdoch merged JohnWren’s Brisbane-based Daily Mail (est. 1903) with the Brisbane Courier to become the Courier-Mail. Along with Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) publications, which Murdoch headed, the Courier-Mail was one of the first papers to run regular polls on political issues. This was due to the close relationship between Murdoch and pollster Roy Morgan, who operated out of the HWT offices in Melbourne. From the 1940s to the 1970s, about 40 per cent of all newspapers sold in Australia were published by the HWT group. It was during the latter part of this period that the conservative Country Party, and then the National Party, gained a stranglehold on Queensland politics. Indeed, the Courier and then the Murdoch-owned Courier-Mail were considered conservative publications, with Queensland historian Ross Fitzgerald referring to them as distinctly ‘anti-Labor’ during the major strikes of the 1920s and 1930s. During the ultra-conservative era of the Bjelke-Petersen government, the Courier-Mail operated somewhat uncritically, even

supporting Bjelke-Petersen’s legislation to ban street protest in 1977. Courier-Mail journalists during this era were fed a diet of regular media releases, and given access to extensive travel with the Premier, leading to sometimes gentle and often quite overt manipulation of coverage. Bjelke-Petersen famously referred to this as ‘feeding the chooks’, a practice that continued through until the mid-1980s. A sense developed that after Harry Gordon took over as editor-in-chief of Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd in 1980, a less conservative and slightly more liberal line was taken. However, it was not until ABC Television investigative journalist Chris Masters, along with Courier-Mail investigative journalist Phil Dickie, pursued inquiries that led to the watershed Fitzgerald Inquiry (1987–89) into police corruption that this era in the Courier-Mail’s history came to an end. Indeed, it was around this time that Rupert Murdoch moved in on his father’s old company and sought to absorb the HWT into the News Limited stable. This successful takeover in 1987 led to one of the most significant media ownership changes in Australian history, and ultimately delivered the Courier-Mail a monopoly in the Brisbane market. Murdoch had introduced the Daily Sun in 1982 to compete with the two existing HWT titles, the Courier-Mail and the afternoon tabloid, the Brisbane Telegraph. In 1988, as a result of the News Limited takeover, the Telegraph closed. The Daily Sun became an afternoon daily (the Sun) for three years before closing in 1991. After achieving monopoly, the Courier-Mail’s readership increased for a time but then declined, in line with trends in newspaper readership. In the late 1990s, editor Chris Mitchell achieved notoriety for the newspaper when he embarked on an ill-fated attempt to ‘out’ respected Australian historian Manning Clark as a ‘Soviet agent of influence’. By the early 2000s, the Courier-Mail’s classified advertising and readership were severely impacted by the internet and a changing media landscape. In response, the newspaper moved from its traditional broadsheet to a tabloid format (described by editor David Fagan as a ‘compact’) in March 2006. The newspaper had already introduced a glossy weekend supplement, QWeekend, in 2005, and the move to tabloid format saw an increased emphasis on supplements—travel, culture and lifestyle. Fagan insisted that there would be no difference in the newspaper’s commitment to covering serious news, but research since has identified a significant increase in display advertising and a shrinking news hole. Since 2007, the Courier-Mail has experienced daily newspaper competition again, with the Fairfax company introducing the Brisbanetimes. com.au to the market—but this newspaper is entirely online.

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court reporting REFs: A. Davies, ‘Queensland’s Pioneer Journals and Journalists’, presented to Historical Society of Queensland (1941); R. Fitzgerald, From 1915 to the Early 1980s (1984). SUSAN FORDE

C O U RT RE PORTI NG Court reporting has been part of Australian journalism since the launch of the first newspaper in 1803. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser captured colonial readers with graphic accounts of murders, more restrained reports of sex crimes and ‘entertaining’ tales about minor offences. Published weekly after inspection and (sometimes) censorship by the governor’s secretary, the Sydney Gazette produced lengthy and moralistic stories, which stretched to coverage of hangings. Readers learned whether convicted criminals repented or were defiant before facing the gallows. One of the first reported trials was the murder of a constable, whose body was found with a cutlass embedded in his head in August 1803. Readers followed the accounts as they might a serial, with each instalment revealing legal twists and turns. Since then, major criminal trials result in newspaper circulation boosts. Most criminal cases involve guilty pleas by offenders to charges ranging from the mundane to the serious. Journalists choose the unusual and controversial cases to cover in depth. They rely on the open court principle, and a legal privilege to report fairly and accurately, but the commercial motive to sell information is a major part of Australia’s (mostly) private media companies. The Myall Creek massacre of Aborigines in 1838, the Ned Kelly trial in 1880, underworld murders and personal scandals in various decades, and more lately terrorism trials in different states, have typified the media focus on legal reporting. The 32-year legal saga involving Lindy Chamberlain over the death of her daughter Azaria is a classic journalism target. The combination of religion, mystery and a child’s death suited worldwide media narratives. Chamberlain’s murder conviction on flawed evidence, followed by her subsequent release from prison and exoneration, made hers the biggest court story of its time. The case has been described as ‘trial by media’, but journalistic and academic research suggests a broader picture. Media outlets produced hostile and exploitative stories that promoted public opinion against Chamberlain. But journalistic endeavours also helped to secure her release, and dissenting reports raised doubts about the initial guilty verdict. In 2012, a coroner found that a dingo had killed Azaria Chamberlain in 1980. Crime and scandal have not been the only court reporting focus. Judges have publicly regretted the disbanding of a High Court press gallery that covered constitutional cases. Other

journalists used their skills to report on Royal Commissions and other inquiries. Commercial and personal injuries cases, challenges to government decisions and appeals against perceived injustices were also court story subjects. In Victoria, court reporters have covered cases for decades regarding the 1964 collision between two naval vessels, HMAS Voyager and HMAS Melbourne off the NSW coast. Eighty-two men died and others were injured in the disaster. Court rounds were also considered ideal training grounds for young reporters. Often mentored in a collegiate setting by senior journalists, they learned the need for accuracy, attention to detail and an ability to obtain and verify information. In 1986, Sydney Morning Herald journalists told students they needed poker-faced impartiality, the ability to talk to lawyers and others, accuracy, curiosity bordering on voyeurism and a strong stomach to cover courts. Technology has changed the discipline. From the early 19th to the late 20th century, newspaper reporters attended court and took notes of proceedings before returning to their press rooms or media offices to file their stories. Some became skilled at dictating stories via public telephones to copy-takers, who typed the articles for publication. Greater attendance by radio and television journalists took stories out of the courtrooms and into the street, where media ‘packs’ could interview police, lawyers and those affected by crimes. Sketch artists can depict relevant parties in proceedings for publication, but the use of cameras in criminal and civil cases is still limited. Audio recordings of sentencing remarks and other decisions have been allowed. Some jurisdictions have let reporters use laptop computers, mobile phones and tablets to record and/or transmit information from hearings. Judges once delivered decisions by reading them for hours in open court, but many now summarise the result, and release written and online versions within minutes. The Victorian Supreme Court has tweeted important decisions and announcements since late 2011. While some critics have pointed to a decline in the number of court stories written in an era of under-staffed newsrooms, others have noted courts’ proactive attitudes to provide audiences with direct access to their decisions. Audio and video links on court websites—shared with mainstream media—have removed journalistic filters. REF: P. Gregory, Court Reporting in Australia (2005). PETER GREGORY

C O W LEY, KEN N ETH ED WAR D (1936– ) Ken Cowley rose from humble origins to become Rupert Murdoch’s most powerful chief executive officer in Australia, presiding over News Limited’s operations for 17 years (1980–97) and serving as a board member for a further 14 years.

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crawford family A printer by vocation, Cowley first joined News Limited in 1964 on the Australian, where he grappled with the logistics of publishing it as a national daily in Canberra, before organising its relocation to Sydney in 1967. Unlike his immediate predecessor, Sir Kenneth May, he did not belong to the closely-knit executive group from the Adelaide News who transferred to Sydney to run Murdoch’s media acquisitions in eastern Australia. Cowley entered the ranks of Murdoch’s senior management in 1982, replacing May as Australian CEO. By this time, he had stamped his authority on the ailing Australian newspaper, convincing Murdoch not to close it and successfully issuing a 24-hour ultimatum to its striking journalists to return to work in late 1982. Murdoch was looking for reliability and loyalty when promoting Cowley, who imposed his own conditions on the appointment, insisting that he be consulted on all matters pertaining to News Limited’s local operations. He became a powerful company executive and political lobbyist. Cowley was closely associated with Murdoch’s major acquisitions of the 1980s and 1990s, including the co-purchase with Sir Peter Abeles of Ansett Airlines, and the dramatic acquisition during 1986–87 of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT). Although Cowley’s authority came briefly under challenge from HWT executive John D’Arcy, he continued to enjoy Murdoch’s support as CEO until the Super League confrontation of 1995–96, when he was given the unenviable task of trying to establish a rival football league to undermine Kerry Packer’s Nine Network and the Australian Rugby League. When News Limited lost its court challenge in 1996, Cowley was replaced as Australian CEO by Lachlan Murdoch, but remained an influential board member. His business fortunes continue to flourish. As a champion of outback causes, he used his political and commercial operations to promote the Stockman’s Hall of Fame at Longreach in 1988, and he purchased R.M. Williams’ ailing company in the early 1990s, expanding its land holdings with generous federal government and News International’s support. Cowley was appointed AO in 1988, and awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales in 2008. He retired from the News Limited board in 2011. REF: D. Cryle, interview with K. Cowley, 5 December 2005. DENIS CRYLE

CRAW FORD FAM ILY Between 1946 and 1960, Hector Crawford Productions was a major independent producer of radio drama, and of innovative musical and educational programs. Headed by orchestra leader Hector Crawford (1913–91), his sister Dorothy

(1911−88) and Dorothy’s son Ian (1933− ), Crawford Productions—or simply ‘Crawfords’—then became influential in developing an Australian identity and awareness in drama and music through its television productions. Hector and Dorothy formed the company in 1945, and experienced rapid success with the serialised dramatisation The Melba Story. Hector’s protégée and future wife Glenda Raymond, who played Melba, became a popular soprano and later a Crawfords company director. Crawfords’ many musical productions included Opera for the People and Music for the People, which attracted large crowds in Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Mobil Quest, won by (Dame) Joan Sutherland in 1950, provided opportunities for fledgling singers between 1949 and 1957. Dorothy produced the musical offerings and majority of radio drama series and serials, including the popular Victoria Police-based D24 narrated by husband Roland Strong. Gifted at script editing, radio timing and predicting audience trends, she was an outstanding radio producer. Crawfords prepared for television by establishing the Crawford Television Workshop in 1954, managed by Ian Crawford and David Lee, but low-cost American programs dominated Australian television’s first decade. Several human-interest and comedy programs proved minor successes, but it was Consider Your Verdict (1961−63), the first independently produced Australian drama series, that achieved sustained success. Dorothy and Ian, with writer Phillip Freedman, supervised the original creative processes, but as Crawfords grew, David Lee (director, associate producer and producer), Sonia Borg (actress, drama coach, casting director, writer, script editor and associate producer), Ian Jones (director, writer and producer), Terry Stapleton, Tom Hegarty and Cliff Green (senior writers) and relative Henry Crawford (casting, script editor and producer) became integral team members. As early as 1956, Hector was critical of insufficient Australian dramatic content in Australian television. He promoted this issue by lobbying politicians, with media interviews and testifying before several government committees. His 1959 statistical publication Commercial Television in Australia demonstrated the lack of Australian drama content. Hector was influential in convening the 1963 Senate Select Committee on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for Television (the Vincent Committee) and was active in the ‘TV Make it Australian’ campaign in the 1970s. As new stations spread across Australia, program demand increased. With American imports becoming more scarce and expensive, stations began to look favourably upon independently produced local drama packaging. In 1964, Crawfords premiered the police series Homicide (1964−76) on HSV7. Viewers related to

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the Australian vernacular and real-life dramatic situations in familiar Melbourne locations, and Homicide was an immediate success. After Homicide, the espionage series Hunter ran for two years, followed by the police series Division 4 and Matlock Police. By 1971, Crawfords had a successful weekly police drama series running concurrently on all three commercial networks. In 1975, Crawfords suffered when the networks cancelled talent quest Showcase and all three police shows. With only soap serial The Box in production, many staff were retrenched, including most of Hector’s 40 writers. Crawfords recovered in 1976 when Ian Jones created The Sullivans, a serial about a Melbourne family during World War II that resonated with viewers. With its well-researched period detail, The Sullivans was perhaps Crawfords’ greatest television triumph. Populist soap/drama serials such as Skyways and Carson’s Law followed, with Cop Shop a ratings winner. From 1983, several high-quality mini-series, such as All the Rivers Run, The Far County and The Flying Doctors, won wide acclaim prior to the company being sold in 1987. In 1984, Hector Crawford was the inaugural inductee into the Logies Hall of Fame. His activism, entrepreneurial skills and musical direction have been acknowledged, but arguably Dorothy and Ian Crawford were the real force behind Crawfords. Ian, a technician, cameraman, studio director, producer, executive producer and senior executive, devoted his life to the company, and as Henry Crawford has acknowledged, Dorothy was ‘the absolute creative brain of the organisation’ during Australian television’s formative years. The pioneering work of Crawfords’ extended family provided employment, training and career opportunities for successive generations of creative, technical and production staff, many of whom ultimately made significant contributions to the Australian television and film industry, and worked in Hollywood or formed production companies. Similarly, actors welcomed the rotating bit-part, guest and regular lead roles that made stars of so many, evidenced by the numerous Logies awarded to Crawford programs between 1962 and 1986. REFs: P. Davey, ‘Crawford Creations: What Would We have Done Without Crawfords?’, PhD thesis (2014). PHILIP DAVEY

C R IK EY Probably Australia’s best-known independent online news service, Crikey was founded in February 2000 by journalist and shareholder activist Stephen Mayne (1969– ). Crikey covers politics, media, business, social issues and international affairs. It comprises a daily email edition of around 25 original stories, which has some 17,000 paying subscribers, and an open-access website that carries blogs, aggregated

content, news stories and video and has a monthly audience in excess of 400,000 unique viewers. Crikey takes a vigorously independent view of Australian public life, with a particular emphasis on investigating and explaining how important political decisions are made, how power is exercised, the relationship between government and media, and the ‘stories behind the stories’ that are often left untold. It is often leaked information and documents that reveal confidential activities which shed light on how power is exercised. In his expose of politics, The Latham Diaries (2005), former federal opposition leader Mark Latham described Crikey as ‘the most popular website in Parliament House’. Crikey started as a bold experiment in new media when it was launched by Mayne as a weekly email newsletter. It was the successor to an earlier online newsletter, jeffed.com, which had been created by Mayne as part of his campaign to stand for election to the Victorian parliament in the seat of Liberal Premier Jeff Kennett, for whom Mayne had earlier worked as an adviser. Crikey soon became a daily email publication, and began building a growing subscriber base and reputation. Mayne’s editorial philosophy was to publish material from all sources—often anonymous, personal or unconfirmed—which gave it a ‘larrikin’ image. Even though Mayne’s policy was to immediately correct mistakes or apologise for causing offence, this approach drew critics and litigation. In 2002, Mayne was forced to sell his family home and other assets as part of defamation settlements with radio presenter Steve Price and former Labor Senator Nick Bolkus, although the resulting publicity generated a large increase in subscriptions and a greater awareness of the site. As Crikey grew, Mayne found it more difficult to manage on limited resources, and in 2005 he sold Crikey to Private Media Partners, owned by publishers Eric Beecher and Diana Gribble, for $1  million. ‘After five years of struggle, including moving house five times in 30 months, we really couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,’ Mayne said when the sale was announced. Beecher said the new owners intend to ‘ensure that Crikey remains mandatory reading for anyone interested in politics, media, business, professions and other areas of society that matter to thinking people’. Since then, Crikey has grown significantly in audience size, advertising and subscription revenues, staffing levels and editorial output. Under its new ownership, a more responsible editorial approach was adopted, a network of blogs was created, the free website was expanded, editorial management, marketing and advertising sales staff were added and it became a larger, viable business with turnover of several million dollars. Crikey’s talent includes Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane, roving international correspondent Guy Rundle, business editor Paddy

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crime reporting Manning and arts editor Raymond Gill. Stephen Mayne continues to write for Crikey as a business and media commentator. Crikey also expanded its arts coverage, launching a stand-alone arts and culture website, the Daily Review. After acquiring Crikey, Private Media continued to grow its presence as a leading Australian independent digital publisher, launching websites Smart Company, StartUp Smart, Women’s Agenda, The Mandarin and Property Observer. REF: http://www.crikey.com.au. ERIC BEECHER

CRI ME REPORTING From misdemeanours to more serious violations of the law, like murder, crime has long featured in the news headlines. Many early Australian newspapers, like the Sydney scandal sheet Truth, sensationalised crimes to increase their circulation. The mid- to late-19th century Australian press often adopted a rich and expressive vocabulary, especially in its descriptions of the scandalous indiscretions of the nation’s convicts and colonial outlaws. In November 1879, a correspondent for the Melbourne Argus reported on the ‘gallant capture’ by police of the bushranger Captain Moonlite and his accomplices. The reporter recounted how Captain Moonlite had become exasperated with one of his hostages, telling the man that he would ‘cut his nose and ears off, and make him eat them, and then cut his throat’. Reports in the same newspaper the following year reminded readers of the ‘perpetration of a tragedy almost unparalleled in the history of the colony’ of Victoria, and the murders of three police officers by a ‘band of marauders’: Ned Kelly and his gang. Popular press-inspired moral panics and crime waves dominated early- to mid-20th century crime reporting in Australia. The press regularly devoted column inches to coverage of juvenile delinquency and youth gangs, whose crimes—according to one correspondent in a 1936 edition of Lismore’s Northern Star—were motivated by a desire for ‘gangster notoriety’ and were attributable to the popularity of cheap literature, such as ‘penny dreadfuls’ and mobster films. By the 20th century, the concepts of the ‘crime beat’ and the police rounds reporter were firmly established in many Australian newsrooms. Newspapers like the Sydney Sun and the Daily Mirror even hired former policemen to report on crime. After World War II, police rounds relied almost entirely on a journalist’s contacts, which included cultivated relationships with both cops and crims. Veteran crime reporters, such as Basil Sweeney, Ced Culbert, Noel Bailey and Ken Blanch, and later Geoff Wilkinson and Malcolm Brown, did most of their work outside the walls of the newsroom. In the 1960s, the ‘king of Sydney’s crime reporters’—the Daily

Mirror’s Bill Jenkings—was almost as well known on the street and in the famous Thommo’s Two Up School as the criminals he covered. But crime reporting of this calibre required both patience and stamina. As chief police reporter for the Herald Sun, Keith Moor faced what he described as ‘incredibly tight’ deadlines. His shift would start at 6 a.m. and, if an incident had occurred the previous night, he was expected to have visited the crime scene, spoken to the police and other key players, and filed his news story by 9 a.m. The exploits of these crime newshounds were personified in the 1950s and 1960s by fictional characters like Randy Stone, star of the popular American radio drama, Night Beat. Adapted from the original US scripts by Grace Gibson Productions, the Australian version of Night Beat was first broadcast in 1951. Australian actor Alan White starred as Randy Stone before American actor Harp McGuire took over the role. Other popular radio dramas were inspired by true crimes. The storylines of Crawford Productions’ D24 (1951–60), which served as a forerunner to the highly successful television series, Homicide, were based on files from the Victorian police force, which sponsored the first two years of D24’s production costs. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the daily routines of real-world police rounds reporters were supplemented by an upsurge in investigative crime journalism. The legacy of this period can be identified in the work of contemporary Walkley-nominated journalists, such as Kate McClymont, Andrew Rule, John Silvester and Les Kennedy, whose crime reporting resulted in exposures of cronyism and corruption and led to several breakthroughs in criminal cases, including the arrest of one of Australia’s biggest amphetamines dealers. Described as a ‘career crime reporter’, Kennedy acquired a legendary status after the many years he spent at the Daily Telegraph, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun-Herald, investigating some of Australia’s most notorious and serious crimes, including the disappearance of Donald Mackay, the murder of Dr Victor Chang and the Belanglo backpacker murders. Kennedy was always cautious about allowing his photograph to be published, but 2011, in the days before his death from cancer, Fairfax Media’s Sun-Herald newspaper ran a picture by-line to accompany his last exclusive story: a scoop on the discovery of a pistol linked to the 1997 disappearance and murder of Kerry Whelan. Less media shy was veteran television reporter, Harry Potter, who retired in 2010 after 32 years with Network Ten and more than 50 years as a journalist. His career highlights included news coverage of the Terrigal massacre; the murder of Anita Cobby; the arrest of Sef Gonzales for the murder of his family in 2001; and the trial of Andrew Garforth, convicted of the murder of Ebony Simpson in 1992.

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cumberland newspapers While communications between crime reporters and police are as old as journalism itself, the dynamics between the two have changed as communications technologies and police and media management styles have evolved, and police–media relations have become more complex. The development of professionalised public relations and media liaison units within Australian police agencies in the mid- to late 20th century significantly impacted on the crime news-gathering and story-selection processes. The centralised production of police media releases, management of journalist inquiries and requests for interview, and coordination of press conferences lessened the imperative for the individual police contacts nurtured by early police rounds reporters. It also resulted in the marriage of police corporate branding with crime portrayals in the form of popular television programs, such as Australia’s Most Wanted (1989–99), renowned for its graphic crime scene re-enactments and appeals for public information about unsolved cases, and Forensic Investigators (2004–06), which featured exclusive access to police crime scene videos. In 2009, figures obtained under freedom of information laws and published by the Daily Telegraph showed that the growth of police public relations had netted the NSW police alone over $1 million from reality television shows, like The Force (2006– ) and Crash Investigation Unit (2008– ), and consultations on other broadcast productions. The demands of the digital age also significantly shaped crime reporting in Australia. As Nick Richardson explains in Journalism Research and Investigation in a Digital World (2013), the arrival of web-based news, blogs and the 24-hour news cycle—with its speed imperative and demands for the latest developments in crime and corruption stories, traffic accidents and emergencies—has left modern-day crime reporters with less time than their predecessors to cultivate police contacts and other sources of information about criminal activities and police investigations. In the 21st century, traditional consumers of crime news also became sources of information in the crime-reporting process, often enlisted by news organisations to contribute tip-offs for stories and images related to crime news narratives. The pervasiveness of surveillance technologies, like CCTV, and social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, also brought media audiences closer to the action and scene of the crime—in some cases, enabling citizen journalists to ‘scoop’ mainstream media outlets. Police agencies in Australia also started to use social media and video-sharing platforms more actively as communications tools to appeal for public information about crimes and to provide updates on the status of criminal investigations—sometimes bypassing traditional news media altogether. Media outlets wishing to conduct paid interviews with convicted criminals are also restricted by the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

Despite such developments, almost all major newsrooms in Australia continue to have reporters dedicated to crime, courts and police rounds, although many now work across multiple media platforms. Some have also adapted their crime reporting experiences into true-crime novels and other forms of popular entertainment, such as television dramas like the Underbelly series. In 2013, the Murdoch-owned newspaper, the Herald Sun, had recruited a number of these journalists (and ex-police officers) as contributors to its special online multimedia news section ‘True Crime Scene’. The section offers readers information about ‘new crimes, cold cases, latest investigations’, as well as top 10 blacklists of Australia’s worst criminals, written by veteran crime reporters. REFs: P. Grabosky and P. Wilson, Journalism and Justice (1989); A. Mitchell, ‘Fatal Obsessions’, Overland, 208 (2012); A. Rule and N. Richardson, ‘Crime Writing’, in S. Tanner and N. Richardson (eds), Journalism Research and Investigation in a Digital World (2013). KATRINA CLIFFORD and GLENN MITCHELL

C U M B ER LAN D N EW SP AP ER S This chain of suburban newspapers mixes free weekly tabloids with a free daily newspaper as part of a network of 20 publications that covers Sydney and the NSW central coast; its publications have a circulation of 1.21 million a week. Cumberland’s recent history is built on Rupert Murdoch’s aggressive entry to the Australian newspaper market, which triggered corporate rivalry with the Packer and Fairfax families. So significant was Murdoch’s initial investment in Cumberland that it was seen as a pioneering suburban publisher during the 1960s. Yet the Cumberland name also has a rich history in colonial New South Wales. The group’s antecedents belong to the Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland General Advertiser, which began on 30 December 1843. Although Benjamin Isaacs had published the short-lived Parramatta Courier earlier in the year, Community Newspapers of Australia celebrates the Parramatta Chronicle, founded by Edmund Mason, as Australia’s first community title. This publication offered a combination of local and general news. Within two years, Mason had sold it to B.E. Bailey and the paper was renamed the Cumberland Times and Advertiser, a title that remained until its closure in 1911. The next iteration of the name was the Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate, a twice-weekly, paid-for title that covered a vast stretch of suburban and agricultural land from Liverpool to Dural. In 1933, a young Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Earl White, established the Parramatta Advertiser; three years later, he formed Cumberland Newspapers Pty Ltd. The company expanded over almost three decades, and was making about a £70,000 annual profit when Murdoch, acting through

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current affairs an intermediary, paid White £1 million for it in February 1960. The purchase gave Murdoch a network of 24 publications that spread from Hurstville in Sydney’s south to Hornsby in the north and the Blue Mountains in the west. Murdoch’s arrival triggered a fierce round of rivalry with the Packer and Fairfax newspaper groups. The two established groups formed a strategic alliance against the newcomer in the form of Suburban Publications Pty Ltd, with the intention of using the Sydney Daily Mirror printing presses to publish more suburban papers. The problem was that Murdoch had bought the Mirror just three months after taking over Cumberland, and the Mirror presses were no longer available. It took a midnight brawl on 7 June 1961 between Clyde and Kerry Packer and Murdoch supporters over access to the alternative print capacity of the Anglican newspaper to help settle the issue. This legendary melee would later be dramatised in The Paper Man (1990) and Power Games: The Packer–Murdoch War (2013) mini-series. Even though Murdoch technically won the contest, the two companies lost thousands of pounds before a truce was called in February 1962 that saw the Sydney suburban newspaper map carved up and Cumberland controlling the printing of all the city’s suburban papers. There was only one place left where Cumberland and Suburban Publications had rival papers: Bankstown. Murdoch recalled later just how bruising the competition had been: ‘They started papers against us in every suburb of Sydney. It was a real bloody battle. But they found it much more expensive than they thought.’ By 1974, Cumberland had 22 papers and, alongside the Packer and Fairfax interests, dominated the market. Cumberland’s flagship was the Parramatta Advertiser, which at the time was Sydney’s largest single-issue suburban paper, regularly running to more than 100  pages. In 1978, Murdoch offloaded five Victorian suburban newspapers and Cumberland’s Dandenong typesetting business to the publisher of the Age, David Syme, as part of the shakeout in the Victorian suburban market. The next growth surge occurred in 1987 when News Limited bought the Herald and Weekly Times, which brought the Manly Daily, five papers on the NSW central coast and one in Sydney’s inner west into the Cumberland stable. The group did not grow again until it took over the suburban newspapers owned by the Federal Publishing Company in 2007. The Cumberland group now had 28 separate mastheads and published 34 editions a week. But after a rationalisation of titles in the intervening years, the new-look NewsLocal was born. As with all News Limited titles, Cumberland embraced the online news revolution and steadily built its profile to have its home page ranked among the nation’s top news and weather websites for traffic in 2010. The organisation was re-branded

in 2011 as NewsLocal. The chain was based at Parramatta until 2013, when some of its major titles moved back to the News Corp Australia headquarters in Surry Hills. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer (1999); R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in NSW, 1803– 1920 (1976). NICK RICHARDSON

C U R R EN T AFFAIR S Both radio and television have carried forms of current affairs programming. However, today the term is primarily used in relation to television programming, because there is now little current affairs on commercial radio and the high profile of the leading television current affairs programs has resulted in their effectively claiming ownership of the term. Unlike the ABC, which began its premium current affairs franchises AM and PM in 1967 and 1969 respectively, Australian commercial radio—even its leading news provider, the Macquarie Network—has been more inclined to program news and current affairs as a mix of news and comment rather than supporting its news with background stories and independent investigations. The primary focus of commercial radio has always been on the provision of upto-the-minute news: stations began employing their own journalists from the late 1930s. Radio commentary on news and politics had been around from the 1920s. It was placed under security restrictions during World War II, but became more widespread after the war. From the 1950s into the 1960s, high-profile and opinionated radio news commentators such as Eric Baume (2GB), Buzz Kennedy (2UW) and Ormsby Wilkins (2UE) in Sydney attracted significant audience numbers; in retrospect, it seems as if their success effectively laid the groundwork for the installation of the talkback host from 1967 as the primary facilitator of on-air discussion of current issues. (Most of these star commentators failed to make a successful transition from commentary to talkback.) In the long run, the development of talkback radio would prove to be the beginning of the end for current affairs programming on commercial radio, but not before almost a decade of award-winning current affairs reporting and documentaries, with eight of the nine Walkley Awards for Best Radio Current Affairs Reports between 1979 and 1987 going to commercial stations. That commitment to high-quality current affairs journalism eventually gave way to market pressures, and talkback radio has maintained a dominant position in the public discussion of current affairs on radio since that time. It is notable that very few commercial radio talkback hosts have backgrounds as journalists. For every Neil Mitchell (former newspaper journalist and talkback host on 3AW Melbourne), there are many versions of Alan Jones (former school

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current affairs teacher, Australian Rugby Union coach, and talkback host on 2UE), whose programs depend on opinion rather than research, and the fanning of controversy rather than the application of expertise or the provision of reliable information. On the ABC, local and talk radio formats have tended to make use of the ABC’s journalists as often as specialty presenters. In addition to ABC Local Radio’s journalistic coverage of current affairs issues, AM and PM have been joined by more specialist current affairs programming on Radio National (such as Asia Pacific), as well as by reporters’ commentaries on headline issues on ABC NewsRadio. The Wire is broadcast daily on community radio and Indigenous radio (through the Central Indigenous Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association) around Australia. Television has become the primary location for current affairs in Australia. It has adopted three main formats: the half-hour daily program comprising investigative journalism reports and interviews, and screened just after the network news; the one-hour high-profile program with celebrity reporters, longer stories, celebrity interviews and a prime-time slot (mostly but not always on Sundays); and the long-form single-topic documentary format employed by the longest running (since 1961) current affairs program in the country, the ABC’s Four Corners. The first of these formats has been a staple component of three of the four commercial television networks’ lead-ins to prime-time evening programming since the 1970s. There have been (and continue to be) many variations on these models—for instance, a mix of comedy, personalities, interviews and current affairs discussion informed the late-night talk show The Panel (1998–2004), and a similar mix has been responsible for the gradual ratings success of the expanded one-hour format for Network Ten’s The Project since 2012. Although television current affairs programming in Australia actually began with the ABC’s Telescope (1965–66), it is conventionally regarded as starting with the ABC’s This Day Tonight (TDT) in 1967. TDT was mostly a ratings leader until 1978, when it was closed while still attracting an average audience of 1.8 million. The next generation of current affairs journalists and presenters was drawn largely from TDT alumni. Among them was Mike Willesee, who launched a competing program for the Nine Network, A Current Affair (ACA), in 1971; it is the long-term survivor. Various versions of the program have screened on each of the three commercial networks, with numerous changes of host and format, and with the occasional period of interruption, until the present. The success of and competition between ACA and TDT saw current affairs establish itself as a major programming genre on the commercial networks and the ABC in the 1970s. Since the ABC ceased production of TDT in 1978, it has maintained an early evening or prime-time daily

current affairs presence virtually constantly— currently 7.30. Television current affairs enjoyed something of a boom from the late 1980s through to the mid1990s, when it became a particularly high-rating and high-profile television genre. It is likely that one of the reasons was the enormous success of 60 Minutes, which began in 1979. The genre moved into prime time—mostly in one-hour formats featuring high-profile reporters. Television current affairs personalities like Mike Willesee, Ray Martin, George Negus and Jana Wendt became household names. Even ABC reporters such as Kerry O’Brien and Chris Masters entered the limelight when moved to the commercial sector to work for Network Ten on Page One (1988) and The Public Eye (1989) respectively. The boom also encouraged some more down-market initiatives. There were attempts to translate the tabloid radio shock-jock style to television, with Derryn Hinch’s Hinch (Seven, 1988–93) and, less successfully, Alan Jones Live (Ten, 1994). Inside Story (1992) and Hard Copy (1991–94), both on Network Ten, were populist, muck-raking programs in true tabloid style. There were also innovative attempts at making current affairs programs attractive to the youth audience, such as the ABC’s Attitude (1993–94) and the Seven Network’s The Times (1994). The range of current affairs programming available over the mid-1990s represented a peak in our television history; there has been a decline in offerings ever since. The ABC continues to produce a range of current affairs programs—including 7.30, Australian Story, Q&A, Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and Four Corners; SBS continues to present Dateline and Insight, as well as one-off long-form documentaries on particular topics; and the pay television channel Sky News Australia presents political interviews and comment on Agenda. The commercial free-to-air networks have contracted their offerings, and now concentrate on the early evening timeslot (although the Nine and Seven Networks both have offerings in prime time on Sundays—60 Minutes and Sunday Night). The weekday market leaders, ACA and Today Tonight, now trade unapologetically in tabloid-style news entertainment; their stories cycle through a continuous parade of bad neighbours, botched cosmetic surgery and diet fads, with only an occasional venture into politics—and then usually with a populist spin. Apparently deemed too boring for commercial television’s primary demographics, the serious analysis of politics or social issues has been left to the ABC’s News and Current Affairs division to consider. REFs: M. Bromley (ed.), No News is Bad News (2001); R. Tiffen, ‘Political Economy and News’ in S. Cunningham and G. Turner (eds), The Media and Communications in Australia (2nd ed., 2006); G. Turner, Ending the Affair (2005). GRAEME TURNER

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D DAI LY NEW S ( P ERTH) The Perth Daily News opened with a wordy flourish on 26 July 1882 and continued as an afternoon daily for the next 107 years. It was the first daily newspaper in Western Australia, but its provenance could be traced back to local newspapers from the 1840s, including the Inquirer and Commercial News. The first editor of the Daily News, Horace Stirling, was one of three brothers who controlled the publishing company Stirling Bros. In typical Victorian-era journalese, he announced that his paper would ‘satisfy the need of the public mind for the earliest information of the latest occurrences’. This could mean sending off pigeons carrying news of the latest gold strike. Almost to the end, Daily News journalists tried to follow their inaugural editor’s dictum. The Kalgoorlie gold strike happened in 1893. To provide the ‘earliest information’ for an increasing number of readers, a surveyor-turned-journalist, Arthur Lovekin (1859– 1931), was sent to London to purchase a rotary press and a number of linotype machines. Both were firsts for the colony. He had also, in 1912, provoked the first Australian newspaper strike among his journalists concerning wages relativity. Lovekin lost with good grace and put on a celebratory dinner for his staff. He became editor on his return from London in 1894 and sole owner in 1916. He was a ‘private conservative’ but his newspaper promoted progressive topics. Lovekin sold his company to the Adelaide News in 1926. In 1935, West Australian Newspapers Limited (WAN) took over the financial but not editorial control of the Daily News. The following year, the paper entered a golden age when James Macartney (1911–77) became editor. He boosted the paper’s daily readership with a lively format, unusual angles and frequent changes to pages between editions. The latest sporting results appeared in a rapidly changing ‘Stop Press’. By the time of World War II, circulation had doubled and Macartney had shifted the paper’s focus from overseas battles to survival at home. The ‘Home Front’ feature was headed by freethinker Gavin Casey. Two members of the proscribed Communist Party, Bill Irwin and Joan Thomas (later Williams), helped.

Macartney was not averse to taking risks. By 1942, he was flying RAAF Catalinas on marathon patrols but still found time to visit the newspaper office and tinker with layouts and stories. Macartney resumed his editorship in 1945. He signed up Bernie Kirwan Ward as the back-page ‘Peepshow’ columnist, and Paul Rigby, an unknown illustrator, as cartoonist. It was a masterful pairing that resulted in a circulation increase to 135,000 by the 1970s. Police roundsman Jack Coulter broke most stories, while Bonnie Giles, under the pseudonym ‘Mary Ferber’, added ‘hard news’ to the women’s pages. Meanwhile the red caps of the newspaper boys and the posters tied to light poles were part of the Perth street scene. Macartney served as managing editor (1951–60) and then managing director (1960–69) of WAN. From 1960 to 1986, the Saturday edition became the Weekend News, initially to counter the decision of the Perth Sunday Times, by now under Rupert Murdoch, to publish a Saturday evening edition. Heavily promoted evening television news sessions meant that afternoon newspapers throughout Australia in the 1980s lost circulation, and many folded. This was also company takeover time. WAN, which now wholly owned the Daily News, was taken over by Alan Bond’s Bell Group. Bell was forced to sell the Daily News to meet federal anti-monopoly laws. A small local company bought it in 1986. Debts mounted as readership continued to fall. Sir Albert ‘Larry’ Lamb, the British ‘tabloid doctor’, was called in, but his old prescription of page three girls and sensationalist stories did nothing to improve sales—particularly among women. The final edition came out on 11  September 1990. An attempt by WAN in the Federal Court to have anti-monopoly provisions eased so that it could resume ownership also failed that day. The Daily News left a debt of $15 million, mostly to WAN for production costs. REF: J. Coulter, By Deadline to Headline (1997). RON DAVIDSON

D AILY TELEG R AP H From meagre beginnings as a four-page penny paper, the Daily Telegraph became the largest

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selling daily newspaper in New South Wales. Launched on 1 July 1879 by a consortium of 10 Sydney and Melbourne businessmen, the broadsheet was a rival to the established Sydney Morning Herald. The Telegraph almost folded in 1883 when the Victorian co-owners wanted to pull out of the venture. A subsequent restructure, the appointment of Frederick William Ward as editor and a relaunch on 1 January 1884 underpinned the paper’s initial success. While still broadsheet in format, the Telegraph was the first Australian daily to embrace design elements of the New Journalism. Eleven months after the relaunch, the paper scooped the world by revealing the German annexation of northern New Guinea. By the end of the decade, the pro-free trade and anti-Labor Telegraph was outselling its rival, but there was trouble ahead. In May 1890, a disagreement over proposed management influence on editorial policy prompted the resignation of three senior editorial staff, including Ward. He did return as editor for 11 years from 1903 until 1914, but further editorial changes followed and by 1920 the paper had become a dull imitation of the Sydney Morning Herald. As the Great Depression loomed, the Daily Telegraph experienced mediocre sales and ownership changes. In 1927, it was acquired by Sun Newspapers Ltd, transformed into a pictorial tabloid and renamed the Daily Telegraph News Pictorial, becoming for a short time the Daily Pictorial. In 1929, Sun Newspapers was amalgamated with S. Bennett Ltd, publishers of the Evening News, to form Associated Newspapers Ltd. In 1931, under chairman Sir Hugh Denison, the paper was reinvented, returning to broadsheet format with its old name, the Daily Telegraph, restored. ‘Daily’ was dropped from the title in 1934, and the paper was the first in Australia to publish a rotogravure pictorial supplement. Two years later, the newly formed Consolidated Press Ltd, an amalgamation of Sydney Newspapers Ltd and Associated Newspapers, with (Sir) Frank Packer as deputy chairman and managing director, came to its rescue. Packer spent money on the title, increased the number of pages and hired leading journalists, including former Melbourne Herald editor Sydney Deamer. Promoting itself as ‘thoroughly modern’, the revitalised Daily Telegraph won public support and sales rose. In November 1939, the Sunday Telegraph was launched with Cyril Pearl as editor. The often controversial novelist and journalist Brian Penton was promoted to the Daily Telegraph editorship in 1941, replacing C.S. McNulty, who had taken over from Deamer in 1939. Penton and Pearl led the Telegraphs through a stellar era, attacking Australian political and intellectual complacency, promoting local literature and art, and resisting wartime censorship. Throughout the 1940s, the papers led public debate and were never far from controversy. Due to newsprint rationing, the papers

were published in tabloid format from the early 1940s. In 1946, the Daily Telegraph overtook the Sydney Morning Herald in circulation. Four years later, Pearl gave up his editorship to concentrate on the company’s new A.M. magazine. Penton died the following year. The Telegraphs lost flair but little clout, and became more closely directed by Frank Packer. As Packer’s news empire grew, so did his influence. Over the next two decades, the Telegraphs moved much further to the right. In 1963, Daily Telegraph journalist Alan Reid set a precedent in Australian political journalism with his ‘36 unknown men’ (later re-told as ‘faceless men’) pictorial scoop, which implied that Labor opposition leader Arthur Calwell and deputy Gough Whitlam were ‘waiting for instructions’ from the ALP federal executive. The Telegraph’s political influence under Packer climaxed with the 1969 Liberal Party leadership spill, when the Telegraph-supported (Sir) William McMahon replaced (Sir) John Gorton as prime minister. There was less confidence behind the scenes: the Telegraphs were losing more than $1 million a year when sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited for $15 million in June 1972. The Daily Telegraph became a companion paper to News’ Sydney afternoon tabloid, the Daily Mirror. The Sunday Telegraph was combined with the fledgling Sunday Australian. Under Murdoch, the Telegraphs threw their weight behind the election of Labor under Whitlam at the 1972 election. The support was short-lived, and by 1975 the Telegraphs were strident in their attacks on the Whitlam government. The Daily Telegraph’s influence on the federal political agenda is considerable but, as a Sydney-based newspaper, its greatest sphere of power has been in New South Wales. The Telegraph is regarded as the agenda-setter for commercial radio and television news. Particularly under Colin ‘Col’ Allan (editor, editor-in-chief 1993–2001), the paper developed a close relationship with state Labor and was frequently fed political leaks. Allan reinvigorated the Telegraph. In 1990, the paper had been renamed the Telegraph Mirror following the closure of the Daily Mirror. In 1993, Allan controversially dropped ‘Mirror’ from the title, but answered critics by retaining high sales through a revamped ‘24-hour newspaper’ with new columnists and more editorial splashes. Allan was at the helm when a 1997 front-page splash on poor final-year results at a Sydney high school led to defamation payments of more than $2 million. The Daily Telegraph was again drawn into controversy when, under editor David Penberthy, it decided to publish allegations of misconduct against the state Liberal opposition leader, John Brogden, in 2005. The paper was forced to defend its decision following Brogden’s subsequent resignation and attempted suicide.

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davies family News (1933–57). He wrote a regular newspaper column, and in 1945 published a book, Hi, Ho! Everybody! During the 1950s, Davey conducted a public rivalry with radio quiz-master Bob Dyer. The advent of television proved more favourable for Dyer’s scripted delivery than Davey’s more spontaneous approach: three television programs Davey made for ATN7 were not successful. They coincided with poor health and the exertions of his lifestyle: in this last stage of his career, he epitomised the classic radio star unable to make the transition to television.

In August 2013, Col Allan was recalled to Australia from the New York Post to oversee News Limited’s federal election coverage. The Telegraph overtly campaigned for a return to conservative government, printing a front cover photo-composition portraying Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as an inept Nazi commander from the 1960s television program Hogan’s Heroes. Like most newspapers, circulation of the Daily Telegraph print edition has steadily decreased since the advent of the internet. Content from the newspaper first went online in 1996, while a Telegraph app for iPhone and Android was launched in May 2012. A year later, a metered paywall was introduced for online content.

REF: L. Wright, The Jack Davey Story (1961). JOHN POTTS

REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, The House of Packer (1999); R.B. Walker, Yesterday’s News (1980). MARGARET VAN HEEKEREN

DAVEY, J A CK (1907–59) Known as ‘Mr Radio’ during the ‘golden age’ of Australian commercial radio in the 1940s and 1950s, Jack Davey was an enduringly popular announcer and entertainer. Born in New Zealand, he arrived in Sydney in 1931, originally finding employment as a crooner on Sydney’s 2BL. Hired by 2GB in 1932, he quickly established himself as a radio voice within the staple programming formats of the time: breakfast show, daytime quiz show, evening variety program. His strengths as a host and announcer were his warm, engaging voice, his lively personality, his quick wit and his ability to improvise. He established the welcoming phrase ‘Hi, Ho! Everybody!’ as his distinctive call sign during his time at 2GB. The height of Davey’s fame coincided with the high-profile radio productions produced by the Colgate–Palmolive Radio Production Unit in the 1940s. From 1941, Davey was director of productions and host of a number of Colgate– Palmolive shows, including The Youth Show and Calling the Stars. The variety and quiz shows produced during this period were often recorded before live audiences of up to 2000 people each week at venues such as Sydney’s Trocadero Ballroom. As the host and central figure of these grand productions, Davey was associated with the glamour of commercial radio. He was known as the highest-paid radio personality in Australia: in 1950, his contract with the Macquarie Network was worth £13,000 per year at a time when the prime minister’s salary was just £3000. Davey’s extravagant lifestyle—nightclubs, gambling, parties, expensive cars and a cruiser—was heavily publicised. After serving as a field entertainer during the latter stages of World War II, Davey moved with the Colgate–Palmolive Unit to 2UE in 1946, returning to 2GB in 1950 as director of radio productions. He also worked in other media, including as commentator for Fox Movietone

D AVIES FAM ILY For more than a century, the Davies family was Hobart’s dominant newspaper dynasty. John Davies (1813 or 1814–72) was transported for fraud to Hobart in 1831. After his emancipation, he worked in Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales in a range of capacities, from amateur actor and publican to chief constable. A journalist on John Pascoe Fawkner’s Port Phillip Patriot from 1842, Davies purchased the Hobarton Guardian in partnership with Auber George Jones a decade later. On 5 July 1854, it was incorporated in a new paper, the Hobarton Mercury. Within a few weeks, Davies was the sole proprietor of what became the Hobart Mercury. Davies was a member of the House of Assembly from 1861, and a decade later management of the Mercury shifted to his two sons, (John) George (1846–1913) CMG, KCMG and Charles Ellis Davies (1847–1921). George trained as a journalist and advanced to become general manager, a title he later ceded to Charles. In 1877, the pair launched a weekly newspaper, the Tasmanian Mail. In 1895, the liability company Davies Brothers Limited was formed, with Charles as managing director. George served as mayor of Hobart City Council and, from 1884 to 1913, was a member of the House of Assembly. He was knighted in 1909. Charles Ellis served in the Legislative Council (1897–1920) and was Tasmanian representative at the Imperial Press Conference in London in 1908. Sir George’s youngest son, Charles Reginald Davies (1883–1925), took over as chairman in 1921. He had worked in accounts and the photographic department before becoming company secretary in 1914 and managing director in 1921. His brother, Cecil Bertrand (Bert) Davies CBE (1876–1960), a leading Tasmanian engineer, became chairman of Davies Brothers in 1925 and served as managing director from 1931 until his retirement in 1946. Charles Ellis Davies (1914–54), son of the original Charles Ellis, was director of advertising before serving in World War II. He became

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davis, neil brian (1934–85) managing editor in 1944 and chairman in 1946. George Francis (Bill) Davies AO, CMG (1911– 87) worked in accounting and the commercial printery before serving as executive chairman from 1954 to 1971 and chairman until 1985. Bill was also the foundation chairman of radio station 7HO and television station TVT6. In 1962, some family members decided to relinquish their entire holdings in Davies Brothers Limited, and the Herald and Weekly Times became the major shareholder in the company. In March 1988, Davies Brothers Limited became a wholly owned subsidiary of News Limited and the family link of four generations was severed. REF: Cyclopedia of Tasmania (c. 1900). MARGARET DAVIES

D AV IS, NEI L BRI A N (1934–85) Hobart-born Neil Brian Davis covered front-line combat in the Second Indochina War (known as the Vietnam War in the West) for 11 years as a roving correspondent for Visnews, a British international news film company. Unlike other Western cameramen, he consistently filmed the fighting efforts of the Vietnamese and Cambodian soldiers. His film was shown in more than 100 countries. An apprenticeship to the Tasmanian Government Film Unit in Hobart in 1949 taught him his trade, including 35mm newsreel coverage for Fox Movietone and Cinesound. In 1961 he became a cameraman with the ABC. Davis’s appointment to Visnews in 1964 established his credentials as a war correspondent, first in the Indonesian Confrontation with Malaysia in Borneo, and in Vietnam where he honed his survival skills in combat with the South Vietnamese army in their deadly struggle with the communist Viet Cong. From 1970 he based himself in Phnom Penh when Cambodia became involved in the war, where survival in combat with the brave but inexperienced Cambodian troops against the ruthless Khmer Rouge soldiers tested him to the utmost. He was wounded more than 20 times, most seriously in Cambodia in April 1974 when a mortar blast nearly severed his right leg. His most celebrated scoop was obtaining the only film of a communist tank breaking down the gates of the Independence Palace in Saigon on 30 April 1975—the symbolic end of the war. Admitting to being addicted to combat, Davis always knew he was not invincible, but he would not have expected to die in a usually unexciting Thai coup in 1985, when shrapnel from a rebel tank fatally ripped into his body while his camera continued to roll, capturing scenes of his own death. It was his last and ultimate scoop. REF: T. Bowden, One Crowded Hour (1987). TIM BOWDEN

D EAM ER FAM ILY The careers of Syd and Adrian Deamer span a wide range of print media outlets, pre-eminently as journalists and editors rather than managers. Both Syd and Adrian, his younger son, achieved recognition for their editorial independence and their talents as journalists. However, both were destined to clash with newspaper proprietors and senior staff over their liberal views and bohemian work habits. If Syd’s early career was the more charismatic, Adrian’s was arguably the more durable, culminating in a legal career with John Fairfax & Sons and the Australian Press Council. Sydney Harold Deamer (1891–1962) entered journalism in the United Kingdom before emigrating to Australia, where he worked on Sydney and Melbourne newspapers after World War I. He gained professional recognition as president of the Australian Journalists’ Association (later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) for his successful advocacy during the 1927 Metropolitan Dailies’ Agreement. Recruited by (Sir) Keith Murdoch to edit the Adelaide Register, Deamer subsequently moved to the Melbourne Herald, where he became embroiled in an ongoing power struggle between Murdoch and Theodore Fink. After spending time in London with Australian Associated Press, Deamer returned to Australia in 1936 to edit the revamped Sydney Daily Telegraph. Within (Sir) Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press Ltd, he enjoyed considerable autonomy at the Telegraph in competition with the staid Sydney Morning Herald. In 1939, after resigning over his demotion on the Telegraph in favour of Brian Penton, Deamer was appointed editor of the fledgling ABC Weekly, where he continued to promote progressive views, criticising government control of the ABC wartime news service. As head of the ABC’s Public Relations Division in 1943–44, Deamer promoted its wartime independence on both the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee and in evidence to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Broadcasting. In a move designed to forestall an offer from the Sydney Morning Herald, Frank Packer offered Deamer a directorship with Consolidated Press. He was re-employed in 1944 as a feature writer and associate editor with the Daily Telegraph, before accepting an appointment on the Herald in 1946 to write Column 8. Despite declining health and renewed bouts of drinking, Deamer maintained Column 8, with a figurehead of ‘Granny’ bearing his waspish features at the top of the column, for the remainder of his career, until 1961. Syd’s renewed influence on the Daily Telegraph helped to secure Adrian Deamer (1922– 2000) a cadetship with the paper, but relations between the two would remain tense over Syd’s caustic wit and drinking habits. Adrian steadily rose through the ranks on a range of papers

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defamation with the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT). He became chief of staff and features editor on the Herald, then London editor in 1960. On his return to Australia, he was recruited to work for the Australian in Canberra. He left the HWT on amicable terms, but did not become editor of the Australian until 1968. Deamer took the paper to the centre-left of the political spectrum. Its attack on the Vietnam War and the divisive Coalition politics of the Springbok Rugby tour in July 1971 helped precipitate his sacking by Rupert Murdoch. Later that year, Deamer delivered the Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism, defending his position and his search for a younger, more progressive readership. While considering his future prospects after the Australian, Adrian found casual work with the Bulletin and Radio Australia. During the turbulent 1970s, he was sceptical of the newly established Department of the Media and the Australian Press Council (APC), and developed his own theory of ‘self-censorship by osmosis’ to explain the limitations of Australian journalism under proprietorial dominance. After completing his law degree in 1978, Adrian was offered a position with law firm Stephen, Jaques and Stephen, which acted for John Fairfax & Sons, combining his knowledge of law and journalism to good effect. Recruited directly to Fairfax by Max Suich, he served as its in-house legal manager at a time when the company and its publications faced annual suits of $2–3 million. Prior to his retirement in 1993, Deamer was appointed Fairfax’s representative on the APC, and was subsequently retained as a member of its Press Freedom Committee. An editorial traditionalist like his father, Adrian Deamer maintained until his death in 2000 that ‘an editor should (never) be anything other than that bastard sitting in the room who is always difficult to get on with’. REFs: D. Cryle, Murdoch’s Flagship (2008); C.J. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist (1985). DENIS CRYLE

DEFAMATI ON Defamation in Australia departed from its English heritage in 1847. Only four years after the creation of its first representative legislature, New South Wales reformed the law in ways that had recently been rejected in England. The change meant that the defence of justification required proof that the publication would benefit the public as well as being true. After 1847, true but private matters could not be defended from defamation claims in New South Wales. This early legal method of protecting privacy is often linked to the colony’s convict origins. Parliamentary debates also suggest that it had the more general aim of countering attempts at extortion by some newspapers that threatened

to publish embarrassing private facts and speculation about a convict past. The requirement to prove both truth and public benefit did not survive in all colonies, with each developing its own defamation law. This lack of uniformity continued until largely uniform defamation laws came into force throughout Australia in 2006. Among modest changes, the uniform laws removed any requirement to prove public benefit or public interest in the defence of truth. The absence of uniform laws posed challenges for the media, particularly with the growth of national distribution and broadcasting during the 20th century. In practice, the media had to meet the requirements of whichever jurisdiction was least protective of the publication in question. An even greater difficulty for the media was the law’s general substance. Defamation plaintiffs need to establish far less than in most civil actions, and plaintiffs with the resources to sue can do much to limit critical media coverage. (A criminal offence of defamation exists, but has become very rare and is not significant for media publications.) Political, business and legal figures, sports and entertainment stars, restaurateurs, artists and performers all successfully sue the media. Plaintiffs could also issue ‘stop writs’, in which defamation actions were brought but left to languish in the court system; the action was brought solely to stop further publication on the issues in question. Between the 1960s and 1980s, law reform bodies raised serious concerns about the use of such writs against Australian media. Major defences to civil defamation involve proving publications to be true; to be honest opinion or comment based on material proven to be true; to have been published on an occasion of absolute privilege, such as statements made in legal proceedings and parliament; or to be protected by qualified privilege. None of the defences works very well for the media. Qualified privilege traditionally included media reports of statements made in courts or parliament but not wider commentary about those statements. It was often unavailable to media defendants—for example, it did not protect media publications about suspected corruption: the matter had to be reported to authorities rather than to the general public. Historically, a minority of Australian jurisdictions provided other forms of qualified privilege that could better protect media publications on matters of public interest. However, the defences were sometimes difficult to apply at trial and were abolished by the uniform laws. Truth is more challenging to prove in court than one might suspect, making new forms of privilege important if public-interest speech is to be better protected. Reflecting such arguments, a new qualified privilege developed in the 1990s as the High Court recognised a protection for political communication implied

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defamation in the Australian Constitution. The defence protects publications concerning political matters where the circumstances of publication were reasonable. The uniform laws have extended the defence to reasonable publication on matters of public (and not just political) interest. However, the term ‘reasonable’ in an earlier, similar defence in New South Wales was interpreted so restrictively by courts that it became almost impossible for media defendants to use. The net result of all these rules is that where defendants cannot prove material true by evidence admissible in court, they may well be liable for damages because harm to the plaintiff is assumed in defamation. The risks exist for classic forms of media investigation and commentary, but extend to all media genres. The law appears to focus more on protecting reputation than promoting wide debate about matters of public interest. Several examples illustrate the complexities and challenges of defamation. In O’Shaughnessy v Mirror Newspapers (1970), a theatre review caused years of litigation. Katharine Brisbane had criticised a production of Othello under the headline ‘What a Tragedy’. Peter O’Shaughnessy both directed the production and played Othello. Brisbane commented: ‘Stupidity and lack of talent are forgivable; brave failures are deserving of praise—these are every-day human failings. But the waste and dishonesty of this production … make me very angry indeed.’ One might think, like the jury, that this was an honest opinion about the production and so protected by the defence of fair comment. But that defence cannot protect bare statements of fact, and more than three years after the review’s publication in the Australian, the High Court held that it might have meant the plaintiff promoted his own performance at the expense of other actors. The law would treat that as a factual matter, which could not be defended by fair comment. The jury had not been asked to consider that possibility and, to avoid a second trial, the case finally settled. In Meskenas v Capon (1993), the director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales was sued after the Sun-Herald published his criticism of a portrait of business identity, Rene Rivkin. Edmund Capon said: ‘It’s simply a rotten picture. It’s no good at all … It looks like it’s been painted with chewing gum.’ In his opinion, this was a poor painting. But the statement could not be defended, because it was taken to convey a broader meaning that Vladas Meskenas was an inferior painter. While only $100 in damages was awarded, the defence had to pay the plaintiff’s legal costs, which reportedly amounted to $80,000 for a short and simple defamation trial in the District Court in Sydney. As well as such artistic criticism, media reports of issues of public debate can easily give rise to defamation actions. For example, multiple

defamation cases arose during the 1990s in connection with the Hindmarsh Island bridge development in South Australia, media reporting of it and the Royal Commission that was held into the government planning process for the bridge. The plaintiff developers reportedly won damages totalling $800,000. Influential investigative journalism has also long been at legal risk. A famous example involved serious allegations about governance in Queensland. The 1980s Four Corners report, ‘The Moonlight State’, is commonly seen as a catalyst for an official inquiry into police corruption in Queensland and substantial efforts to reform the police force. Among more than 100 convictions, Queensland’s most senior police officer was subsequently imprisoned. Even so, the journalist involved, Chris Masters, and ABC legal staff had to defend the program in a series of hearings over more than 12 years. The main defence was an earlier form of qualified privilege. At almost every stage, the media succeeded in the defence, yet the litigation continued, in part due to the highly technical appeals allowed by defamation law’s complexity. The publication was of undoubted public importance and the journalism outstanding, but its defence involved huge resources. There have also been notable cases involving politicians who historically were among the most common defamation plaintiffs faced by the media. It is a matter of folklore that some won sufficient damages to pay for a ‘Fairfax (or Murdoch) swimming pool’. Equally, particular business figures and organisations have formidable reputations for suing. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that some litigants who have the resources for legal action have used defamation in managing their public image and limiting reporting and commentary. Media publications are not all at equal risk of suit. Journalists and legal advisers’ knowledge of potential plaintiffs can be significant in deciding what material to publish and who can be defamed with relative safety. Research shows many more men than women sue in defamation, with wider socio-economic differences also evident. Suits most often involve allegations about business, professional or political activities. It is not only media publications that are subject to suit, but media organisations are very prominent defamation defendants. Historically, newspapers have been most likely to be sued. Comparative research has found defamation law to have a ‘chilling effect’ on speech, with Australia comparing poorly to the United States, where public speech is far more protected under the first amendment to the US Constitution. Defamatory allegations against political and corporate actors appear be published in the US media more frequently than in Australia—as much as three times more often in mainstream newspapers during the early 2000s. Australian media appeared to be far less comfortable

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department of communications became a statutory reality after his death, when the Chifley government amended the Australian Broadcasting Act 1942 in 1946, obliging the ABC to use its own staff for Australian news. Over the next 20 years, Denning served as ABC News editor in Brisbane, Hobart and Sydney, but two of his books, Inside Parliament (1946) and The Road to Canberra (1947), expressed his love of the national capital. In 1937 Denning had published Caucus Crisis, an account of the fall of the Scullin Labor government, an ‘insider’ account of Caucus in-fighting. Denning’s essentially tragic vision of Labor, its idealism fatally flawed by opportunism, has influenced the literature of Australian politics ever since.

making allegations about business wrongdoing than US media, although Australian media also appeared more constrained in relation to political criticism. Under Australia’s uniform defamation laws, most corporations can no longer sue in defamation. However, individuals associated with a company can still sue if they are identifiable from media publications about the company. Despite calls for more substantial alteration of defamation law, legislative changes have been incremental. In part, this has been due to complex relations between politicians and media. Internet communications may alter those relations over time, promoting larger reform. REFs: C. Masters, Inside Story (1992); M. Pearson and M. Polden, The Journalist’s Guide to Media Law (4th ed., 2011). ANDREW T. KENYON

REF: K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983). GRAHAM FREUDENBERG

DENNI NG, WA R REN EDWIN (1906–75) Warren Denning was pivotal in making the ABC News national and independent. His pioneering books on federal politics inspired a succession of journalist-historians from the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. Born in Perth, Denning started work with Parramatta’s Cumberland Times at the age of 16. He covered the first five years of the federal parliament in Canberra as correspondent for the Sydney Labor Daily and then the Melbourne Argus. After stints in Sydney and Melbourne, he returned to Canberra in 1937 with Australian United Press. In May 1939, Frank Dixon, the ABC’s federal news director, appointed Denning as the first staff correspondent in Canberra. This was a major breakthrough; previously the press proprietors had strongly resisted moves by the ABC to create its own reporting capability and the ABC depended almost entirely on material culled and edited from the dailies and Australian Associated Press. In March 1939, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons publicly lashed the ABC for broadcasting a questionable item on defence plans copied from a newspaper, and demanded that the ABC should have its own Canberra correspondent. Dixon’s choice of Denning was inspired. The advent of the Curtin Labor government in 1941 and the war against Japan transformed the role of ABC News. On Denning’s initiative, 10 days after Pearl Harbor, his Canberra bureau produced a daily bulletin of national news, which was read from Canberra ahead of the overseas news read from Sydney. At Curtin’s behest, Denning’s bulletin became the nucleus of a vastly expanded service of five daily bulletins. Denning’s close relations with Curtin helped drive this expansion. As opposition leader, Curtin had told Dixon that ‘only when the ABC had an independent service would the Labor Party get impartial treatment’. Curtin’s hopes

D EP AR TM EN T O F C O M M U N IC ATIO N S From Federation in 1901, under section 51(v) of the Constitution, the Commonwealth of Australia was responsible for the administration of communications matters, and in particular a nationally integrated system of postal and telegraphic services. Section 69 specifically required the new federal government to absorb all state departments responsible for ‘posts, telegraphs, and telephone’. A single group of public servants has essentially been responsible for media and communications issues since Federation, with almost unbroken succession despite changes of government. There have been at least nine successive departments since 1901—with the names usually more complex in recent years. The precise responsibilities of related government departments and their public servants have changed with the allocation of ministerial portfolios and incoming administrations. Sometimes the secretary of the department changes when a new government is elected, but usually there is little change in departmental leadership. While public servants, particularly the secretary of the department, have considerable influence on policy, that power stems from their role in assisting and advising their government minister. The current Department of Communications is a descendant of the original Postmaster-General’s (PMG) Department, created in 1901, which accounted for 90 per cent of the federal bureaucracy, with 16,000 staff. Radio started its early growth soon afterwards, with the first complete set of broadcasting regulations issued in 1923, for which the department’s Wireless Branch became responsible. With the formation of the Australian Broadcasting Control Board in 1949, the PMG still retained statutory authority for broadcasting. Under the Television Act 1953, the department was authorised to make television stations available for transmission of programs.

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department of information The PMG coexisted with the Department of the Media (1972–75) under the Whitlam Labor government. The duties of both departments were assumed by the Postal and Telecommunications Department, which also gained responsibility for technical and planning matters in 1975. The Department of Communications (1980– 87) under the Fraser Coalition and Hawke Labor governments oversaw inquiries into telecommunication services and subscription television, and considered the findings of the Dix inquiry into the ABC. The Department of Transport and Communications (1987–93) under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments oversaw the introduction of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and the Radiocommunications Act 1992. The Department of Communications and the Arts (1994–97) under the Keating Labor and Howard Coalition governments assumed arts and heritage policy priorities, and oversaw ‘Networking the Nation’, a regional telecommunications fund, as well as the arrangements for the sale of the first third of Telstra. The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (1998–2007) under the Howard government demonstrated the shifting awareness of the role that technology was playing in the ‘information economy’. This emphasis was articulated even more sharply in 2007, with the Rudd Labor government’s creation of the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) under Senator Stephen Conroy. The new department’s priorities were the switch to digital television, more accessible broadband (through the National Broadband Network), promoting the digital economy (through broadband infrastructure) and safer internet use (through addressing e-security and cyber-safety risks). By 2012–13, the DBCDE was responsible for three programs: broadband and communications infrastructure; digital economy and postal services; and broadcasting and digital television. In June 2013 it employed 643 staff. The DBCDE was replaced by the Department of Communications, under Malcolm Turnbull, with the election of the Abbott Coalition government in September 2013. REF: http://www.communications.gov.au. TIM DWYER

D E P A RTME NT OF I NFORM ATION Established on 12 September 1939, the Department of Information (DOI) built and managed an extensive government media-monitoring and management system. Previously, a Directorate of War Propaganda had been formed shortly before World War I ended, but propaganda had had little effect on Australian war policy at that time. German and Italian broadcasts began to be received in Australia from the early 1930s and raised the prospect of international propa-

ganda. The first Minister for Information was Sir Henry Somer Gullett. During World War II, the DOI managed propaganda and censorship, and was in charge of bolstering domestic morale. On 18 October 1939, Cabinet approved Gullett’s aims for the department, which were to increase and sustain the faith of the Australian people in the cause for which Australia was engaged in war; promote the interest and thought calculated to support the government in security, money-raising (including taxation) and other general activities; and to directly and indirectly distribute sound facts about all phases of the war through every available channel. The department maintained the Australian News and Information Bureau (ANIB), a Censorship Branch and sections for advertising, broadcasting (including a ShortWave Broadcasting Division), cinema and photographs. Initially, the DOI sponsored a network of ‘groups’ to disseminate information and provide feedback on its effectiveness, but this proved unwieldy and was abandoned. The department undertook to produce its own news bulletins, managed production and technical requirements for short-wave broadcasts, oversaw government distribution of information, advertising, and private and mass media censorship, and appointed its own war correspondents, including Kenneth Slessor, the Official War Correspondent. When Sir Keith Murdoch was appointed the Department’s Director-General of Information in June 1940, concerns increased that government would control all broadcasting. Murdoch’s determination to oversight all radio news and information led to the first national broadcasts in 1940. When Murdoch resigned in December 1940, the Director-General’s position lapsed until E.G. Bonney was appointed in April 1943; he resigned in 1948. The national (ABC) and commercial radio stations provided morale-boosting broadcasts, war news, war bonds and behavioural advertising without losing day-to-day management of domestic broadcasting. International shortwave broadcasting was wholly initiated and undertaken by the DOI’s Short-Wave Division. These Radio Australia broadcasts used five languages (English, French, Dutch, German and Japanese), and included news bulletins to overseas troops, political propaganda and war publicity. The division also used ‘listening posts’ to monitor other short-wave broadcasts. From January 1942, the ABC managed short-wave broadcasting until it was returned to the DOI in April 1944. The Department of Commerce’s Cinema Unit was transferred to the DOI in February 1940 to provide material and facilities to newsreel companies. In April 1945, an Australian National Film Board was established to coordinate films for school, adult education, social development and the extension of trade, tourism and immi-

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department of the media gration. The board was attached to the DOI, which was responsible for the production of films recommended by the board. The DOI banned some print media (including Communist Party newspapers and Jehovah’s Witness magazines, which promoted conscientious objection), but popular newspapers continued publishing with pre-publication censorship arrangements. The department could compel publication and ration newsprint. By centralising major press advertising contracts for efficiency reasons, the DOI accrued influence in print media. The diversity of national newspapers led to different approaches to the department’s suppressive and expressive powers. A free news service was welcomed by suburban and country newspapers, but little used by their metropolitan counterparts. The press maintained varying levels of accommodation and contention with the department, although historical commentary has focused on the censorship of the Sydney newspapers in 1944, while Labor’s Arthur Calwell was Minister for Information. The department’s relations with the metropolitan press—particularly in Sydney—deteriorated under Calwell. On 15 April 1944, when the Daily Telegraph published blank spaces to indicate censored content, the newspaper and its Sunday edition were served with an ‘order to submit’, requiring all publication and distribution to cease. On 16 April, entire editions of Sydney papers were suppressed and Commonwealth Peace Officers were sent to newspaper offices to prevent distribution. While the DOI was abolished in 1950, its publicity function continued through the ANIB. The National Film Board was maintained and Radio Australia became part of the ABC. REFs: P. Hasluck, The Government and the People, 1939–1941 (1952); J. Hilvert, Blue Pencil Warriors (1984). JOHN TEBBUTT

DEPART ME NT OF THE M EDIA Australian media policy was in the melting pot by the early 1970s. Politically there was bipartisan acceptance of the need for government support to develop a local film industry, and media reform campaigns had emerged in the wake of the Senate Select Committee on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for Television (known as the Vincent Committee) in 1962–63. When Labor won power in December 1972, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam created a Department of the Media, which incorporated various media, information and publishing-related agencies drawn from other government departments. The first minister was Senator Douglas McClelland, a former newspaper reporter who had been a member of the Vincent Committee, and the permanent head was James

Oswin, former CEO of ATN7. He saw one of the department’s most important tasks as being establishing an ‘Australian look’ for all aspects of the media. The information functions of the new department had evolved from those of the Department of Information during World War II and continued by the Australian News and Information Bureau (ANIB). Its focus was overseas, with Australian-based journalists supplying articles and information targeted to individual countries and supplied through diplomatic missions. The ANIB became the Australian Information Service (AIS). Senior staff in the department’s broadcasting division were drawn mainly from the radio and television industry. Although satisfactory as private-enterprise managers, they lacked a working knowledge of public service management, and were soon shown to be naive about inter-departmental negotiations. McClelland failed to alter policies that he had denounced for many years as an opposition senator: the foreign monopolies that had dominated the Australian film industry for years, and monopoly control over the press, radio and television. He made no move towards public licence-renewal hearings for radio and television; he did not act to investigate the feasibility of Labor’s proposed newspaper commission; and he left no coherent broadcasting policy—and in fact resisted its development because of political and departmental in-fighting. One obstacle that faced the department’s broadcasting division was the independent statutory powers of the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB), which was seen by many as ‘captive’ to the existing radio and television stations. The ABCB had inexplicably decided to introduce frequency-modulation (FM) radio in the UHF band, although the rest of the world was using the VHF band. In March 1974, the Independent Inquiry into Frequency Modulation Broadcasting, headed by Sir Francis McLean, rejected the ABCB’s views and recommended that the VHF band be opened to FM radio stations, that a community radio sector be established and that the ABC have an FM network. At the request of the prime minister, the Priorities Review Staff reported on radio issues in August 1974 and August 1975. The reports expressed many of the highest hopes of people wanting to operate small community radio stations. If they had been adopted, it would have meant emasculating the Media Department. Sections of the second report were leaked to the media but not released; instead, the department basked in the minister’s announcement of new radio licences to public broadcasters, such as ethnic radio, fine music and public access (community radio) stations, and the development of new ABC programming and services such as 2JJ in Sydney (now Triple J) and 3ZZ in Melbourne (a public-access station).

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devine, frank (1931–2009) The department approved a points system for Australian content in areas such as drama on commercial television. It moved unsuccessfully to introduce more television channels to most rural areas, which were surviving with just one commercial channel plus the ABC. It was not until the Hawke Labor government aggregated television services from March 1989 that the department’s goals were achieved. The promotion of diversity, access and pluralism in Australian media was achieved by, for example, organising a national conference on public broadcasting in July 1974. The department enlarged the scope of AIS in July 1973 to include internal information initiatives, such as the formation of the Australian Government Liaison Service to provide a centralised information team for federal ministers, and the introduction of a government bookshops network. In late 1975, AIS became part of the department’s newly formed Australian Office of Information, with John Lleonart as its director. On 6 June 1975, Dr Moss Cass, former Minister for the Environment, became the Minister for Media, and on 30 June, Jim Spigelman, Whitlam’s principal private secretary, replaced Oswin as head of department. The department existed from 19 December 1972 until 22 December 1975, when the Fraser Coalition government abolished it and split its functions between two departments: Postal and Telecommunications, and Administrative Services. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘The Government Advocates’ (unpublished paper, 1975, held by NLA). ROD KIRKPATRICK

D E V INE , F RA NK (1931–2009) An editor and columnist, Devine was born in Blenheim, New Zealand. Aged 17, Frank began his career as a sports reporter on the Marlborough Express. In 1953 he moved to Perth to join the West Australian, where he met his future wife, Jacqueline Magee. Devine variously served as foreign correspondent for the West Australian and the Melbourne Herald in New York, London and Tokyo. In 1970, Reader’s Digest founder DeWitt Wallace invited Devine to New York to be interviewed for the position of editor-in-chief of the Australian and New Zealand editions of Reader’s Digest. Wallace asked Devine whether he thought the Digest should use the word ‘fuck’ in one of its condensations of a novel. Devine said that if such a word could not be deleted, it was not a very good novel. He got the job and moved to Sydney. As editor, he published the first major report on the growing use of drugs in sport and an exposure of how a New Zealander convicted of murder had been ‘fitted up’ by an Auckland detective. In 1981, he was appointed editor of the American edition of Reader’s Digest and returned to the United States.

Rupert Murdoch made him editor first of the Chicago Sun-Times in 1986, then of the New York Post; one of his prized possessions was a first edition of Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop (1938) given to him by staff. Appointed editor of the Australian in 1988, Devine suffered the first setback of his career: after just 15 months, he was sacked. He wrote ironically that his dismissal was ‘one of the enduring mysteries of Australian journalism’, since under his editorship circulation had risen. He doubted that his Reaganite conservatism was too strong for Australian readers, although he believed that his American ideas of the independence of editors had irritated Australian management. Murdoch said later, without explanation, ‘Frank was one of my mistakes. But I love him.’ Devine remained a columnist on the Australian for 20 years. Devine was a conviction journalist whose Catholic faith was central to his life and work. He was a stylish writer, jovial bon vivant, sports fanatic and family man. His last essay in Older and Wiser (2009), a collection of his best pieces from Quadrant since joining the magazine in 2002, honoured his three daughters (including the journalist Miranda Devine) and his 50 years of marriage. REF: http://australianconservative.com/2009/07/valefrank-devine-1931-2009/. PETER COLEMAN

D IG ITAL R AD IO AN D TELEVISIO N Digital broadcasting refers to the transmission of radio and television signals using digital coding. It became a major policy issue in the 1990s and early 2000s because its introduction by free-to-air broadcasters required governments to allocate radio-frequency spectrum and consumers to buy new receivers. Digital coding of the broadcast signals made more efficient use of spectrum, allowing broadcasters to offer more services of better technical quality and audiences to manipulate, store and interact with broadcast content more easily. By enabling the use of frequencies that could not be deployed for analogue transmissions without unacceptable levels of interference, digital television transmission meant a lot of spectrum could be reallocated for other purposes after ‘analogue switch-off’ or ‘digital switchover’. Much of the policy debate was about freeto-air broadcasters’ use of digital transmission, although the technology was introduced first by satellite and cable operators. The first policy debates and decisions occurred in the late 1990s, amid the rapid take-up of other digital media, including 2G mobile telephony, internet access and DVD. Incumbent broadcasters promoted digital transmission mainly to help them keep pace with the technical quality offered by their competitors. Television broadcasters were especially concerned to secure their tenure over valuable spectrum at a time when spectrum

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digital radio and television auctions were becoming popular. Governments and parliaments supported digital broadcasting because it used spectrum more efficiently, and because they accepted that popular electronic media services—including the public service broadcasters they funded—needed a path to a digital future. They were especially interested in digital television because politically influential broadcasters wanted it, and because the large amounts of vacated spectrum might raise significant sums at auction. Policy-makers in Australia drew on technology, experience and policy models from overseas, especially the United Kingdom and the United States. Australia chose European transmission standards—DVB rather than ATSC for television and eventually the enhanced DAB+ rather than HD Radio for radio—and the European digital radio structure, where broadcasters would share capacity on multiplex transmitters. The Australian television policy model was closer to that of the United States. Incumbent commercial and national (ABC and SBS) broadcasters each got an additional channel to transmit their existing analogue and digital television services until analogue services were shut down. Australia, like the United States, initially emphasised higher definition television. The ABC and SBS were important parts of the digital television transition, but not the centrepiece. Initial decisions about digital television and radio were announced by the Howard Coalition government in March 1998, and the television decisions were legislated later that year. Digital television and radio were both supposed to commence in 2001. Digital television would replace analogue, but digital radio would only supplement analogue services. There was no commitment to shut down AM and FM radio; analogue television transmission would cease eight years after digital commenced, a timetable that was later delayed. The government eventually agreed to wholly fund the new television infrastructure for the ABC and SBS, and provide half the cost for regional commercial television broadcasters—a total of around $1.25 billion. The Labor opposition and Australian Democrats criticised the speed of government decision-making about digital television, but ended up supporting the main policy elements. The decisions about television were heavily criticised, especially the quotas for high definition programming, the continuing prohibition on more than three commercial television licences in each market and the complicated restrictions on ‘datacasting’ services able to use frequencies not required by incumbent television broadcasters. Not much public comment was made about the digital radio policy, but it was not pursued with any enthusiasm by the radio industry. Criticism of the digital television policy by newspaper, pay television and telecommunications companies, internet service providers and a consumer organisation was expressed through

an inquiry into broadcasting held by the Productivity Commission. Its March 2000 report warned that ‘without substantial changes, the digital [television] conversion plan is at serious risk of failure’. It opposed a conversion scheme for digital radio. A number of changes to the television scheme were made later in 2000. To allow consumers to buy cheaper standard definition (SD) receivers, television broadcasters were required to ‘triple-cast’ separate SD and HD digital as well as analogue versions of their services. More detail was added to the definitions of what could and could not be transmitted by digital television and datacasting service providers, and internet streaming was excluded from the definition of ‘broadcasting service’. An auction of spectrum for datacasting was called off after it became clear there would be few bidders. Metropolitan digital television services commenced on 1 January 2001, after the late-1990s internet and telecommunications bubble had burst. Household penetration reached nearly 30 per cent by October 2006. The main pay television operator, Foxtel, launched a digital service in 2004 and switched off analogue three years later. In late 2006, the long-criticised restrictions on free-to-air multi-channel services were relaxed, effectively allowing commercial broadcasters a second channel from 2007 and a third from 2009. Restrictions were removed entirely for the ABC and SBS. Seven’s 7mate and 7TWO, Nine’s Gem and GO!, Ten’s ONE and ELEVEN, SBS2, and the ABC’s ABC2, ABC3 (Kids) and ABC News24 soon started attracting significant audiences. Together with National Indigenous Television, the digital multi-channels became available to all viewers across the country when the government-funded Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) commenced in 2010. Capacity for a terrestrial community television channel was eventually allocated on the SBS’s multiplex transmitter. Digital television switchover began in Mildura in June 2010 and ended when the last analogue services were switched off in Sydney, Melbourne and some remote areas in December 2013. Vacated ‘digital dividend’ spectrum was auctioned in 2013 and acquired by Telstra and Optus Mobile, who can offer new, probably mobile broadband, services from January 2015. Digital radio services did not start as planned in 2001. Unsure about a number of aspects, broadcasters re-opened the policy. Eventually, a new one was agreed, but for the mainland state capitals only. The new, more efficient transmission standard DAB+ was chosen, enabling broadcasters sharing capacity on multiplex transmitters to transmit more than the single high-quality digital audio channel initially contemplated. A block of spectrum on the VHF band was allocated, rather than the higher frequency L-Band proposed in 1998, and the federal government agreed to fund the new

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disability and the media infrastructure for the ABC, SBS and city-wide community broadcasters. Commercial and national broadcasters commenced services in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth in 2009. City-wide community broadcasters followed in 2011. By mid-2013, around 1.4 million DAB+ receivers were reported to have been sold, and nearly 13 per cent of radio listening was to DAB+ devices. New commercial radio stations available online as well as on digital radio included hits of the 1970s and 1980s (Koool), Mix ’80s, Mix ’90s, ‘Best Mix from the 80s, 90s and Now’ (Chemist Warehouse Remix), ‘Tune In, Chill Out’ (Buddah Radio), ‘Time to Chill’ (Koffee) and a dance station (novanation). SBS launched separate Asian, Arabic and Desi pop stations, a world music station and a third language station; the ABC launched specialist jazz and country music stations, DiG Music (now Double J) and Triple J Unearthed, a sports station (Grandstand) and a special events channel. VHF spectrum was reserved to allow digital radio to expand beyond metropolitan areas, but by late 2013, no government decisions had been made about that, or about shutting down analogue AM or FM transmissions in any area—meaning digital radio remains a supplement rather than a replacement for analogue. REFs: J. Given, Turning off the Television (2003); A. Kenyon (ed.), TV Futures (2007). JOCK GIVEN

D IS A BI L I TY AND T HE M EDIA Roughly one in five Australians is regarded as having a significant form of disability. While disability in the media still passes largely unnoticed, some key moments can be identified. Disability first gained visibility in the Australian media in the 1970s because of the provision of dedicated services. The leading example is Radio for the Print Handicapped (RPH): community radio stations offering alternative ‘spoken word’ access to print media for those with a print disability due to literacy issues, learning disabilities, vision impairment or physical disabilities. Less is known about other kinds of distinctive media forms and uses by people with disabilities in Australia—for instance, aspects of Deaf culture using sign language, or new formats such as audio tapes (used for speaking books, for instance). By the 1980s, accessibility of mainstream media had become an important policy issue. Captioning of television for Deaf people and those with hearing impairment is a long-standing issue, provided for many years by the Australian Captioning Centre (est. 1982). The key lobby group, Media Access Australia (created from the wind-up of the Australian Captioning Centre), is the leading advocate for accessibility across all media forms.

John Byrne used the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) to advocate for better captioning services within Australian cinemas in the late 1990s. His success also highlighted the need for better captioning on television. Television captioning was addressed by self-regulatory codes under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA), and then reviewed for digital television in 1999. However, it took many years for adequate captioning rules to emerge; they did so in 2012 due to amendments to the BSA. These changes set new captioning targets for national (ABC and SBS) and commercial television broadcasters, and new obligations for pay television and narrowcasters. A captioning quality standard was also introduced in 2013. Another key area of disability accessibility has been telecommunications, where consumer and disabled persons’ organisations have worked closely with technology companies (especially Telstra), the Department of Social Services and regulators to improve accessibility and promote universal design. Decisive change has also been driven by further test cases using the DDA. The important case Scott v Telstra (1995) resulted in the incorporation of accessibility into universal service via key amendments to the Telecommunications Act 1997 in 1999. Internet accessibility was driven by World Wide Web Consortium web accessibility guidelines; these were more often observed in the breach, as highlighted by the pivotal Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) complaint taken by Bruce Maguire against the Sydney Olympics Organising Committee. In 2010, Australian governments commenced a national transitional strategy to address web content accessibility. The representation of people with disabilities in the media shifted markedly with the 1981 International Year of Disabled Persons. A high-profile awareness-raising campaign, with innovative information and advertising, challenged disability stereotypes and provided alternative representations. In subsequent years, disability media reform centred on guidelines for journalists to improve reporting and coverage, and to avoid offensive language and stereotypes. A range of important figures and programs in Australian media made invaluable contributions, questioning discrimination. A notable example was the prize-winning 1991 episode of Andrew Denton’s satirical ABC program The Money or the Gun, entitled ‘The Year of the Patronising Bastard’. Also significant is the 1996 SBS series House Gang (set in a share house with three actors with intellectual disabilities). However, ‘miraculous cure’ storylines continued to dominate Australian television soap opera, such as Angel’s triumphant walk down the aisle to marry beau Shane on Home and Away in 1993. Disability also offered a rich source of material for the Australian cinema renaissance.

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disc jockeys By the 2010s, disability had became a staple on mainstream television. Stereotypical coverage and representation still abounded, as witnessed in news reporting on suicide and mental illness, medical cures for disability or coverage of charity fundraising. However, the media slowly changed to regard disability as an important area of Australian society. Sports media made a high-profile, if sometimes problematic, contribution to media’s embrace of disability. The Paralympics, in particular, attracted steadily increasing coverage and audiences, if still on the margins of media sport. The Paralympics also afforded opportunities for new genres, such as Adam Hills’ The Last Leg, a chat show-comedy program broadcast during the 2012 Summer and 2014 Winter Paralympics (produced by UK Channel 4, and also broadcast on the ABC). Also important were the innovative media campaigns and coverage of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Australia’s media industries were slow to provide career paths for people with disabilities on par with those for non-disabled people. Compared with initiatives on cultural diversity and Indigenous participation, disability languished. Instead, areas like disability arts, comedy and culture incubated talented professionals such as media personality Stella Young. Elsewhere, major change has occurred through opportunities made available through digital media platforms from the 1980s. Blind consumers were pioneers in their use of computing and text-based internet interfaces—especially email (though they experienced a setback when Windows launched with inaccessible graphical user interfaces). Waves of innovation by Australians with disability have occurred in digital media, including mobile text messaging, disability blogs (by users, as well as the ABC’s Ramp Up disability blog), virtual worlds (notably Second Life), location-based technologies (offering better navigation and way-finding) and social media. The advent of smartphones and tablet computers has brought new challenges for accessibility, but they have also served as a test-bed for developers to offer apps that have pioneered new forms of media interactivity for many people with disabilities. Digital media have provided a significant new tool for social participation as well as activism (evident in the DDA suit against the ABC to introduce audio description on the public broadcaster). It is not surprising that HREOC Disability Commissioner Graeme Innes described himself in 2012 as a champion for the National Broadband Network. REFs: K. Ellis and M. Kent, Disability and New Media (2011); G. Goggin and C. Newell, Digital Disability (2003); H. Meekosha and L. Dowse, ‘Distorting Images, Invisible Images: Gender, Disability and the Media’, MIA, 84 (1997). KATIE ELLIS and GERARD GOGGIN

D ISC JO C KEYS The term disc jockey (DJ) describes a radio announcer whose programs are based upon presenting popular music. The term ‘disc jockey’ is possibly derived from ‘record jockey’. Jack Kapp, the founder of the American Decca label, spoke of record jockeys when describing certain radio announcers in the 1940s who, while playing records, ‘rode the gain’—in other words, adjusted the volume—while talking over the music, thus blending their words with the music. Methods of talking over and/or manipulating music flow have long been the creative hallmark of disc jockeys the world over. A number of programs of popular music hosted by disc jockeys in the United States became synonymous with the emergence of rock’n’roll and rhythm’n’blues music. American disc jockey Alan Freed rose to prominence in the mid-1950s by actively promoting the new forms of music on air and at dance venues. Popular music programs—some borrowed in style from the United States—appeared on Australian radio (particularly commercial radio) in growing numbers in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. Australia’s radio landscape changed fundamentally during this period, due to the introduction of television, the growing sales of transistor radios, the introduction of seven-inch, 45 rpm single-play vinyl discs, and a burgeoning wave of teen pop culture. With concerns among radio executives that audiences may flock to television, it was incumbent upon stations to adopt fresh, innovative programming. Disc jockey shows were initially of 15, 20 or 30 minutes’ duration, featuring new releases and titles with established popularity among the record-buying public. These short-form shows were particularly appealing to teenagers, who were seen by station managements as a desirable demographic for advertisers. Disc jockeys were the conduit delivering new sounds and artists to the Australian public. A significant development in radio that ran parallel with the rise of the disc jockey was the introduction of a weekly Australian Top 40. The Top 40 chart was a listing of popular contemporary song titles, and it quickly became the blueprint of programming for radio disc jockeys across the country. In 1958, 2UE Sydney launched the first Australian Top 40 shows, hosted by staff announcers including Gary O’Callaghan, John Laws, Tony Withers and a newcomer to Sydney, Bob Rogers. By year’s end, each capital city boasted a Top 40 station in the image of 2UE. These were 3UZ Melbourne, 4BC Brisbane, 5AD Adelaide, 6PR Perth and 7HO Hobart, as well as 2KO Newcastle, which then owned 2UE. In an era before the introduction of talkback radio and the prevalence of talk radio hosts, disc jockey shows increasingly populated the schedules of radio stations. As the energetic, sometimes frenetic presentation style associated with radio disc jockeys

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took hold in the 1960s, a number of announcers cultivated huge followings in their market on a par with the pop music stars played during their programs. Disc jockeys such as Ward ‘Pally’ Austin (2UW Sydney), Stan ‘The Man’ Rofe (3UZ), Tony MacArthur (4BC), Bob Francis (5AD) and Keith McGowan (6PR) were particularly popular with younger audiences, faithfully tuned to their transistors. The pop star–disc jockey nexus was further enhanced by stations converting previous ‘block’ programming schedules into 24-hour disc jockey operations led by teams including the Good Guys on 2SM Sydney, 3AK Melbourne, 5KA Adelaide, 6PR and 7HO; the 2UW 11–10 Men; 3KZ’s Most Happy Fellas; the 4IP Ipswich Sound Guys; and the 7HT Hobart Showmen. Occasionally a unique ‘character’ disc jockey emerged, such as the American Mad Mel, heard on 2SM in 1963–64. There was some anecdotal evidence of, and disquiet about, inducements being offered to prominent disc jockeys to promote particular songs and artists, but the market was simply too small for ‘payola’ to become as entrenched as it did in the United States. In the late 1960s, several stations instructed disc jockeys to play as much music as possible, leading to the More Music More Often format. The format was underpinned by the weekly Top 40 charts, and found popularity on a range of stations, including 2CC Canberra, 2NX Newcastle, 2SM, 3XY Melbourne, 4IP and 6PM Perth. Listeners heard much less of the disc jockey’s voice, meaning that his (he was always male) capacity to support certain acts or recordings to their liking was more or less over. During the 1970s, disc jockeys were heavily promoted by their stations, and occasional television or other public appearances, included Sydney’s Ron E. Sparks, Melbourne’s Greg Evans, Brisbane’s Paul J. Turner, Adelaide’s David Day, Perth’s Gary Shannon and Hobart’s Tim Franklin. Commercial FM radio, which was introduced in 1980, established itself in opposition to Top 40 playlists, promising greater diversity. However, in 1984 the radio production house mcm entertainment began producing the nationally syndicated Take 40 Australia from 2Day-FM. The weekly countdown was hosted by Barry Bissell and sponsored by Coca-Cola. A few years later came the Toyota Camry Solid Gold Countdown, produced by a subsidiary of Wesgo and heard on 40 stations. ‘Teen radio’ was abandoned as FM aged with its audience, and was replaced largely by ‘heritage rock’. In the 1980s and 1990s, the role of traditional music radio disc jockeys continued to wane while that of opinionated talkback presenters rose. The era of audiences flocking to radio for the latest trends in pop music from personality disc jockeys who were identified with their local markets, and were ‘connected’ or ‘in the know’, had passed. Parodies of Top 40 radio emerged, among them Sea FM 101.9’s

poll for the top 10 worst songs of all time and 96.9FM’s Arse-About Countdown. REF: W. Mac, Don’t Touch That Dial (2005). WAYNE MAC

DOCUME NTA RY, RA DIO see radio documentary DOCUME NTA RY, T E L E V IS ION see television

documentary

DRA MA , RA DIO see radio drama DRA MA , T E L E V IS ION see television drama

D U B B O LIB ER AL AN D M AC Q U AR IE AD VO C ATE Three newspapers had been launched at Dubbo, about 400 kilometres west of Sydney, and one was still being published, when William Backhouse Dixon began publishing the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate as a bi-weekly on 8 October 1887; Dixon had published newspapers at Brewarrina and Bourke. The Liberal competed with the Dubbo Dispatch and Wellington Independent, established on 20 January 1866. Dixon sold the Liberal to William Smart in 1890, and started another paper in Brewarrina in 1891. The Dubbo Liberal changed hands a number of times in the 1890s before William White bought it. He sold it to Abraham Irvine and two partners in April 1905. Irvine, who eventually became the sole proprietor, devoted his skills to building a robust newspaper. In 1930, he entered into a partnership with son Ken and daughter Mirna, and the following year they made the Liberal a tri-weekly. Irvine Senior died in 1946, leaving his children in charge. On 2 April 1949, they sold the paper to Leo Vincent Armati’s Macquarie Publications Pty Ltd. Armati (1882–1962) had been the editor of the Newcastle Sun (1923–34) and the Sydney Sun (1937–42). He also served as the New Yorkbased overseas managing editor of Associated Newspapers Ltd (1942–48). Armati had bought the Dubbo newspaper at age 67 because he needed a solid income to support his third wife, Patricia, and their two children. He published the Liberal four times a week from 20 September 1949. International news was as likely to lead the front page as stories from Dubbo, Wellington or Nyngan. The Liberal had strong competition from the Dubbo Dispatch, owned by brothers George and Stan Maliphant. Armati expanded by launching newspapers in other western New South Wales towns: Warren (1951), Nyngan (1955) and Cobar (1959). He made the Liberal a daily on 9 September 1957. On 24 March 1962, Leo Armati died, leaving his third son, John Leo, aged 21, to run the Liberal and the Macquarie Publications group with the oversight of his mother. John changed the Liberal’s title to the Daily Liberal on 17

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dumas, sir (frederick) lloyd (1891–1973) June 1964, and bought the Dispatch in 1966, closing it in December 1971. On 23 February 1978, the Daily Liberal became the first daily in Australia to use an electronic system for editorial input. Armati stayed at the forefront of newspaper technology and expanded into high-quality magazine printing. Assisted by a financial interest that John Fairfax & Sons took in Macquarie, Armati greatly expanded the number of newspapers the Macquarie group owned in the 1980s. He bought back the Fairfax interest in 1990, when he sold his printing division to Hannanprint. The Liberal changed to morning issue on 24 September 1984. Armati sold the Liberal and the entire Macquarie Publications group in December 1995 to Rural Press Limited. REFs: John Armati, ‘Paper and Ink’ (unpublished manuscript); R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000) and interviews with John Armati (April 2000, September 2010). ROD KIRKPATRICK

DUCKMA NTON, SIR TALBOT SYDNEY (1921–95) From 1965 to 1982, T.S. Duckmanton was the general manager of the ABC. He expanded its range of programs and services, had frequent conflicts with governments, and steered the ABC through many editorial disputes arising from new kinds of programs introduced while social standards were changing. Joining the ABC in 1939 as an announcer and sports commentator, Duckmanton was one of the first broadcasters to speak in an educated Australian rather than a BBC accent. After war service with the RAAF, he was chosen as one of three Commonwealth broadcasters in the BBC’s commentary team for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. But while still young he was discovered to have a talent for cool and thoughtful administration, and by 1956 he was masterminding the introduction of the ABC’s television service. Major expansion in current affairs programs in radio and television increased tensions with federal and state governments as ministers found that broadcasting’s new seriousness about creating an informed democracy made the job of governing much harder. Rapidly changing social attitudes and the divisive effects of the Vietnam War meant ABC staff, Commissioners and politicians had widely different views about broadcasting. Although Duckmanton had started as the enabler of program innovation, the growing clamour of interest groups increasingly forced him into the role of mediator and defender. He understood the ‘fragility’ of the very existence of the ABC, created by an Act of Parliament and funded by taxpayers, and was reminded of it by various parliamentary inquiries. He took the ABC through the disturbances of the 1960s and

1970s by seeing earlier than others where the middle ground had moved to. In Australia, Duckmanton was rather a lone voice in urging consideration of the importance of strategic planning, and in understanding public service broadcasting’s relationship with national aims, and the role and nature of statutory corporations like the ABC. He was president of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union from 1973 to 1977, and of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association from 1975 to 1982, known internationally for his concern with practical and philosophical assistance to smaller broadcasters. Duckmanton was appointed CBE in 1971 and Knight Bachelor in 1980. REF: K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983). ANTHONY RENDELL

D U M AS, SIR (FR ED ER IC K) LLO YD (1891–1973) The son of an emigrant printer, Dumas began his career aged 15 as a cadet on the Adelaide Advertiser. He was one of the founders of the South Australian branch of the Australian Journalists’ Association in 1911. Excelling as a sports and parliamentary reporter, he moved to the Melbourne Argus in 1915, becoming the paper’s federal political roundsman. He joined Prime Minister William Hughes’ staff for the second conscription campaign in 1917, and accompanied Hughes, as his publicity officer, to the Imperial Conference in London in 1918. Peacetime saw Dumas return to the Argus, where he was appointed its youngest ever chief of staff in 1921. In 1924, he took on the role of editor of Melbourne’s new morning challenger, the Sun News-Pictorial. A year later, Sir Hugh Denison sold the title to (Sir) Keith Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) after an intense newspaper battle. In 1927, Dumas left for London to become the editor and manager of the United Cable Service, the position Murdoch had held during the war. He was enticed home to Adelaide to serve as managing editor of Advertiser Newspapers Ltd after a Murdoch-led syndicate bought the struggling company. As the Depression bit, both men revelled in the strategising that would lead to Adelaide’s morning press falling under their monopoly control. The promotion of Joseph Lyons for prime minister in 1932, employing Advertiser Newspapers’ newly established radio station 5AD as well as the press under their control, was just one example of the pair’s politicking. In a letter to Dumas, Murdoch would later describe Lyons as the man ‘we chose and made’. Dumas was also associated with the longevity of Sir Thomas Playford’s Coalition government in South Australia. Dumas had been elevated to the board of Advertiser Newspapers in 1931; he became its managing director in 1938 and chairman in 1942. As well as radio, Dumas’s era would see

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dyer, robert neal (‘bob’) (1909–84) Advertiser Newspapers embrace television with the launch of ADS7 in 1959, while its small job-printing office was developed into one of Australia’s largest printing houses as Griffin Press. Dumas retired as chairman in 1967. His career had also seen service on the boards of the HWT (1946–67) and Australian Newsprint Mills Pty Ltd (1938–67), and leadership as chairman of Australian Associated Press (1949–62) and Reuters News Agency, London (1950–53). REF: L. Dumas, The Story of a Full Life (1969). TOM D.C. ROBERTS

D Y E R , ROBE RT NEAL (‘BOB’) (1909–84) Almost unique in achieving national celebrity across both radio and television, Bob Dyer was one of the most successful American entertainers to work in the Australian electronic media. Born to a poor sharecropping family in Tennessee, he left home at 17, finding intermittent work as a hillbilly singer. Dyer first visited Australia with a vaudeville troupe in 1937; he returned permanently in 1940. His ascent to media stardom began on commercial radio. In 1940 he hosted The Last of the Hillbillies, and his many programs included Bob Dyer’s Variety Show (launched 1944), Can You Take It? (1946), The Atlantic Show (1946), Pick-a-Box (1948), Cop the Lot (1951) and It Pays to Be Funny (1955). In each of these programs, the audience skills learnt in vaudeville served him well. With the advent of television in Australia, Dyer launched both Pick-a-Box and It Pays to be Funny in the new medium. Though only Pick-a-Box survived, it became early Australian television’s most spectacular success story. In a medium then dominated by imported Westerns, crime dramas and situation comedies, Dyer pioneered the more cheaply produced quiz show as staple Australian content for commercial television. Unlike similar overseas productions, the program ran without a break. From February 1957 until March 1971 (when Dyer retired), Pick-a-Box screened once a week on the Seven Network, 52 weeks a year. Unlike Jack Davey (to whom he was linked in a famous if contrived radio rivalry), Dyer was not an instinctive comedian. An engaging manner, unfailing professionalism, resonant voice and imposing physical presence all aided his television career. Dyer attributed his success to a carefully crafted persona as one of the ‘gang’, and his unashamed lack of general knowledge encouraged audience identification with the quiz program. Viewer loyalty was matched by the longevity of Dyer’s commercial backers. He boasted that from 1948 to 1971 he had only ‘two soaps and two oils’ as sponsors. Dyer’s trademark accent never prevented his recognition as a ‘national identity’. Nor did his considerable private wealth prevent

him fostering an image of appealing ordinariness. In this he was enormously aided by his 30-year marriage to Dorothy (‘Dolly’) Mack (1921–2004). Originally a dancer, Dolly was also Dyer’s business partner and on-screen assistant. Dyer was one of the first winners of the Gold Logie and was appointed OBE in 1971. After retirement, the public man became noted for his reclusiveness. REFs: B. Dyer, ‘My Life’, Sun (Sydney), 17 and 22–26 March 1971. DIANE COLLINS

D YSO N , W ILLIAM H EN RY (1880–1938) William Henry Dyson was one of Australia’s most famous cartoonists and satirists. He was born in Ballarat, and his career began at the age of 17 when he was encouraged by his elder brother, writer Edward Dyson (1865–1931), to submit his drawings to the Bulletin. In 1907, the Bulletin’s sister publication, the Lone Hand, was established, giving Dyson a further small income. The following year, his first political cartoons were published in full colour on the covers of Randolph Bedford’s mining magazine, the Clarion. But payment was poor and opportunities limited. Following an exhibition of his caricatures of notable personalities in public life, held in Melbourne’s Royal Arcade in 1909, Dyson and his wife Ruby (Norman Lindsay’s sister) sailed for London. Dyson initially made little progress in Britain; however, in 1912 he was appointed as a cartoonist on the staff of the newly established Labour newspaper the Daily Herald, where he was given a free hand to express his own politically radical ideas. The result—published on a full page—admonished capitalist greed, unemployment, hunger and the multiple social evils that existed. With strong hints of political turmoil on the European continent in the London press prior to World War I, Dyson rose to the occasion. His anti-Kaiser KULTUR cartoons, drawn in the ‘grand allegorical manner’, enhanced his reputation with the intelligentsia, including with H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and C.K. Chesterton. But his triumphs were not to last. Devastated by the war, and the sudden death of Ruby from the influenza pandemic, Dyson accepted an offer from (Sir) Keith Murdoch to return to Australia and take up a position as cartoonist on the Melbourne Herald. The move was a disaster: he had frequent stand-up quarrels with Murdoch, who was not mentally equipped to appreciate Dyson’s ironic satire, insisting he comment only on local affairs. Dyson thought otherwise, believing Melbourne was stuffy and smug, and remote from greater world affairs. This conflict of opinion could only end in one way: Dyson was edged out of his field to produce caricatures of musical comedy actors playing Melbourne theatres.

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dyson, william henry (1880–1938) After five years, his contract finished and Dyson returned to England and rejoined the Daily Herald. His last years were overshadowed by grief at Ruby’s death, his own health problems, dark depressive moods and repeated editorial interference. With one of the most robust minds

of his times, Dyson’s force and irony have never been approached by any Australian cartoonist then, or since. REF: V. Lindesay, The Inked-In Image (1970). VANE LINDESAY

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E E C O NOMI CS RE PORTING Economics reporting in Australia focuses on reporting developments in the national economy—and, occasionally, the state economies—and the efforts of governments and their agencies to influence the economy. It covers economic policy—micro-economic as well as macro-economic. It is to be distinguished from business and finance reporting, which focuses on the activities of listed companies and the stock exchange. Economics journalists devote most of their time to reporting and interpreting movements in the wide range of economic indicators published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, covering unemployment, inflation, wages, retail sales, housing activity, gross domestic product, trade and much else. Other economic indicators are published by the Reserve Bank of Australia, while the commercial banks sponsor regular surveys of business and consumer confidence. Economics journalists also report the federal Budget, and official reports, speeches and press releases by senior economic ministers and bureaucrats, including announcements of changes in official interest rates by the Reserve Bank, as well as statements from business lobby groups. Most economics reporting is done from the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. The main national and metropolitan newspapers have specialist economics correspondents in the Gallery, most of them with tertiary qualifications in economics. In smaller Gallery bureaux, the reporting is done by political correspondents. There was little distinction between financial and economics reporting until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when economics became seen more clearly as a specialty within federal political journalism. During the 17 years he spent as financial editor of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), Tom Fitzgerald combined editorials and commentary on economic management with his path-breaking exposés of corporate mismanagement. When he left to join the Australian in 1970, he was replaced by a financial editor and an economics editor, although the SMH employed the British journalist J.C. Horsfall as its economics editor for several months

before he became editor of the new Australian Financial Review (AFR) in 1951. By contrast, Max Newton, who joined the SMH in 1957, would always have written more about the economy in a political context. Referring to SMH editors of the 1950s, Horsfall complained in his book, The Liberal Era (1974): ‘The trouble with most editors was that the subject of economics which had become the main stuff of politics was largely a mystery to them.’ It was this dawning realisation that led to greater media interest in reporting the economy. This perception was mightily reinforced in 1974 when, after the first OPEC oil shock, ‘stagflation’—simultaneous high inflation and high unemployment—led governments in all the developed economies to lose confidence in Keynesian economic policy and begin a period of experimentation. The restoration of low inflation and low unemployment was to dominate those governments’ concerns throughout the remainder of the 1970s and the 1980s—longer in Australia’s case. Tracking the ups and downs of the economy has remained a major media interest to this day. The financial deregulation of the 1980s had the effect of greatly expanding the choice of sources available to economics reporters, with a growth in the number of financial market economists keen for publicity and the Reserve Bank’s need to be more active in media relations. More think-tanks and university research centres have also helped reduce Treasury’s former dominance of economic information. The rise of economics journalism as a specialty within political journalism can be traced in the careers of its leading practitioners. Kenneth Davidson worked for Treasury before becoming the Australian’s Canberra-based economics correspondent in 1965 and the Age’s economics editor in 1974. Alan Wood, who had been a Canberra economics correspondent for the AFR, became economics editor of the SMH. After a period out of daily journalism, he returned as economics editor of the Australian. P.P. McGuinness joined the AFR as an economics reporter in 1971, left to work for the Whitlam Labor government, then returned as economics editor in 1974. When Ross Gittins, a chartered accountant, joined the SMH as a cadet in 1974,

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edgar, dr patricia (1937– ) he was encouraged to focus on economics, sent to Canberra as economics correspondent and returned to Sydney in 1976 to replace the departing Wood as economics editor. Whereas in recent decades governments have sought to discourage contact between journalists and bureaucrats, economics journalists have been able to maintain active contact with senior econocrats, including in Treasury and the Reserve Bank. Although almost all economics reporters are located within the Press Gallery, some economics editors are based in Sydney. American practice is for movements in economic indicators to be reported in neutral terms, accompanied by balanced quotes from experts saying the figures are either good or bad. In Australia, however, reporters are more likely to take their own stand on whether the movement is good news or bad, partly because they are more likely to have economics qualifications and on-the-job training in the interpretation of statistics. But this can lead reporters and their editors to judge movements according to their perception of whether readers would regard the change as good or bad. Movements in interest rates, for instance, are almost invariably judged from the perspective of readers with a mortgage rather than those dependent on interest from investments. An over-used formula in modern times is for movements in indicators to be judged according to whether they make an increase or decrease in the official interest rate at the next meeting of the Reserve Bank board more likely or less likely. Falls in the dollar are usually taken to be bad and rises good, mainly because of their effects on the prices of imports and overseas holidays; effects on the competitiveness of Australian industries tend to be ignored. A fall in unemployment during an election campaign may be billed as ‘good news for the government’ rather than good news for those seeking jobs. Perhaps because there is so much room for interpretation of economic developments, economics journalism tends to involve more analysis and commentary than other specialist areas of journalism. This is largely the role of economics editors, who tend to do little reporting and even less editing. Whereas political journalists strive to appear even-handed in their commentary—telling Labor how to win one week then the Coalition the next—economics editors rarely hesitate to push their own view of what constitutes good policy. The line they take generally reflects the economic orthodoxy they were taught at university, which is regularly reinforced by their bureaucratic contacts. It can thus be argued that the work of economics journalists played a part in the rise of economic rationalism in the 1980s and 1990s, and the various micro-economic reforms to which it led—particularly the phasing out of protection against imports.

REFs: R. Gittins, ‘The Role of the Media in the Formulation of Economic Policy’, Australian Economic Review (4th quarter, 1995) and ‘Economic Journalism: How Influential are Journalists?’, Economic Papers, 30(4) (2011). ROSS GITTINS

ED G AR , D R P ATR IC IA (1937– ) Patricia Edgar was awarded a doctorate from La Trobe University, and established the university’s Centre for the Study of Media and Communication in 1970. She wrote several influential books, including Under Five in Australia (1973, with her husband Don Edgar), Media She (1974, with Hilary McPhee), Children and Screen Violence (1977) and The Politics of the Press (1979). Appointed to the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) in 1975, Edgar chaired its Advisory Committee on Program Standards. Its review of television standards, known as the Edgar Report, recommended the introduction of children’s standards, including specified hours and the production of programs especially for children. Edgar wasn’t overly concerned by the negative aspects of television, believing that it offered opportunities to children, and that they had a right to their own programs. In 1977, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s Self-Regulation Report recommended a new ‘C’ classification for children. A Children’s Program Committee (CPC) was established to develop and administer the new regulations and Edgar became its first chair. The Children’s Television Standards of 1979 were unique in the world, and have underpinned Australia’s children’s television industry for more than 30 years. However, Edgar became convinced that ‘regulation by itself’ would never achieve the type of programming that she believed Australian children deserved. Victorian Liberal Education Minister Norman Lacy helped her establish the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF), with the support of Commonwealth, state and territory governments, in 1982. Edgar was the founding director of the ACTF and she held that position until 2002. Edgar was responsible for the production of programs including Winners, Touch the Sun, Round the Twist, Lift Off and The Genie from Down Under. These programs screened all over the world, and won more than 100 national and international awards. In 1995, Edgar hosted the first World Summit on Television and Children in Melbourne. She was the recipient of an AM in 1986, and the Australian Film Institute’s Raymond Longford Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. REFs: P. Edgar, Bloodbath (2006); http://www.patriciaedgaranddonedgar.com. JENNY BUCKLAND

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educational media E D U CATI ONA L ME DI A The commencement of electronic educational media in Australia dates back to the 1930s. ABC radio stations provided educational radio programs for schools from 1932. From 1933, Professor (Sir) Bernard Heinze and the Sydney conductor E.J. Roberts put on four educational concerts for schoolchildren under the auspices of the ABC. Interested not just in school, but also adult, education, in 1934 the ABC formed a National Talks Advisory Committee composed of academics who were experienced in speaking on the air. However, the ABC proceeded cautiously for fear of antagonising state governments, which had (and still have) responsibility for primary and secondary school education. With a federal advisory committee composed of all directors of state education, programs on national relay began in 1936: Adventures in Music, followed by The World We Live In and Health and Hygiene. The Argonauts’ Club was revived in 1941 as a national program incorporating important social educational goals in addition to its entertainment focus, with ABC Commissioners accepting ‘a certain responsibility for the training of young Australian in ideals of good citizenship and the enjoyment of the beauties of life and literature’. By 1934, talks by academics and radio news commentators on topics ranging from domestic politics to international affairs, were such a feature of ABC and commercial radio that a cartoon of ‘The Professors’ appeared in Wireless Weekly. In Sydney, 2UE supplied schools with radio sets in 1933, while 2SM was broadcasting lessons for Catholic schools by 1937. By the end of the decade, 2GB was broadcasting Children’s Newspaper of the Air, featuring 15,000 ‘Radio Reporters’ who relayed news that came their way; some entered essay competitions on topics nominated by Charles Cousens, who also delivered nightly commentaries. Over 4BC and other Queensland stations in 1934, Dr W.G. Goddard began advocating ‘Round Table Clubs’ for the discussion of international affairs. Early in 1939, the ABC launched Listening Groups, initially in partnership with the Victorian Education Department, to listen to and discuss special series of talks under the direction of a group leader. That year, the ABC’s School Broadcasts Department was renamed Educational Broadcasts; this in turn became Youth Broadcasts in 1944. In 1943–44, more than 2500 schools were recorded as regular listeners to the ABC’s educational broadcasts. In 1942, the ABC appointed an education officer (usually a teacher) in each capital city to keep in touch with state educational authorities. Dr Clement Semmler was appointed in Adelaide. After many kindergartens were closed down during the war, Catherine King developed a new daily program, Kindergarten of the Air. In Education, Press, Radio (1948), Lewis Wilcher

argued that radio (particularly the ABC) had a responsibility to elevate taste and standards on ‘every reasonable occasion’. Participants in Quiz Kids, launched on the Macquarie Network on Sunday nights in 1942, were chosen with the help of the NSW Education Department. Among those to become household names were future politicians Barry Jones and Neville Wran. In 1949, the ABC endeavoured to serve one group of adults by launching English for New Australians early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Commencing in 1951, the Alice Springs Royal Flying Doctor Service operated the first School of the Air, a two-way radio-based school education service for very remote school students. Later Schools of the Air have operated from Mt Isa, Katherine, Broken Hill, Tibooburra, Port Hedland, Port Augusta, Kimberley, Carnarvon, Kalgoorlie and Meekatharra. By 1956, ABC Radio educational broadcasts were going into 88 per cent of all schools. With support from the ABC chairman, Sir James Darling (1961–67), the ABC expanded educational television programs for primary and secondary school students in 1965, when a quarter of the country’s schools had installed televisions. The ABC has also produced and broadcast educational-style pre-school children’s programs, notably Play School (1966– ), which focuses on fun learning activities for two- to five-yearolds and succeeded the earlier Kindergarten Playtime. The best-known ABC Television schools education series is Behind the News, a magazine-style current affairs program for upper primary and lower secondary students; it has been broadcast almost continuously since 1969. Educational television and video in Australia expanded in the 1980s. In 1982, the ‘ATOM Awards’ were established by the Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM). A new ABC charter in 1983 included a commitment to broadcasting ‘programs of an educational nature’. In 1984, the ABC ‘nationalised’ production and 1985 combined Education with the Children’s Television department (although a 1998 restructure split them again). Educational radio broadcasts eventually moved to ABC Radio National, although by 1985 the ABC decided to focus Radio National education on programs for adults, dropping schools broadcasts. Almost all state education departments have produced and distributed their own educational television programs, primarily through satellite television. In 1988, SBS commenced collaboration with all state departments of education to provide a broadcast television ‘window’ for state-produced educational television programs, TV Ed. In terms of overseas-produced educational programs, from 1971 the ABC broadcast Sesame Street, made in New York by the Children’s Television Workshop, although less popular

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edwards, george (1886–1953) than the local Play School. The ABC has licensed a number of educational television programs from overseas. A major milestone in educational television occurred with the passage of the Copyright Amendment Act 1989, which allowed educational institutions to record broadcast television programs legally through payment of licence fees to the Audio-Visual Copyright Society, now known as Screenrights. These fees from educational institutions allowed the ABC to maintain a school program service even with reduced budgets. In 1987, ABC Television introduced PGR, an adult education parenting program produced with funding from the South Australian Department of Health. In 1990, it launched the adult literacy series Fresh Start, produced in collaboration with NSW TAFE and the federal government, and in 1992 it commenced a pilot open access university project with a consortium of five universities that became known as the Open Learning Agency of Australia (now Open Universities Australia). The success of the pilot led to federal funding for the establishment of a full service. The introduction of the full TV Open Learning program in 1993 and 1994 allowed the ABC to move to a 24hour broadcasting schedule, seven days per week, with adult education programs screened from 4 a.m. each weekday, and on Saturday mornings. The ABC subsequently produced and broadcast a second major adult literacy series (The Reading, Writing Roadshow, 1994) and an English-language teaching series (English, Have a Go, 1996), through the ABC’s international television network. When pay television first arrived in Australia, the Optus network included the Horizon Learning Channel, launched in 1996. A number of other Australian private companies and non-profit organisations have used television for educational purposes, including the Rural Health Education Foundation. Until it was finally absorbed by Screen Australia in 2008, Film Australia produced a number of educational television series. The Australian Children’s Television Foundation continues to produce educational series. The growth of the internet began to change the delivery of educational television by 2000, increasingly moving educational media online. In 2004, School of the Air instruction moved to satellite and, where available to the students, online. Only Western Australia remains active in educational broadcasting, through its Westlink digital television channel. As of 2014, the ABC continued to broadcast five hours of schools television programs per week on ABC1, and a number of educational series on the Australia Network. The reduced cost of digital television production and the expansion of high-speed broadband have made the distribution of video-based

educational media widely accessible. This has led to the phenomenon known as ‘MOOCs’— massive open online courses—and increased opportunities for organisations to become their own video distributors. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983) and Whose ABC? (2006). DON PERLGUT

ED WAR D S, G EO R G E (1886–1953) Born Harold Parks in Kent Town, South Australia, George Edwards was a pioneer of radio serials in Australia. He began in amateur theatre in Australia, moving to England at the age of 18 to perform in music halls and theatre for three years. He changed his name to George Edwards before returning to Australia to work, first in musical comedy with J.C. Williamson Ltd at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne and later in vaudeville. As the popularity of vaudeville began to wane, he moved into radio, working first for the Australian Broadcasting Company in 1931, producing and acting in variety shows and comedy sketches. He made a number of short films in the period 1927–31, including The Haunted Barn (1931), and was briefly a theatrical agent. With his move to commercial radio in the early 1930s, Edwards began to exploit his mimicry skills. ‘The Man with a Thousand Voices’ produced and acted in a range of shows, at times playing as many as 12 characters in the one program. While working for 2GB Sydney in 1933, he established the George Edwards Players with his partner (and later third wife) Nell Stirling (Helen Dorothy Malmgrom), with whom he had earlier worked in musical comedy theatre, and the talented emerging writer Maurice Francis. A number of Edwards’ shows—such as Darby and Joan—were highly popular. But it is Dad and Dave for which he is best known. Starting in 1937 on 2UW Sydney, to which he had relocated in 1936, this program ran four nights a week and was sponsored by the American chewing gum company Wrigley’s. It portrayed the daily lives of an ordinary Australian family, with episodes incorporating special events such as the Melbourne Cup and Christmas Day, timed to be broadcast as they happened in real life. With the move to 2UW, the George Edwards Players were heard nationally on the station’s Commonwealth Network, and recordings of programs were also shipped daily to New Zealand. Playing ‘Dave’ until his death in 1953, Edwards was at the forefront of making radio serials part of the everyday life of radio listeners. Underpinning this success were the George Edwards Players, which he and Nell Stirling managed together until their divorce in 1948, when she took on sole responsibility. The company had signed a contract with EMI Columbia in 1936,

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election reporting a move that helped with recording facilities and gave the three founders greater stability. REF: Sumner Locke Elliot, ‘The Man with 1000 Voices’, Bulletin, July 1980. LESLEY JOHNSON

E L E C T I ON RE PORTI N G Election reporting has changed a great deal in the last century, from early campaigns where face-toface interaction with voters was crucial, to recent elections as highly mediated events through television, newspapers, radio, the internet and, increasingly, mobile and portable media. In the 19th century, newspaper reports of elections were often a mix of editorialising about the election and verbatim reports of the speeches candidates made from the hustings, complete with reports of audience participation in brackets, such as ‘(hear hear)’ and examples of heckling. Editorial commentary was sometimes strongly directive. For example, for the first election in New South Wales on 15 June 1843, the Sydney Morning Herald assessed all of the candidates for its readers and told them that ‘Mr Wentworth is foremost in the ranks’, arguing that if he was not elected, it would be ‘a reproach and a loss to the community’. Newspaper reports of speeches continued to be important, but by the mid-1920s, cinema and radio were also playing a role in reporting election news. After its introduction in 1923, radio quickly became a major source of political news including through the live transmission of policy speeches made by the prime minister and the leader of the opposition at peak listening times. But even into the early 20th century, party leaders still had to travel widely to get their messages across—whether by horse-drawn buggy, steamer or train. One legendary effort was Coalition Prime Minister Joseph Lyons’ marathon campaign during the 1937 election, when he travelled 9600 kilometres and held 43 meetings in as many days. Leaders’ public meetings were generally well attended and well publicised, usually receiving live radio coverage and front-page newspaper reports the next day. Press coverage of speeches was still often verbatim, and meetings reported in transcript style. By the 1940s, media consumption was encouraging change. Radio aided leaders who were effective political orators, such as (Sir) Robert Menzies, but local candidates found that attendance at their public events dropped markedly—something they largely attributed to the mainstream use of radio. Australian legislators in the 1940s also had serious concerns about radio, specifically about the impact of electronic media reporting on election results. The Australian Broadcasting Act 1942 required a complete ‘blackout’ of electoral broadcasts for the last 72 hours before polling day. Radio stations—and, after 1956, television stations—were forbidden to

broadcast any election-related material. This rule remained in place until 1983, when it was lifted for election news reporting but remained for election advertising. By the 1960s, television was playing an increasingly important role in both the ways in which people spent their leisure time and how politics was communicated. In 1958, two Labor politicians (H.V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell) and two from the government (Harold Holt and (Sir) William McMahon) appeared in the nation’s first television debate. From 1963, leaders’ policy speeches were presented before the cameras. Television news and current affairs were also growing in importance, with the ABC’s Four Corners (from 1961) and This Day Tonight (1967–78) both playing a significant role. In 1972, Labor’s ‘It’s Time’ campaign revolutionised Australian election campaigning. Based on detailed market research and public opinion polling, it focused extensively on television, and its success marked the end of the traditional public meeting-based campaign. Thereafter, politicians and their advisers tailored their campaigns for the demands of television, and sought to exert much greater control over their public and media interactions. Public meetings became less spontaneous and less well attended as people had increasing access to politics at home. Aside from television news and the ABC current affairs programs, the commercial channels, capitalising on a burgeoning interest in public affairs, initiated programs such as A Current Affair (Nine Network, 1971– ) and programs hosted by Mike Willesee (on Ten in 1974 and then on Seven, 1975–82). 60 Minutes was launched in 1979. To capture viewers’ attention, campaign events were redesigned to be more entertaining. This was epitomised by Labor leader Bob Hawke’s policy launch at the Sydney Opera House in 1987, at which he arrived by barge from Kirribilli House. Hawke was also part of the first televised leaders’ election debate in 1984, sparking a tradition that continues to this day. Since then, a televised debate (often called the ‘Great Debate’) between the Labor and Coalition leaders has been held during every federal election campaign, with the exception of 1987 when Hawke refused (reportedly because he was still smarting at being unexpectedly upstaged by Andrew Peacock in 1984). In 1993, the Nine Network first added its own touch: the ‘worm’ (a live visual representation of how studio audience members were responding to the leaders during the debate). During the 1990s, the parties increasingly became convinced that their campaigns were being won or lost in the national media. They made significant changes to how they coordinated their campaigns—including travel for the leaders and the journalists accompanying them—which had major repercussions for election reporting. In the 1950s, the major parties used to provide

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election reporting the media with the leaders’ itineraries at the beginning of the campaign and newspapers would print them. This became a problem once there were more organised political parties and social movements, better telecommunications and much higher stakes involved in terms of favourable television coverage. ‘Wild scenes’ involving protestors at opposition leader John Hewson’s public meetings during the 1993 election and the cost this inflicted on the Coalition campaign were salutary lessons for both major parties. At the next federal election in 1996, the parties put new logistical arrangements in place. In providing transport for the journalists travelling with party leaders, they took the opportunity to impose a level of secrecy about the leaders’ daily schedules. Journalists on the campaign buses and planes following the leaders were not told where they were going, or only given short notice—which made it difficult for them to adequately prepare or even to organise camera crews to be on location. Once there, journalists were sometimes provided with detailed policy documents only minutes before interviews were held or deadlines had to be met. Over the next few election campaigns, the secrecy intensified. Once the leaders’ advisers used to print out itineraries for the next day and slip them under journalists’ hotel doors at around midnight. But by 2001, travelling journalists were instead sent a text message just before the bus left, advising of its departure time, where it was headed and the issue of the day. By 2007, they were only getting a text message about what time the bus or plane was leaving, and no details about where it was headed, what the event was going to be or what the issue of the day was. Journalists could find themselves on the way to regional Queensland or suburban Tasmania, covering an environment policy launch or a housing affordability plan. The parties were trying to control information flows in an era of instant messaging when mobiles, texts, tweets and emails meant the details of their events could be communicated very quickly to opponents who could disrupt them at very short notice. In the already frenzied atmosphere of election reporting, journalists found that these new methods made it difficult for them to seek out extra information other than what was being provided or to adequately scrutinise policies. By 1998, fed-up senior journalists like Michelle Grattan were getting ‘off the bus’, feeding questions to more junior reporters on the road. This pattern has continued ever since, and leads some commentators to express concern about whether junior reporters can do the tough questioning of senior Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery reporters, and whether they are more susceptible to political public relations techniques. Transport and technology were also making campaigns easier to cover. Digitisation and the

internet played a key role. Once reporters had been reliant on the campaign buses to stop and provide them with a place that had phones and faxes, so they could file their stories. Now, portable cameras, digital equipment, satellite and wireless ability to transmit audio-visual material back to base quickly all make for faster and more efficient ways of reporting news. Stories are now sent from mobile devices and laptops, using email or sometimes blogs and Twitter. The rise of 24-hour television news channels (especially since Sky News Australia provided a dedicated election channel from 2004) means it is possible for journalists to watch the campaign unfold from their office or at home. They are not only able to watch key events live on television, but can also access websites and blogs, listen to news, interviews and pundits on radio (including the 24-hour ABC NewsRadio), and receive information direct from the parties by SMS, email and RSS feeds—including media releases and transcripts of press conferences and media interviews. An increasing recognition began to dawn that travelling on the bus (or plane) gave reporters access only to the manicured face of the campaign while information and important decisions were often being made elsewhere, including within the parties, but also within the media itself—including online. In the 2000s, some of the key sites for election reporting (excluding those already mentioned) included ABC Radio National’s AM and PM programs, ABC1’s Insiders, The 7.30 Report (now 7.30), Q&A and Lateline, Sky News’s Agenda, Network Ten’s Meet the Press, the Nine Network’s Sunday and ABC News 24’s The Drum. While election reporting traditionally is associated with Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery reporters and journalists working for major media organisations, a multitude of other sources also report election news and contribute to political communication, including comedy shows such as ABC’s The Chaser, talkback radio hosts and callers, websites including Crikey and ABC online’s The Drum, blogs, YouTube clips, social media comments, emails and electronic newsletters. The 2000s saw the decline of straight Press Gallery-centred election reporting. This was exacerbated by new media options, but was also the result of party leaders holding fewer (and shorter) press conferences and devoting more of their time to radio and television interviews. This included not only talkback radio (which played a significant role in elections during the 1990s especially), but also breakfast television programs such as Sunrise and Today. In 2007 and 2010, Labor’s Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard performed many FM radio interviews, while in 2010 opposition leader Tony Abbott appeared on Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Some journalists argued that the ‘soft’ media appearances were about reducing journalists to the role of theatre-critics and spectators so

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environmental reporting politicians could avoid tough questioning, while others argued that the trend was a democratising one. For example, when Rudd appeared on Rove Live in 2007, he tapped into an audience of over 1.3 million—including young people, who are difficult to reach through conventional news and current affairs. As the role of journalism in mediating politics and elections continues to change, such debates will continue. REFs: R. Tiffen, ‘Australia’, in J. Strömbäck and L.L. Kaid, The Handbook of Election News Coverage Around the World (2008) and News and Power (1989); S. Young, How Australia Decides (2011). SALLY YOUNG

EMER G E N C Y B R O A D C A S T IN G see weather and

natural disasters reporting

EMPIR E P R E S S U N I O N see Commonwealth Press

Union

E N V IRONMENTAL REPORTING Reporting of environmental issues is as old as the Australian press itself. In November 1804, a correspondent to the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser proposed establishing a subscription fund that would assist in ridding the country of ‘noxious vermin’—dingoes, in this case—while a detailed description of the natural dispersal of seeds appeared under the heading ‘Striking and Curious Phenomena in Botany’. Readers of the Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter, published from 1816, were told that, ‘A great number of Whales have already made their appearance in Frederic Henry Bay; some have even been seen as high as Sullivan’s Cove’, and that ‘some evil disposed Person or Persons have to the injury of the Crown cut down and drawn away many of the most beautiful Trees on the Water-side of the Government Domain at New Town’. These early reports reflect the breadth of issues and concerns, as well as the physical, legal, political and social events and activities that now fall under the environmental umbrella. The mid-19th century Australian press often took sides on environmental issues, deploying a rich and sharp vocabulary to argue a case— whether based on instrumental or aesthetic reasons. The Colonial Times, among other newspapers, lambasted one of Hobart’s most prominent citizens, Peter Degraves, for his ‘establishment’ upstream of the town water supply (which he also controlled), and its ‘accumulation of such fetid and obnoxious filth as to be loathsome and sickening to those who witnessed it and were engaged in clearing it out’. These attacks and campaigns were conducted to varying degrees of political influence. Charles Meredith’s doomed legislation to protect the black swan was not supported by the Launceston Examiner, which wrote: ‘Of what special use are black swans to

the colonists of Tasmania that the legislature should be asked to throw over them the shield of its protection?’, while the Argus’s campaign to protect giant eucalypts went largely unheeded by the Victorian government. The newspaper did not give up on such campaigns, however. Tim Bonyhady identifies the Argus between the 1860s and 1930s as probably providing ‘more extensive and sharper reportage and analysis of environmental issues than any Australian newspaper before or since’. From the 1870s, newspapers tended towards a less opinionated stance on environmental issues. In 1880, the Sydney Morning Herald reported without comment on the formation of the NSW Anti-Air and Water Pollution League, whose object was the ‘opposition of the proposed system of sewerage, and the adoption of some improved means of getting rid of drainage matter’. This period also saw the genesis of media coverage of the activities of environmental lobby groups, a relationship that would not fully emerge until the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Herald’s extensive 1887 report of a public meeting debating the proposal to move abattoirs from Glebe to Homebush reveals emerging collective anxiety about urban conditions. The ‘noxious trades’ along the banks of the Yarra River were the subject of several Royal Commissions, which were reported by the Age as a complex debate on public health, urban growth and risk to workers. Concerns related to urban expansion, such as air and water quality and loss of open space, continued to dominate environmental coverage in the first half of the 20th century, alongside the reporting of natural and human-made disasters and events—floods, fires, blankets of smog. At the same time, Australia’s natural environment was increasingly celebrated rather than—as it had often been in the first century of the Australian press—condemned as ‘barren’, ‘dull’ or ‘horrid’ wilderness, or seen as being vastly ‘improved’ by ridding it of native dogs and poisonous reptiles. Newspaper columnists, including ‘Oriolus’ in the Age, wrote with a hint of nostalgia and romance for the Australian bush and its vulnerable species. This journalism and accompanying photography reflected the growing ‘new world’ interest in nature and wilderness. By the late 1960s, the contemporary environment movement had fully emerged in Australia. Politically active across a range of issues from wilderness and urban conservation to uranium exports and public health risks, the movement brought together the ‘environment’ as a clearly identifiable category. A symbiotic relationship between the movement and news media quickly formed on the back of the national campaign to save Lake Pedder in Tasmania’s south-west. Over the following decade, movement leaders would direct much of their attention to gaining media coverage in order to influence political

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ethics outcomes, rather than direct lobbying of decision-makers, impacting on the style and content of environmental reporting. A focus on protests and celebrities was a feature of the new type of coverage, which peaked during the Franklin Dam campaign (1978–83), alongside numerous accusations that the relationship between journalists and activists was too close. Meanwhile in 1969—just as photographs of the earth from space were entering the popular imagination—Graham Perkin, editor of the Age, resigned his membership of the newly formed Australian Conservation Foundation to avoid accusations of a conflict of interest as he directed his and his paper’s attention towards a campaign to save the Little Desert from subdivision into farming lots. The campaign was led by reporter John Messer, who was appointed to Australia’s first formal environment round by Perkin and by-lined as ‘Our Environment Writer’. (Many major US newspapers had appointed reporters to the ‘environment beat’ by 1967, with environment stories winning Pulitzer Prizes in 1966 and 1967.) The commitment of most newsrooms to a designated environmental round did not survive the decade. As public interest in matters environmental waned in the 1970s, so too did that of editors. Even the Age’s commitment to the round lapsed at times. The next wave of interest occurred in the mid- to late 1980s, when the concept of ‘sustainability’ first entered common usage, but again declined soon after, in the wake of major world events including the collapse of the Soviet Union and the first Gulf War. The strong connection between public and political concern about the environment and the existence of formal newsroom rounds has been a notable element in the history of environmental reporting in Australia. The latest rise in editorial interest began in the mid- to late 2000s, following growing international and scientific alarm about climate change. At the turn of the decade, many major newsrooms maintained designated environment reporters. The sheer magnitude of the issue, and the range of political, economic, social and other concerns it piggy-backs into the media arena, appear to have given the round a longer shelf-life, despite dips in public concern. Environment reporting in Australia is now mainstream. The 2011 Gold Walkley was awarded to Sarah Ferguson, Michael Doyle and Anne Worthington for a Four Corners report on animal cruelty in Indonesian abattoirs. However, the fact that the broadcast was based around footage shot by activists represents a notable shift in Australian environmental journalism. The same trend is evident in reporting of environmental protest; the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s activity against the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean is regularly reported in the Australian media using information and images produced by the activists and circulated via new communication technologies and net-

works. Meanwhile, the stakes remain high, with coverage of climate change and a carbon tax, irrigation and water use, natural area protection and Indigenous land rights, and population growth, immigration and urban development remaining among the most scrutinised, controversial and politically charged issues debated in Australia in recent years. REFs: T. Bonyhady, The Colonial Earth (2000); L. Lester, Giving Ground (2007). LIBBY LESTER

ETH IC S The view that journalism has wider responsibilities than trying to make money was publicly acknowledged in 1803, when the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser carried the statement that ‘information is our only purpose’. In 1854, the first edition of Melbourne’s Age informed readers that the newspaper was ‘the source on which society depends for reliable information on topics of current interest, and for the elucidation of great principles of public polity’; four years later, the editor of the Adelaide Advertiser declared that the newspaper’s aim was ‘To give as wide a cover of all the news of the day as possible, to provide guidance and service’. While the importance of information provision was acknowledged early on, the idea that newspapers had ethical responsibilities took much longer to emerge. For most of the 19th century, journalists were widely viewed as a rough and ready lot, despite evidence that many were making a positive contribution to colonial life, most notably through the publication of material that today would be described as investigative journalism. Examples include the work of Melbourne journalist Maurice Brodzky, who exposed ‘lawlessness, waste and commercial malpractice which ruined hundreds of investors’, and Henry Britton’s exposure in the Melbourne Argus of the evils of blackbirding. Investigative journalism has a strong ethical component because those who engage in it need to make moral judgements about the gravity of potential topics for investigation, and the potential implications for those involved. Ethical questions frequently arise in relation to such aspects as fairness and accuracy, sensationalism, relationships with sources, conflicts of interest and the influence of the more powerful members of society. As the 19th century advanced, many journalists gradually became aware of issues such as these. According to Clifford Christians, the word ‘ethics’ was first used in a journalistic context in an 1889 essay on press criticism by W.S. Lilly entitled The Ethics of Journalism. This essay and the discussion it engendered contributed to the drafting of the first Code of Ethics (in Kansas in 1910), followed by the adoption in 1923 of a series of ‘canons’ of journalistic conduct by the

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ethics American Society of Newspaper Editors. These developments attracted attention in Australia, and led eventually to a 15-point ethics code for editors being drawn up by the NSW Country Press Association in 1927. However, it was not until 1942 that Australia’s first Code of Ethics for journalists was drafted by the NSW district of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA), forerunner of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). After being accepted by individual states, this code was adopted by the federal conference of the AJA in 1944 and subsequently incorporated into the organisation’s constitution. The AJA Code of Ethics was revised in 1984, with changes that included the removal of sexist language and an increased emphasis on privacy and anti-discrimination principles. A further review in 1994 culminated in the adoption by the MEAA of a revised Code of Ethics in 1999; among other things, it rejected plagiarism, condemned digital manipulation of images, added a preamble that linked journalism to democracy and freedom of expression, and enunciated the ‘fundamental principles’ of journalism as ‘honesty, fairness, independence, respect for the rights of others, respect for truth and the public’s right to information’. Virtually from the time of its inception, the AJA Code was criticised because of limitations in regard to interpretation and enforcement, and because it applied only to journalists and not to editors. These weaknesses and the dissatisfaction they engendered contributed to the decision by Australia’s major newspapers to establish the Australian Press Council (APC) in 1976. The APC continues to be the main body with responsibility for responding to complaints about Australian newspapers, magazines and associated digital outlets. Mechanisms for overseeing broadcast journalism standards developed somewhat later than they did for newspapers, sparked by the rise of radio journalism from the 1930s and of television journalism from 1956. The most significant government statutory authorities with responsibility for oversight of standards were the Australian Broadcasting Control Board, which became the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal and later the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA). In 2005, the ABA merged with the Australian Communications Authority to form the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which continues to have responsibility for reviewing industry standards and Codes of Practice. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) and Free TV Australia (formerly the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations) also have separate Codes of Practice. Since 1989, an important contributor to public awareness of media ethics in Australia has been ABC Television’s weekly Media Watch, which regularly draws attention to ethical blem-

ishes and failures, including what the program’s website describes as ‘conflicts of interest, bank backflips, deceit, misrepresentation, manipulation, plagiarism, abuse of power, technical lies and straight-out fraud’. Other major ethical issues that have emerged in the Australian media in recent years include invasion of privacy, chequebook journalism, trial by media, intrusion into grief, diversity (or rather the lack of it) and what became known as ‘cash for comment’. While there has been no shortage of examples of unethical behaviour in Australian journalism over the years, it is important to understand that such behaviour is limited to a relatively small number of practitioners, and that a great deal of high-quality, ethical journalism has been produced in Australia. Despite some expressions of public concern, there is no evidence of ‘phone hacking’ by journalists in Australia and no evidence that the scandal that has so seriously undermined British journalism has echoes here. Journalism ethics is now a dynamic and evolving field, which involves applying and balancing ethical principles and practice to the complex challenges faced by practitioners. Public disquiet over media power in Australia was partly behind the Gillard Labor government’s decision in 2011 to establish the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation (known as the Finkelstein Inquiry). In the words of the chair, retired Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, the underlying issue addressed was ‘how to accommodate the increasing and legitimate demand for press accountability, but to do so in a way that does not increase state power or inhibit the vigorous democratic role the press should play or undermine the key rationales for free speech and a free press’. Central to this is the right of redress for those who consider they have been misrepresented in the press. Finkelstein noted that Australia’s highly concentrated newspaper market means that consumers have little choice and little power to influence what is published. Further, he concluded that the existing system of self-regulation is ineffective. Contrary to much media reportage at the time, Finkelstein’s report did not call for direct government control of the media, but rather a system of what could be described as enforced self-regulation via a government-funded statutory agency. The News Media Council would be better resourced than the APC, have jurisdiction over broadcast as well as print media, and have the power to compel media outlets to publish its findings. There was a strong negative reaction from the mainstream media. Amid public controversy, proposed legislation to enact Finkelstein’s recommendations failed to pass through federal parliament. Since then, an uneasy stalemate has settled on the public debate over media ethics in Australia. This is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, as the Abbott Coalition government,

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ethnic broadcasting elected in September 2013, has made it clear that it has no intention of returning to Finkelstein’s report—or, indeed, of acting on any of his recommendations. REFs: C. Christians, ‘Chronology’, in E. Cohen and D. Elliott (eds), Contemporary Ethical Issues (1997); R. Finkelstein and M. Ricketson, Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation (2012); C.J. Lloyd, ‘The Historical Roots’, in S. Tanner (ed.), Journalism Investigation and Research (2002). IAN RICHARDS

ET HNI C BROA D CASTING Radio broadcasts in languages other than English (LOTE) were being heard on Australian commercial radio as early as 1931, when Sydney’s 2UW broadcast a program of French music. Broadcasts of European operas were common on ABC and commercial radio in the 1930s, although Italian and German compositions, along with Lutheran church services, were a controversial feature of the airwaves during World War II. But it was the surge in post-war immigration that saw LOTE broadcasts—particularly in Italian and Greek—become increasingly common on commercial radio, although not without controversy. The newly established Australian Broadcasting Control Board (1949) received complaints about broadcasting in languages most of the population did not understand. In 1959, restrictions were imposed on LOTE broadcasts, limiting them to 2.5 per cent of transmission time, on the condition that all foreign-language material was re-broadcast in English. 2CH Sydney and 3XY Melbourne obtained special permission in 1964 to increase their LOTE transmission to 10 per cent and 6 per cent respectively, but by 1972, 2CH had dropped most of its LOTE programming. Between the 1950s and 1970s, more than 30 of Australia’s commercial stations were involved in foreign-language broadcasting at some stage, with programming largely supplied by individuals or ethnic communities, who would buy airtime, make the programs and sell the advertising. Pino Bosi (later chair of the NSW State Ethnic Broadcast Advisory Council) was an early entrepreneur, while Al Grassby, later Minister for Immigration, presented broadcasts to the large Italian community on 2RG Griffith in the 1950s. The general restriction on LOTE broadcasting was lifted by the Whitlam Labor government in 1974. Commercial radio was withdrawing from the field because of the demand for tighter, Top 40 formats, a uniform station image and increasing competition in the metropolitan radio market. There was also considerable pressure from the communities themselves to move away from commercial broadcasting. The 1972 Migrant Workers’ Conference in Melbourne called for government-funded ‘ethnic broadcasting’.

In 1974, Al Grassby, as Commissioner for Community Relations, pressed to set up directly funded ethnic radio. The Whitlam government was keen to promote Medicare, but was concerned a great number of former migrants could not understand existing English-language media. Radio Ethnic Australia (2EA and 3EA) came into being, not as fully licensed stations but under special ministerial arrangement. They went to air in June 1975 under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1905, which allowed for special-case broadcasting. Meanwhile, the 1974 McLean inquiry into FM radio and the first Public Broadcasting Conference the same year led to the establishment of community-based public broadcasting stations, one of which, 5UV in Adelaide, went to air in March 1975 and ran ethnic programming as part of its access policy. Others followed. By 1978, the ethnic broadcasters at 5UV split off and formed the first specialist public ethnic radio station to be granted a licence, 5EBI. But Brisbane’s 4EB claims it was in fact the first ethnic community station to go to air, on 1 December 1979, beating 5EBI by two weeks. A third sector of ethnic broadcasting went to air in 1975: the short-lived community access station 3ZZ, attached to the ABC, on air just five hours a night. 3ZZ was available to any community groups, but it became largely dominated by ethnic broadcasters, simply because the demand was there. The simultaneous establishment of 3EA in Melbourne meant the government had unwittingly set up two similar concepts in competition. One of them was bound to fail. 3ZZ was shut down after two years, and 3EA went on to become one of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) stations in 1978, the other being Sydney’s 2EA. By the 21st century, SBS Radio broadcast through one national network (est. 1994) and two city networks each in Sydney and Melbourne: five services in all. Meanwhile, community radio thrived. By 1986 there were 21 community radio stations carrying LOTE programming, and by the early 1990s there were at least 60 community radio stations with significant levels of ethnic broadcasting. Five of them were full community ethnic stations. By 2004, the figure was more than 100. In 2012 there were 131 community stations carrying ethnic programming in more than 100 languages, out of a sector total of 526, and six dedicated ethnic community radio stations. The five radio services of SBS maintain programming in 68 languages, reaching about one million people each week. Multicultural television came in 1980, five years after radio. It had emerged out of an inquiry into post-arrival migrant services, the Galbally Report (1978). Galbally recommended extending ethnic radio and establishing multicultural television, and that both should

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ethnic press operate under SBS. There had in fact been early stirrings for ethnic television, which pre-dated Galbally. Ethnic television probably began in 1969 when bushfire warnings were broadcast in a number of languages on mainstream channels, while The Greek Variety Show was a feature of Network Ten’s schedule from 1977 to 1984. There were several test transmissions on ABC Television and SBS Television prior to the official launch of SBS Television on 28 October 1980. English for New Australians went to air on the ABC in 1949 on Saturday and Sunday mornings, using an amalgam of printed and broadcast material. The Sunday program was expanded after 1950 to include questions and answers, general information and a serial called In a Sunburnt Country. Keith Smith interviewed newly arrived children and adults about their impressions of Australia. English for New Australians changed its name to Learning English in 1964, and survived until 1979. As late as 1986, a reminder was inserted in the ABC charter that it should take into account ‘the multicultural character of the Australian community’. A television multicultural unit was formed in 1988, providing advice and sometimes making programs. It produced a staff guide to non-discriminatory language, with prominent sections on ‘ethnicity’ and ‘gender’. In 1994, the Labor Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, Senator Nick Bolkus, noted that all broadcasters, including the ABC, had vacated the field of broadcasting for ethnic audiences ‘on the grounds that SBS already provides content for this market’. Certainly the ABC had helped set up access radio 3ZZZ, but ethnic volunteers found ABC management and training somewhat restrictive in their Anglophone emphasis. A similar attempt to provide ethnic access to ABC Television by Monday Conference anchor Robert Moore in 1974 went largely unheralded. Yet languages other than English were well known to the ABC. Radio Australia had been operating since December 1939, and by 1956 its short-wave overseas service was broadcasting in English, French, Indonesian, Thai and Mandarin in more than 17 countries across the Asia Pacific region. By 2014 it had dropped Thai and added Burmese, Khmer, Tok Pisin and Vietnamese, carrying news, commentary and some entertainment programs to overseas audiences, including Australian service personnel abroad. REFs: C. Lawe Davies, ‘Enacting Cultural Diversity Through Multicultural Radio in Australia’, European Jnl of Communication Research, 30 (2005); B. Griffen-Foley, ‘From the Murrumbidgee to Mamma Lena: Foreign Language Broadcasting on Australian Commercial Radio, Part 1’, Jnl of Australian Studies, 30 (2006). CHRIS LAWE DAVIES

ETH N IC P R ESS With over one in five Australians born outside the country, and two in five having an overseas-born parent, links to the wider world are integral to the national landscape. With over 150 national-origin and 200 language groups, Australia has a very complex language, information and communication pattern, and our ethnic or diasporic press plays a crucial role in the survival and maintenance of multicultural social relations. The ethnic press performs a number of overlapping roles, ranging from providing information in the heritage language on settlement and adaptation to Australia, to sustaining contact with countries or languages of origin, and building or rebuilding community. If we think of nations as ‘imaginary communities’, then the press sustains the imagination and refreshes the sense of identity and association among its readers. Studies of the ethnic press going back over half a century have documented the nature of the interface formed between settlers, the dynamics of their countries of origin and the wider society. During periods of conflict, some papers have been closed down or come under security censorship—such as the German press (the oldest, Die Deutsche Post, est. 1848) during World War I, and the German and Italian press during World War II. As the digital media have flourished and the makeup of immigrant communities has changed, the ethnic print media have had to reposition themselves in acknowledgement of the technical transformation and the new capacities of online media, and the changing needs of communities. In an analysis of the ethnic press by Ata and Ryan in the late 1980s, 16 language groups were examined. Four broad functions, drawing on a study by Gilson and Zubrzycki some 20 years earlier, were proposed: the maintenance of cultural identity, communication of Australian news, orientation to Australia and acting as a brake on assimilation. The tension between opening Australia to immigrants and protecting them from Australia showed in the emphasis on nostalgia for older communities, on the focus in some communities on struggles in the homeland and on building an ethno-Australian identity based on commitment to the new land. In the 1980s, the Arabic and Vietnamese papers were deeply involved in homeland politics, while the Polish sustained a dogged anti-communism. The Jewish press was not so much ethnic as politico-religious, with a focus on support for Israel. The first Italian papers were developed for émigré political activists at the turn of the 20th century. While they did not last long, as more Italians arrived new outlets were established—though they were hampered by the rural dispersal and low literacy of Italian workers, most of whom spoke dialect. By the 1920s, the Italian-language press had expanded, supported

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ethnic press by the new fascist government. Anti-fascist papers were more popular in the remote mining camps and canefields. Sydney’s weekly La Fiamma (1947– ) grew by the 1960s to a circulation of 44,000. Melbourne’s Il Globo (1959– ) began as a weekly, then went daily in 1978. It bought out La Fiamma in 1985 as Melbourne became the bigger of the two Italian communities. Both papers focused on sustaining community and advertising the passing of former migrants. Long-time Il Globo editor Nino Randazzo was also a political activist, elected in 2006 as Senator from Africa, Australia and Asia to the Italian Parliament. Randazzo had been a strong advocate of defending the reputation of Italo-Australians (against the common Mafia stereotypes) and promoting a wider multiculturalism. With the advent of digital access, the papers retained their hard-copy circulation, with Il Globo selling 30,000 copies, while it also offered an online service, including an English-language magazine designed to appeal to the second and third generations. The Greek-language press has been more controversial. In the 75 years to 1989, some 24 Greek-language papers were launched in Australia, beginning with Australis (est. 1913) and still available as Vima Tis Ekklisias. By the 1980s, the spread of papers reflected a range of allegiances. Many of the papers had first appeared when the Australian government released restrictions on publication in ‘foreign languages’ in 1956; by 1989, three publishers controlled most of the outlets. The Media Press group, run by Theo Skalkos since the early 1960s, grew to some prominence in the 1970s as the printer of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, especially the Australian. By the 1990s, Skalkos had spread out into more than 80 magazines and papers in 40 ethnic languages, and began Greek radio and television programs. Media Press was placed in receivership in 2003, leading to the closure of his Greek Herald and Al-Barak (Arabic) mastheads. The primary focus of the Greek press has been the maintenance of Greek language and culture, and the sponsoring of philo-hellenic activities and discussions. The left of centre Neos Kosmos (1957– ) now focuses its activities through the online edition, gearing itself towards later-generation young Greek-Australian readers. Government advertising of services for older Australians provides a significant part of the income supporting some of these outlets. The ethnic press have undergone some profound transformations, partly because the earlier communities have aged. In 2013, the NSW Community Relations Commission listed more than 140 different daily, weekly and monthly newspapers in over 40 languages across Australia. Its own service provides daily summaries to clients in 11 languages. There are 22 Indian papers, 13 Chinese, 10 Arabic and Korean, nine Turkish, eight Vietnamese and seven Greek

outlets, with languages ranging from Armenian to Urdu. Such diversity reveals quite a complex pattern between and within language groups. Two contemporary examples, the Arabic and the Chinese press, represent important but very different challenges to the press in Australia. The Arabs are drawn from a multinational background, with religious differences, and a diversity of countries, regimes and political struggles. By 2012, the Arab spring of the previous year had torn apart the taken-for-granted crescent of conservative dictatorships, and opened up a future of deep uncertainty with many Australian reverberations. The study from 1986 selected three Lebanese Arabic papers—El Telegraph (1970– ) (then 10,000–15,000 circulation with a total Lebanese population of 56,000) and two weeklies of the left and Christian right. With the outbreak of the civil war in 1975, the papers moved from local communal news and information to a much more active engagement with the homeland and partisan identification. El Telegraph tended to report stories on both Muslims and Christians—by the mid-1980s, the left was strongly supporting the Palestinian cause against Israel, while the Maronite supported the Israelis and the South Lebanon Christian army. However, El Telegraph advised its communal writers not to submit copy that might stimulate sectarian unrest and hostility. A generation later, the largest-selling Arabic-language newspaper was still the Bankstown-based El Telegraph, founded by controversial ALP politician ‘Eddie’ Obeid. Obeid came to Australia at the age of six, left school early and moved through a number of businesses before the newspaper found its platform. The growth of El Telegraph paralleled the rapid rise in the population, first of Lebanese Arabic speakers (whose numbers rose rapidly after the civil war in the mid-1970s), then later of Iraqis (mainly asylum seekers and refugees, both Christians and Muslims). While Obeid comes from the majority Christian Maronite community, the paper, under editor Tony Kazzi, serves both Christian and Muslim congregations. The editorial  focus  positions  readers as part of Australian society, to which they should adapt and integrate. El Telegraph sold some 35,000 copies three times a week, increasing to five days a week in 2012. The paper reached around 25 per cent of the Arabic-reading population, about half of whom are Muslim and 20 per cent Iraqi. In 2010, Obeid sold El Telegraph to the Australian Middle East Media (AMEM) group, which ran the bilingual weeklies Al Anwar (launched in 2006 as a news magazine) and An-Noujoum (1998– ). In November 2011, the AMEM group also opened a partnership with the Lebanese government National News Agency, while building its online presence. El Telegraph also offers an

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ethnic press online presence, but only in relation to Australian news, most of which is translated directly from agencies or the mainstream Australian press. Thus the digest function (covering at least 10 Arabic papers each day) can only be accessed through the print version. El Telegraph has also sought to build its Iraqi following, in part by drawing on unofficial stringers incarcerated in immigration detention centres around the country. It has thus been able to report on activities and issues inside the centres, often providing information for families and the wider community not available in the mainstream media. The Arabic press is thus pan-ethnic and language based, facing strong competition from the online media, and cable and satellite television such as the Qatar-based Al Jazeera and the Saudi-based Al Arabiya. However, unlike many English-language papers, El Telegraph has increased its circulation and coverage in the print version. The Chinese-language press reflects another pan-national audience with far longer ties to Australia. The first Chinese-language newspaper, the English and Chinese Advertiser, appeared on the Victorian goldfields in about 1856. By Federation there were major Chinese newspapers in Melbourne and Sydney, with the first Chinese-backed paper being the Chinese Australian Herald (1894–1923). These served a threefold purpose—to provide information and rally engagement with political issues in Australia, especially Federation; to provide homeland information; and to rally political support for various parties in China. As the Nationalist revolution developed in 1911, a significant number of papers were set up. However, as the White Australia policy cut deeply into the numbers of Chinese readers, the newspapers declined. It was not until after the settlement in Australia of significant numbers of mainland Chinese after the Tiananmen events of 1989 that there occurred a resurgence in Chinese-language press. The first outlets primarily served the Hong Kong and Taiwanese communities, using traditional vertical print and elaborate characters; later publications served People’s Republic of China (PRC) immigrants, set horizontally in simplified characters. A critical change has resulted from the PRC government policy of supporting those outlets that reflect its viewpoint. While the papers (especially the Hong Kong-based Sing Tao, est. 1977) have their own publishing strategies, PRC pressure and influence have been significant. As the Chinese relationship with Australia is complex on many levels, the Chinese press walks through these issues with great delicacy, apart from the Falung Gong paper Epoch Times (2001– ). The range and impact of the Chinese press are difficult to gauge, because few have their circulation audited, and many readers access them online. The Australian Chinese Daily (1987– ), started by Hong Kong

immigrants, shifted from Chinese vertical style to Western horizontal format in 1990, commencing colour printing in 1997 in time for the Hong Kong handover to the PRC. It publishes 20,000 copies daily, but its website, providing access to news specifically relating to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, as well as Australia, receives many more hits. The Australian New Express Daily (ANED, 2004– ) has particular links to both Australian and Chinese political life; it parallels the Guangzhou paper New Express Daily. Launched by millionaire publisher Dr Chau Chak Wing, ANED is closely linked to (but separate from) the Chinese government and does not carry any content critical of the Chinese government. The paper employs English-language editorial consultants to improve journalistic standards. Although it is not audited in Australia, ANED is generally regarded as the third largest Australian-Chinese paper after Sing Tao and the Chinese Herald, though circulation becomes a less meaningful criterion of impact with webbased delivery. The paper has little independent local coverage, taking its content from the mainstream press, wire-service feeds and media releases. However it does provide a ‘getting to understand Australia’ section. The expansion of globalisation has significantly transformed the form and consumption patters of the ethnic press, as well as the patterns of mobility and inter-country movement for readers. The broad functions identified in the 1960s and explored further in the 1980s remain a crucial part of the contemporary dynamic. However, whereas ethnic media once provided an almost sole portal into events in the countries of origin, the current media environment has become more pluralistic. In such a competitive context, the ethnic press has had to find new modes of attracting and retaining audiences, to provide value for advertisers. Some may have other sources of funds. El Telegraph is a long-established paper that is adapting to the times and optimising its advantages. Its editorial focus remains the process of its readers’ integration into Australia. ANED reflects a much more recent emergence, with less attachment to the integration process, and more acceptance of the constant global mobility occurring in the Chinese–reading population. Both have woven their hard-copy editions into the continuous 24/7 world of internet media; both have struck a relationship with their heritage national government news service as a key source of home country news. While both are clearly commercial exercises, the commerce and ideology have become inseparable. REFs: A. Ata and C. Ryan (eds), The Ethnic Press in Australia (1989); G. Gilson and J. Zubrzycki, Foreign Press in Australia (1966). ANDREW JAKUBOWICZ

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ethnic reporting and representation ET HNI C RE POR TING AND REPRESENTATION Ethnic minority communities in Australia have struggled for fair and accurate representation in the news media since the beginning of national identity. The fact that the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (better known as the White Australia policy) was the first Act passed by parliament after Federation illustrates the cultural frame within which the news media have worked. The Act restricted immigration to mostly northern Europeans and, although it began to be dismantled after World War II, it was not finally laid to rest until 1973. The policy’s influence on the news media is evident not only in the language and lack of balance in their content, but most obviously in the masthead slogan of the influential magazine the Bulletin, which proudly proclaimed ‘Australia for the White Man’. As Australia’s international relationships and loyalties have developed and changed, media studies have consistently shown that news values of conflict, violence and otherness have dominated reporting. Members of German ethnic communities interned during World War I were racially characterised as ‘the Hun’, and Japanese were the ‘Yellow Peril’ in World War II. While there have been efforts to reflect a fairer representation of the nation’s diverse ethnic composition, in 2010 researcher Andrew Jakubowicz felt compelled to report that ‘the media for the most part reflect the interests, perspectives and responses of the cultural elite and the older established core culture’. A significant attempt to redress the imbalance was the launch of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in January 1978, built on the belief that all Australians should have access to high-quality, independent, culturally relevant Australian media. However, debate continues over the relevance and meaning of terms such as ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘diversity’. Issues such as the Racial Hatred Act 1995, the terms within it and what it is meant to address continue to consume the news media. Government agencies and researchers devote considerable resources to understanding the issues. Concern over news media framing led the Howard Coalition government to partner with the Journalism Education Association of Australia and others to conduct two ‘sweeps’ (in 2005 and 2007) of print, radio and television reporting of ethnic minorities in the Australian community. The aim of the project was to ‘raise awareness in both the journalism industry and the general public of fair and appropriate reporting of issues concerning community diversity’. The main conclusions of the 2005 survey were that ethnic minority (EM) communities were portrayed as ‘bad’, ‘sad’, ‘mad’ or ‘other’. In the 2007 Reporting Diversity research project, there appeared to be a return to a more ‘normal’ news agenda, with lower levels of EM content, but this only made these characteristics stand

out more starkly. EM communities continue to be featured as ‘mad’, ‘bad’ or ‘sad’. EM talent was rarely featured in the role of expert, or in crowd scenes or vox pops. In subsequent years, little seems to have changed. In a 2010 study of ethnicity and citizenship in Sydney, Kevin Dunn concluded that the news media’s treatment of ethnic minorities portrayed minority cultural groups as deviant, or as a threat to a stable cultural order. The Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales (EAC) complained that media images of ethnic communities had become caricatures. When criticised, journalists tend to take refuge in the fourth estate function of journalism, arguing that reflecting society to itself is crucial to its well-being. But this will benefit society only when the reporting is accurate. Interestingly, the inaccuracies begin with the ethnic composition of Australian newsrooms, which are overwhelmingly of Anglo-Saxon origin. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show nearly half of all Australians have at least one parent born overseas and more than 30 per cent of Australians are themselves born overseas, but the most recent study of Australian journalists’ characteristics by Folker Hanusch shows only 20 per cent were born overseas. The study shows only 4.3 per cent of journalists have some Asian background, compared with 7.2 per cent in the general population, while almost three-quarters (73.3 per cent) identify as having at least some Anglo-Saxon background. The demographic differences between journalists and the broader population make it difficult for journalists to understand, and to place in context, ‘the news’ with reference to ethnic minorities. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance Code of Ethics enjoins journalists to apply 12 standards, including: ‘Do not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, religious belief, or physical or intellectual disability.’ Similar recommendations are made by organisations like the Australian Press Council and the ABC, while Stockwell and Scott’s (2000) All Media Guide to Fair and Cross-Cultural Reporting provides advice on a range of issues, including balance, accuracy, ethical awareness and the concept of ‘a fair go’. However, slavish commitment to concepts of reporting such as balance can sometimes have detrimental effects. In two 2005 case studies for the Reporting Diversity project—of racial vilification in Toowoomba and of violent clashes in Newcastle, both involving Sudanese immigrants—results showed that reporting ‘both sides of the story’ may actually lead to imbalance. Ethnic minorities are also disadvantaged by the Australian news media’s continuing love affair with conflict as the dominant news value; this approach often dispenses with the context

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that can provide a more sophisticated and accurate understanding of the events. Accusations of lack of context are supported by findings from studies like Vulnerability and the News Media (2008–12), which examined the way vulnerable groups in society were reported on in a range of Australian newspapers. Stockwell and Scott acknowledge that most misrepresentations occur through ignorance. There have, however, been occasions when media intervention has not been inadvertent. Talkback radio host Alan Jones, for example, was found by the NSW Administrative Appeals Tribunal to have ‘incited serious contempt of Lebanese males’. While Jones is not a journalist, his audience members do not make that distinction. However, some improvement is starting to be evident in the news media’s representations of ethnic minorities. The Vulnerability and the News Media study revealed a significant gap between what was reported and how vulnerable groups perceived the reporting. The study, in which ethnic minorities were only a portion of those studied, revealed few negative moments of vulnerability in its content analysis. Yet focus group interviews showed that vulnerable groupings, including ethnic minorities, feel they have been poorly treated by the news media. The lesson to be learnt from this study is that while the news media content may increasingly reflect advice in codes of conduct, in the process of reporting, journalists still have much to learn about how to engage with sources from ethnic minorities. REFs: K. Dunn, ‘Embodied Transnationalism: Bodies in Transnational Spaces’, Population, Space and Place, 16(1) (2010); F. Hanusch, ‘Journalists in Times of Change: Evidence from a New Survey of Australia’s Journalistic Workforce’, Australian Journalism Review, 35(1) (2013); A. Jakubowicz, ‘Diversity and News in Australia’, http://andrewjakubowicz.com/ publications/diversity-and-news-in-australia (2010); H. Rane and M. Abdalla, ‘Mass Media Islam: The Impact of Media Imagery on Public Opinion’, Australian Journalism Review, 30(1) (2008); S. Stockwell and P. Scott, All Media Guide to Fair and Cross-Cultural Reporting (2000). KERRY GREEN

EVENIN G N E W S P A P E R S see afternoon newspapers

E X A MI NE R ( L AUNCESTON) Six newspapers were launched in Launceston, Tasmania between 1825 and 1839 before provincial publication occurred elsewhere in Australia. A seventh Launceston title appeared before the Launceston Examiner and Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser began publication on 12 March 1842. James Aikenhead (1815–87), an entrepreneurial Scot, was the proprietor and official editor, but the unofficial editor was Rev. John West (1809–73). While editing the Exam-

iner, he was pastor of the town’s Congregational Church. He inspired a national movement to abolish the transportation of convicts to Van Diemen’s Land. Transportation ended in 1853, and West left Launceston in November 1854 to become the first designated editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. Jonathan Stammers Waddell, a printer, helped launch the Examiner. He held a minority interest and on his death in December 1857, this was acquired by a nephew, Henry Button, who had worked at the paper periodically for 13 years. Aikenhead edited the Examiner until 1869 when son William replaced him. The Examiner began appearing daily on 21 December 1877, when the Cornwall Chronicle (est. 1835) was competing strongly as a tri-weekly. The Chronicle made two forays into daily publication (1878–79 and 1880), but the Examiner bought it and closed it in November 1880. New competition emerged in July 1881 with the launch of the bi-weekly Telegraph, which became a tri-weekly in April 1882 and a daily in June 1883. It closed in March 1928. Button, an excellent reporter and innovative printer, became the Examiner’s sole proprietor in 1887. In November 1897, accountants William Robert Rolph (1864–1948) and Alexander T. Young joined the Examiner partnership. Button retired in 1898. In 1916, when Young retired, the firm became W.R. Rolph & Sons. In the Rolph era, the Examiner dropped Launceston from its title on 1 January 1900, published the Weekly Courier (1901–35), and established the Saturday Evening Express in 1924 and commercial radio station 7EX in 1938. Gordon Burns Rolph (1893–1959) trained in all aspects of newspaper work before joining his father in management. Gordon rose to become general manager, then chairman and managing director, and finally governing director. He was president of the Australian Provincial Press Association from 1946 to 1952. He was knighted in 1948. On 3 September 1939, the Examiner had news on its front page for the first time to announce the declaration of war in Europe. In 1948, it became a tabloid. Examiner editors have included Frederick Prichard (1893–1920), Stanley Dryden (1920–33), Rupert John (Jack) Williams (1938–66), Goodwin Ewence (1966–76), Michael Charles Palliser Courtney (1976–92) and Rodney James Scott (1993–2004). The Sunday Examiner was introduced in 1984 when the Sunday Mercury began in Hobart. Edmund Alexander Rouse (1926–2002) married the youngest of Gordon Rolph’s daughters, Dorothy, in 1951. He became assistant manager of the Examiner, managing director in 1959 when Sir Gordon died and chairman of the board in 1969. Between 1959 and 1989, Rouse transformed Rolph and Sons into a powerful media corporation, ENT (Examiner & Northern Television) Ltd, owning the licences for both of Tasmania’s commercial television

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channels, as well as Melbourne radio station 3UZ, and tourism and hotel interests. Under new cross-media legislation, ENT acquired Associated Broadcasting Services Ltd and became a radio powerhouse in regional Victoria. The Rolph–Rouse dynasty ended when Rouse was imprisoned in 1990 for trying to bribe a Tasmanian Labor government member, Jim Cox, to vote with the Liberals in parliament so that outgoing Premier Robin Gray could retain power. When Rouse resigned all his positions in ENT, the company’s share price crashed and it faced difficulties with the banks. On 30 August 1990, ENT sold the Examiner to Rural Press Limited (60 per cent) and the Burnie-based Harris and Company Ltd (40 per cent) for $28

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million. Rural Press became the sole owner in December 2003 and merged with Fairfax Media in May 2007. Since 2006, the Examiner has been active online. In 2012 it was named Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association (PANPA) Newspaper of the Year in the 25,000–90,000 circulation category. In 2013, the Examiner recorded a circulation of 25,765 Monday to Saturday, and the Sunday Examiner 31,959. REFs: Australian, 13 August 2002; R. Kirkpatrick and S. Tanner, ‘Tall Timbers Topple: End of Independence for Tasmania’s Daily Press’, Australian Studies in Journalism, 14 (2005). ROD KIRKPATRICK

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F FA IR FAX FAMI LY The distance between the beginning, with John Fairfax, and the end, with young Warwick—the man who couldn’t wait—was two months short of 150 years, five generations and a temperamental gulf the size of Carpentaria. When he bought the 10-year-old Sydney Herald (with the gregarious Charles Kemp) from Frederick Stokes in 1841, John Fairfax (1805–77) believed ‘nothing but religion could possibly make me happy’. Faith did not displace his worldly focus. Finding no fault with the existing editorial ideology (Alexander Pope’s ‘In moderation placing all my glory, While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory’), Fairfax also continued the strategy of reduced subscription rates to increase circulation and revenue and concentrated on factual accuracy, believing truth induced a reader’s trust. He changed the title to the Sydney Morning Herald in 1842. Word spread quickly. The year of the sale, Melbourne Herald editor James Cavanagh, citing Sydney Herald advertising rates and circulation ‘beyond all precedent’, upped his own. Applying the core principles of caution, Congregationalism and conformity, John Fairfax & Sons (now Fairfax Media) survived the vicissitudes of nature and nurture through drought and flooding rain, the Federation of the Australian colonies, the Great War, Marxism, Darwinism, the suffragettes and women’s liberation. John Fairfax’s eldest sons, Charles (1829–63) and James—who became Sir James Reading Fairfax (1834–1919)—became partners on New Year’s Eve 1856, creating the firm John Fairfax & Sons. (After Charles was thrown from a horse and killed, the third son, Edward Ross (1843–1953) joined the firm and, in 1865, became a partner.) Of Sir James’s sons, (Sir) James Oswald (1863–1928) fathered (Sir) Warwick Oswald (1901–87), who fathered James Oswald (1933– ) and young Warwick Geoffrey Oswald (1960– ); John Hubert Fraser (1872–1950) fathered (Sir) Vincent Charles (1909–93), who fathered John Brehmer (1942– ). No female Fairfax joined the firm. ‘Only a girl,’ Sir James Reading Fairfax remarked when his oldest child, Mary Elizabeth (1858–1945), was born.

The family’s conservative ideology also cost circulation, revenue and influence. By 1899, David Syme’s Age, progressive in news coverage, liberal in editorials, supporting the acquittals of the Eureka rebels, sold 130,000 when the Herald, Gavin Souter reports, sold ‘regularly in the high sixty thousands and sometimes into the low seventy thousands’. The Sydney Morning Herald recommended a vote for Labor once (1961) in the 60 years following Federation. When he wrote The Story of John Fairfax (1941), the founder’s grandson, John F. Fairfax, saw in the old man’s portrait eyes of honesty and a mouth suggesting kindliness, firmness and strength. The doctrines the family tried to follow were ‘the stern rigidity of truth and the simple rules of unselfishness’. In this and later books they wrote, published or authorised about the dynasty’s newspapers—Company of Heralds (1981) and Heralds and Angels by Souter (1991), Give My Regards to Broadway by James Fairfax (1991) and The Man Who Couldn’t Wait (1990) by Vic Carroll—the Fairfaxes established new standards for self-scrutiny in Australian journalism. In the small Australian book publishing market, while Souter and Fairfax helped the company by pre-empting more critical works, James Fairfax, reading the work in progress, made no attempt to bridle Souter, one of the most gifted non-fiction writers of his generation. In its news coverage of its own travails, the Sydney Morning Herald set new standards. Christmas dinners at the family home in Bellevue Hill were a Fairfax tradition from 1858. At the newspaper’s 150th anniversary dinner on 15 April 1981, chairman James Fairfax said his mother told him ‘all my friends tell me the Herald has gone Labor, but then they always say that at election time’. James thought the difference between cultures in his generation and that of the first John Fairfax was that, in the founder’s time, ‘generally speaking motive was not suspect’. Now he and the family were constantly accused of forcing views down people’s throats. He also regretted his failure to understand the attitudes, intentions and values his half-brother. The son of Sir Warwick’s third wife, Mary, Warwick Geoffrey Oswald was 27 years younger than James.

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fairfax media Having convinced himself without consulting other members that he was acting in the family’s interests, young Warwick Fairfax made a bid for John Fairfax & Sons—first announced on John Laws’ 2UE radio program on 31 August 1987—through a shelf company, Tryart Pty Ltd. Warwick would be proprietor, the first to hold the title since the death of his great-grandfather, Sir James Reading Fairfax. Though both Warwicks were Christians in the family tradition—Sir Warwick insisted to agnostic editor John Douglas Pringle in April 1970 that the paper had run a religious leader at Easter since ‘time immemorial’—the temperamental gulf between them was large. The father concealed an intelligent inner pragmatist inside his outer dogmatic reactionary. He wrote three plays and a book, The Triple Abyss: Towards a Modern Synthesis (1965), on science, religion and philosophy. The son, trying to take control and fearing opportunistic offers, took chances, including using a financier, Laurie Connell, who owned hundreds of racehorses and later served a year in prison for conspiring to pervert the course of justice. James Fairfax, whose acceptance—with other family members he held 33.5 per cent— would guarantee success, said Warwick’s ‘purpose, motive, method of proceeding and choice of advisers’ were all obstacles. ‘The family had never been consulted about the proposal nor even made aware of it until the last minutes when it was too late to do anything about it.’ Warwick mystified James. There was the ‘Fairfax reticence, but there was also a deeper quality I could not quite define which made me wonder if I ever knew what he was really thinking’. At the heart of the world’s oldest family communication business was a communication breakdown. The Fairfaxes attracted not just knighthoods, but portraitists, including Tom Roberts (of Sir James Reading, 1898), John Longstaff (Sir James Oswald, 1927), Walter A. Bowring (Sir James Oswald, 1929) and Judy Cassab (Sir Warwick, 1955). The privatised John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd was forced to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars, refinanced in 1988 with long-term bank debt and American junk bonds. ‘Then’, Gavin Souter reported, ‘the economy faltered, the interest burden became intolerable, the company restructured, tried in vain to do so a second time and went into receivership’ (reported in the Herald as ‘Banks end the Fairfax era’), opening the door to takeover by the Canadian Conrad Black in 1993 with the company name John Fairfax Holdings. Black held 25 per cent and Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd 15 per cent. After intense lobbying to increase his stake failed, Black sold out to New Zealand’s Brierley Investments in 1966. After John Fairfax Holdings merged with Rural Press, the company changed its name to

Fairfax Media on 12 January 2007 and regained control of the Canberra Times, with Rural Press’s John B. Fairfax returning to the Fairfax board. He sold his remaining 9.7 per cent stake in Fairfax Media in 2011. ROBERT PULLAN

FAIR FAX M ED IA Though a conservative family dynasty surviving 150 years implies long-term thinking, the Fairfax family, shaped by the culture of competition as well as moulding it, sometimes made crucial decisions rashly. From 1856, the publication of the Sydney Morning Herald and the operation of family business were undertaken by John Fairfax & Sons. The first new medium to follow the standard-bearer was the eight-page weekly, the Sydney Mail, published on Friday to catch country mail coaches. First published on 7 July 1860, it sold 5000 copies by the end of the year and lasted until 1938. The ill-conceived penny daily the Afternoon Telegram was launched on 1 January 1870, edited by Samuel Cook; it lasted just four months. On 1 May 1875, he tested the afternoon market again, this time with a penny Echo, again edited by Cook. Fairfax and Cook hoped fresh Echo news on country trains would find a market among readers for whom the Herald was sometimes a day late. The paper went through four editors in 18 years, and folded in 1893. In 1916, the Fairfax partnership became a limited company, John Fairfax & Sons Ltd. This was converted to a proprietary company, John Fairfax & Sons Pty Ltd, in 1937. The Herald afternoon edition, first published on 5 January 1899, ran until 13 January 1940. An ambitious quality broadsheet, the Sunday Herald, pushed by governing director Sir Warwick Fairfax, managing director R.A.G. Henderson and general manager Angus McLachlan, started on 21 January 1949 but could not draw enough national advertising and ran, according to Gavin Souter, ‘at a heavy loss’ for four years. In August 1953, (Sir) Frank Packer made a bid for Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), publisher of the afternoon daily the Sun and the Sunday Sun. Alarmed, Henderson persuaded the ANL board to sell John Fairfax & Sons a share in the company, which thwarted Packer and merged the companies and the newspapers, creating the popular tabloid Sun-Herald, first published on 11 October 1953. It also acquired the ANL subsidiary, magazine publisher Sungravure Pty Ltd, which by the 1970s employed 500 people and published Woman’s Day, People with Pix, Cosmopolitan, Dolly and Electronics Australia, and became Fairfax Magazines Pty Ltd. The merger also yielded a consortium comprising John Fairfax & Sons, ANL and several broadcasting and manufacturing companies,

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fashion magazines Amalgamated Television Services Pty Ltd, which successfully applied for a Sydney commercial television licence. ATN7 went to air on 2 December 1956. The next year, John Fairfax & Sons contributed to a consortium applying for a television licence in Brisbane and came to control QTQ9. When Ezra Norton offered Truth and the Daily Mirror for sale in 1958, what followed, according to Souter, ‘was not Henderson’s, nor indeed John Fairfax’s, finest hour’. Fairfax owned the Sun, the Mirror’s competitor in the Sydney afternoon market. Henderson decided Fairfax should buy the Mirror and Sunday Mirror (the old Truth) through a shelf company, O’Connell Pty Ltd, designed to deceive readers and advertisers about Fairfax’s controlling sensationalist, money-losing, newspapers competing with its own. One of the most competitive newspaper markets in the world would become a fake. That this might lead to market or political embarrassment was self-evident. In fact, it led to an opening for 29-year-old Rupert Murdoch, who was looking for Sydney newspaper opportunities and in 1960 made a bid for Mirror Newspapers Ltd. The country’s most successful post-war newspaper, the Australian Financial Review, launched as a weekly on 16 August 1951, went bi-weekly in 1961 and daily in 1963. In 1961, John Fairfax & Sons acquired 45 per cent (later 100 per cent) of Newcastle Newspapers Pty Ltd, publishers of the Newcastle Herald and Newcastle Sun. In 1964, John Fairfax & Sons acquired Federal Capital Press of Australia Pty Ltd, publisher of the Canberra Times and part-owner of Canberra’s CTC7, and in 1969 the South Coast Times Pty Ltd, publisher of the Illawarra Mercury. John Fairfax & Sons bought the Australian assets of the British broadcasting group Associated Television Corporation in 1964, in another move to contain Sir Frank Packer. This led to a restructuring and John Fairfax & Sons’ floating of Macquarie Broadcasting Holdings Ltd, whose six radio stations included Sydney’s 2GB; by 1978, Macquarie was a wholly owned Fairfax subsidiary. Under David Syme’s will of 1908, the Melbourne Age was controlled by a trust during the lifetime of his five sons, after which it went to the grandchildren, of whom there were 18 in 1965, when Oswald Syme, the one surviving son, was 87. There was no prospect of the grandchildren perpetuating a Fairfax-style dynasty, and when Oswald died that would open the door to takeover. The opposition Herald and Weekly Times had bought almost 10 per cent of the David Syme & Co. Ltd shares by 1965. Confidential talks yielded an agreement announced by Sir Warwick Fairfax and Ranald Macdonald, the Syme managing director and Oswald Syme’s grandson, on 13

December 1966 of a shareholding partnership. In 1972, Syme became a Fairfax subsidiary. John Fairfax & Sons acquired an interest in the rural weekly the Land in 1970 and started the weekly National Times in 1971 on the inspiration of Vic Carroll, the managing editor of the Australian Financial Review. After a series of talented editors, writers and investigative journalists whose disclosures were not reflected in sales or revenue, the paper, then named the Times on Sunday, closed in March 1987, along with the afternoon Sun. Sir Warwick died on 14 January 1987. Young Warwick’s takeover ‘succeeded’ but the company collapsed with debts of $1.7 billion. On 10 December 1990, a receiver was appointed. Conrad Black, a Toronto tycoon who at his peak owned the Chicago Sun-Times, Jerusalem Post, London Daily Telegraph and Toronto’s National Post, made a successful bid for what was now known as John Fairfax Holdings Ltd. Black later served 71 months in prison in Chicago after defrauding his US companies of $285,000. After acquiring New Zealand’s Independent Newspapers Ltd in 2003 and the RSVP dating site in 2005, Fairfax created the Brisbane Times website on 7 March 2007, acquired Southern Cross Broadcasting and announced staff cuts of 550 in a ‘business improvement’ program, followed in June 2012 by the experiment of paywalls on the online Sydney Morning Herald and Age, which switched to tabloid size in March 2013 and closed printing plants as advertising shrinkage forced another 1900 staff losses. In December 2011, Fairfax Media included 430 newspapers and magazines in cities, towns and agricultural markets, newspapers and websites from Goondiwindi to Singapore, papers for dairy farmers, computer geeks, grape-growers, lot-feeders and ageing travellers, 15  radio stations and 13 narrowcast licences. It claimed ‘the largest news talk network in the country’ and more than ‘200,000 news tablet applications downloaded’. The newspapers’ print prospects, like all other prospects, remained unknowable in the first generation of the digital revolution transforming the world. REFs: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981) and Heralds and Angels (1990). ROBERT PULLAN

FASH IO N M AG AZIN ES Fashion magazines are an essential part of the fashion industry worldwide, and the medium by which fashion information is conveyed from source to consumer. The Australian market consumes more magazines per capita than any other OECD country. European settlement of Australia coincided with late 18th-century development of fashion journalism in lifestyle magazines, accompanied by fashion plates depicting new styles. Imported

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fashion magazines fashion periodicals, such as R. Ackermann’s The Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions &c (1809–28), were available from Australian booksellers and in some colonial households. Detailed fashion information was printed in local and imported papers, as well as illustrated newspapers and magazines like the Australian Town and Country Journal (1870–1919), which included a fashion column and plate in each issue. Women’s magazines proliferated after the Australian gold rushes. Many colonial periodicals carried fashion notes, but no local magazine was dedicated to the reporting of fashion until the advent of Weigel’s Journal of Fashions (1880–1947). The first fashion magazine designed, published and printed in Australia, it offered illustrated fashion articles, housekeeping hints and serialised fiction alongside a mail-order service for printed dress-making patterns. The emergence of fashion photography is directly linked to the rapid expansion of mass print media following the invention of the photomechanical half-tone process in 1881. This led to the publication of society wedding and engagement pictures in weekly and monthly illustrated papers and magazines. Captions describing the fabric, cut and colour of clothing soon became as much about fashion and style as about society news and gossip. As photographs provided models of aspirational dress for consumers, international society magazines like Vogue (1909– ) shifted their focus to showcasing elite clothing. Through magazines, fashion photographs started to displace hand-drawn illustrations in the business of promoting and selling clothes. Worth’s Australian Fashion Journal (1898–1901), a modest Sydney publication trading on the name of Charles Worth (1825–95), the father of haute couture, favoured illustration over photography. Australian women had an international reputation for fashion consciousness, and the strong local market for imported fashion magazines, illustrations and photographs ensured Australian manufacturers were well informed and capable of producing the latest styles on demand. Advertorials in the daily press for Everylady’s Journal (1911–38) confirmed Australasian women still looked to foreign magazines for fashion information, but suggested that this ‘splendid Australian woman’s magazine’ rendered this unnecessary. The beginnings of Australian fashion advertising photography appear just before World War I, commissioned by Australian retailers for dedicated sections in local newspapers and monthly cultural magazines. Sydney department store Anthony Hordern & Sons’ six-page colour advertorial for spring millinery, published in the 2 September 1907 issue of J.F. Archibald’s Lone Hand (1907–21), is an early example. But it was not until the 1920s that advertisers, publishers

and photographers responded to public demand for more information about the clothes of influential women by offering details about where these garments or replicas could be obtained. Only two Australian publications resembled dedicated fashion magazines in the 1920s: the Home (1920–42) and Fashion and Society (1929–49). The Home was established by publisher Sydney Ure Smith in 1920. Fashion editress Julia G. Lister and ‘specialist photographer’ Harold Cazneaux promoted ‘the latest and best achievements in dress … that commerce has been able to make available for Australian wardrobes’. The Home’s first photographic cover (February/March 1931) predated Vogue by more than a year. Realising the influence of Hollywood fashions on readers, magazine editors included regular features illustrated with studio publicity stills. Priced at sixpence, Fashion and Society’s eye-catching colour covers belied its rather pedestrian editorial content. The magazine was packed with imported movie star fashions, bolstered by advertisements for local retailers and fashion designers; staff photographer Rob Hillier snapped society comings and goings. During the war, Hillier’s largely advertorial, black and white photographs were also used on the cover. Between 1930 and 1950, Sydney became the centre of fashion magazine publishing in Australia. While up-market magazines offered more elegant fashion drawings and photographs, cheaper magazines like New Idea (1902– ), Woman’s Budget (1906–34) and the Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ) promoted down-toearth images of young working girls and married women. All published similar content and, from the war years on, their covers present a pictorial parade of Australian women’s popular culture preoccupations with royal pageantry, Hollywood lifestyles and celebrity, romance, beauty and high fashion. The end of World War II saw a resurgence of local interest in high fashion ignited by the annual parades (1946–49) sponsored by the Women’s Weekly and local department stores. (Sir) Frank Packer’s sister-in-law, Mary Hordern, was recruited to organise these glamorous showcases of French haute couture paraded by international models, simultaneously kick-starting the Australian fashion manufacturing and image-making industries and boosting the Women’s Weekly’s circulation to over 750,000. By the 1950s, fashion advertising, editorial and illustration work had become a major specialist industry for photographers and their growing band of collaborators. Despite the addition to local magazine racks of Glamor: The Magazine for Young Women (1947–50, then absorbed into Woman) and Distinction (1947–71), there were still only two exclusive fashion magazines produced in Australia during the 1950s and 1960s: Vogue Australia (1959– ) and Flair (1956–73), both based in Sydney.

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Prior to launching a full edition of Vogue Australia in 1959, British Vogue (1919– ) produced the Vogue Supplement for Australia from its Autumn/Winter 1956 issue. Rosemary Cooper, Vogue Australia’s inaugural editor, saw potential for a stand-alone edition during her first visit to Australia in 1952, and set about convincing her Condé Nast colleagues that an Australian supplement was a ‘must’. Vogue’s genteel, mature tone was in direct contrast to the bright and breezy style of Flair, its only serious local competitor. Edited by Dorothy Dale Ryman, Flair offered a more inclusive blend of overseas fashions and Australian-made garments, styling and career advice aimed at 16to 25-year-olds, filling the youth gap until the advent of POL (1968–86) and Dolly (1970– ). From the 1960s, colour photography played a key part in fashion reporting. The 1970s and the 1980s saw the launch of Rag Times (1977–81), published in a newspaper format, Mode (1977–97), later absorbed into Harper’s Bazaar & Mode (1998– ), Follow Me (1982–91) and Follow Me Gentlemen (1984– 91). An innovative mix of art, music and fashion, Follow Me pre-figured the avalanche of highly individualised, locally produced independent magazines hitting Australian news-stands in the ensuing decades. New titles since the 1990s have included Black & White (1993–2007), Oyster (1995– ), Yen (2002– ), Frankie (2004– ) and Russh (2004–). Australian editions of prominent international magazines continue to be released into the local market with mixed success; recent additions include Grazia (2008–13) and the September 2013 relaunch of Elle. The independently published bi-annual fashion/art/music magazine doingbird (2001– ) is a product of the creative partnership between Australian fashion photographer Max Doyle and editor Malcolm Watt. Available internationally online and in hard copy, doingbird sits at the crucible of art fashion photography and alternative publishing today. REFs: M. Maynard, Out of Line (2000); D. Palmer and K. Rhodes, ‘Envisioning Independence: Fashion Photography in Australia’, in B. English and L. Pomazan (eds), Australian Fashion Unstitched (2010). MARGOT RILEY

FAT C AT AND FRI E NDS Designed for pre-school children, Fat Cat and Friends was broadcast on weekday mornings on Network Ten between 1977 and 1987, and then on the Seven Network until 1992. It featured Fat Cat (Francis Aloysius Tom Cat), an orange cat with a green hat and red braces, played variously by Ralph Hadzic, Reg Whiteman and Melanie George. Other performers included John Oster and Jane Reilly, and musician Patsy Biscoe. The program was written, directed and produced by Murray George in the studios of SAS10 in Adelaide.

In 1979, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) introduced pre-school and children’s Program Standards that required commercial broadcasters to broadcast minimum amounts of pre-school and children’s programs at specified times of the day. Children’s programs were to be approved by the tribunal before being broadcast, under the guidance of a Children’s Program Committee, made up of experts in production and child development. In 1991, the committee reviewed Fat Cat and made extensive recommendations for changes to Fat Cat and Friends to make it more educational; there was also some concern about the ambiguity of Fat Cat’s gender. The Seven Network decided to cancel the program and begin again with a new pre-school program. This generated a media storm, first on talkback radio, then in the tabloid press and finally on the Nine Network’s A Current Affair. The issue moved beyond Fat Cat to a media trial of the standards themselves. The ABT reacted by abolishing the committee and putting the classification process under its direct management. Fat Cat still appears as the mascot on TVW7’s highly successful telethon in Perth. NICK HERD

FEATU R E W R ITIN G The development of feature writing in Australia is bound up with two historical strands: the development of the form of newspapers and the development of literary styles. As Kevin Barnhurst and John Nerone demonstrate in The Form of News (2001), the layout, design and sectional organisation of newspapers is integral to how their content is experienced by readers; these elements have also changed dramatically over time. In the second half of the 19th century, nothing interrupted the long columns of type, classified advertisements ran on the front page and news was found in the middle pages of Sydney newspapers at this time. Illustrations, then photographs, gradually enlivened the grey pages, followed by specifically designed sections for sport, business and ‘women’s interests’. In the first half of the 20th century, (Sir) Keith Murdoch at the Herald and Weekly Times played a key role in shaping tabloid newspapers with a more lively design, aimed not simply at conveying news but dramatising it. The sectionalising of newspapers continued apace throughout the 20th century, with these sections housing much of the feature material published in newspapers. The English newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe once said: ‘It is hard news that catches readers. Features hold them.’ In the 19th century, it was common for newspapers to present news in a chronological or narrative form. In the hands of a talented writer, such reports could be vivid, as is shown in George Howe’s 1803 account in the Sydney

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feature writing Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser of ‘The Man They Couldn’t Hang’, and William Jevons’ sociological investigation of The Rocks (and other places) for the Sydney Morning Herald in 1858. However, the literary style of news writing was formal and prolix. The rise of the inverted pyramid approach to writing hard news articles in the second half of the 19th century altered this, with information arranged in descending order of importance. The inverted pyramid has proved remarkably durable for disseminating information quickly and concisely; even the most recent communication form—the 140 character long Tweet—has been used by journalists since around 2010 to report news as it happens. So ubiquitous has the inverted pyramid become as an approach to writing news that its shortcomings are often overlooked. Hard news focuses on the concrete rather than the abstract, and on action rather than reflection. For journalists with any literary ambition, hard news is a constricting form. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several notable journalists both reported well and wrote well, such as George ‘Chinese’ Morrison, the author of An Australian in China (1895); A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, best known for his verse but also a distinguished war correspondent; Henry Boote, editor of the Australian Worker between 1914 and 1943; Dame Mary Gilmore, who wrote about the collapse of William Lane’s ‘New Australia’ dream in Paraguay as well as compiling a women’s page for the Worker for many years; and C.E.W. Bean, who wrote On the Wool Track (1910) before becoming Australia’s official war correspondent during World War I. From the late 19th century, publications such as the Bulletin became a home for writers, whether of journalism, poetry or short stories, while Smith’s Weekly (1919–50) combined peppery exposés with larrikin humour. The generation of journalists who covered World War II found the nature of news reporting restricting for the enormity of what they witnessed, and so channelled their experiences and insights into books that became Australian classics, including: Alan Moorehead’s African Trilogy (1944), Rohan Rivett’s Behind Bamboo (1946) and Osmar White’s Conquerors’ Road (delayed until 1996). The gradual compartmentalising of newspapers through the 20th century, with sections created for a range of interests and entertainment from travel and food to computers and cars, created space for journalists with more interest in features than in news. Over time, at least a dozen types of feature articles have developed. Colour stories aim to provide the atmosphere or ‘feel’ of an event. They are limited to giving the reader a sense of what it was like to be at the scene. Human-interest stories are primarily about emotion rather than information; where a

colour piece describes a scene, a human-interest article tells a story about something—usually dramatic—that has happened to a person and how they have dealt with it. News features are probably the most common feature in newspapers. They begin with the news of the day and develop it, either by explaining the meaning of the news or by examining its implications. Backgrounders are a variation of the news feature: they recognise that some news events and issues need to be explained to readers, either because they are inherently complicated, because their significance is tied to previous events or because before the news broke no one had heard of a particular person or event. Where news features revolve around conflict—or at least contention—lifestyle features offer entertaining information about life and how to live it more comfortably. A variation of the lifestyle feature is the travel story, which is usually contained in a travel section. If the commercial impetus for these sections is the advertising revenue they attract, the editorial aim is to provide information for readers planning their next holiday or simply indulging in armchair travel. There are also general features that are neither tied to the daily news agenda nor to an advertising-driven section. The absence of a news hook means the general feature earns a place in the newspaper through the intrinsic interest of its subject-matter. Interview pieces are confined to the reporting of an interview, often one with a celebrity. Question and answer is the simplest format, but some interview pieces are written in the style of a standard feature article—even if all they do is write up the interview. A profile article, by comparison, is a mini-biography. It goes beyond the subject’s own words to present information and perspectives from other sources. A hostile profile is written without the subject’s consent. Investigative features, like other investigative journalism, contain revelations, but they are presented as a feature and aim to set the revelation in its context. Columns have become a highly popular form of feature. Rare in the mid-20th century, columnists had become commonplace in newspapers by the mid-1990s. There are five main varieties of column: service (or advice) columns; gossip columns; pundits who opine on any and every issue; experts with specialist knowledge; and personal columnists who ransack their lives for the reader’s enjoyment. Finally, there are reviews—whether of books, films, theatre, restaurants or video games—where someone critically appraises new art and entertainment. The longer the feature, the more practitioners need to think about narrative structure and whether they will remain a neutral presence in the background or will foreground their subjectivity. These issues were central in the 1960s and

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federal parliamentary press gallery 1970s to what American journalist and social critic Tom Wolfe called the New Journalism. In Australia, practitioners such as Adele Horin, Craig McGregor and Evan Whitton experimented with this style. In 1967, Whitton spent two weeks living rough in an inner-city dosshouse to give readers of the Melbourne Truth an idea of what it was like to live on the pension. A decade later, McGregor adopted Gay Talese’s method of hanging around with his profile subjects for extended periods when he profiled then ACTU leader Bob Hawke for the National Times. In 1981, Horin took a more sociological approach in amassing a four-part series, again for the National Times, on the sexual revolution and how it affected society. For their pioneering efforts, all three won Walkley Awards. The wildly idiosyncratic writing styles of Wolfe and Thompson inspired Australian practitioners such as John Birmingham and Paul Toohey, but perhaps more commonly, novelists have turned to feature writing and narrative non-fiction to great—if sometimes controversial—effect. For example, Helen Garner was awarded a Walkley for her poignant Time Australia feature about child abuse, and then won an army of both admirers and detractors for her account of a sexual harassment case, The First Stone (1995), while Chloe Hooper won widespread praise for her re-investigation of an Indigenous man’s death, first for the Monthly, then published a book on the same subject (The Tall Man, 2008). Online news websites tied to metropolitan daily newspapers and magazines run fewer feature articles than are found in their offline counterparts, perhaps because the experience of reading on a screen is not conducive to enjoying longer articles, though the emergence of tablets may be changing this. The online media offer great scope for multimedia features but this potential has yet to be fully realised, partly because the rise of the 24/7 news cycle has squeezed the time practitioners have to research and write feature articles, and newspapers’ crumbling business model has led to large-scale redundancies in newsrooms. If newspapers appeared to run shorter, less ambitious feature articles in the first decades of the 21st century, this development has, paradoxically, opened up space for a range of niche publications that specialise in longer features, whether in print through the Monthly, Quarterly Essay or the Griffith Review, or online through international sites such as www.longform.org. The 25,000 word Quarterly Essay, in particular, has significantly expanded journalists’ scope to shape public debate, as exemplified in David Marr’s Power Trip about Kevin Rudd, published just weeks before the prime minister was ousted by his own party in 2010; less dramatic but equally effective was Annabel Crabb’s portrait of Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull in Stop at Nothing (2009).

There is recognition, through a new Walkley Award set up in 2005, for journalism written at book length—a prominent example of which is Chris Masters’ Jonestown (2006). REFs: A. Curthoys and J. Schultz, Journalism (1999); M. Ricketson, Writing Feature Stories (2004). MATTHEW RICKETSON

FED ER AL P AR LIAM EN TARY P R ESS G ALLERY The Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery (FPPG) was formed shortly after Federation in 1901. Newspapers selected journalists from the ranks of state press galleries to report proceedings, and to gather and present political news from the newly constituted federal parliament. However, the vexed question of a site for Australia’s national capital was unresolved and the first federal parliament convened in Melbourne in Victoria’s Parliament House. This makeshift arrangement remained in place until 1927, and marked the first phase of the FPPG’s evolution. During this time, government–media relations reflected existing Westminster conventions. The parliament’s presiding officers (the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the Senate) issued media passes to journalists recommended by a committee of the Press Gallery. The passes permitted the fourth estate to enter the parliament, report from dedicated benches (galleries) overlooking both chambers and use a shared ‘writing up’ room inside the building. At that time, the Gallery consisted of stenographer-journalists, skilled in Pittman shorthand and able to reproduce verbatim accounts of parliamentary proceedings. They were complemented by a smaller, separate press corps of newspaper ‘roundsmen’, who covered the executive (the prime minister and Cabinet), attending briefings at ministers’ offices outside Parliament House. When the parliament moved to Canberra in 1927, there was a significant shift in these arrangements. The new capital was a work in progress, and there were few services and virtually no social venues. As a result, the transplanted urban political elite clustered together in and around Parliament House, steering federal government–media relations into new territory. Ministers and their staff occupied one wing of the parliamentary building, while the parliament allowed competing commercial media companies to divide the common ‘writing up’ area into separate FPPG bureaux. The executive and the media’s unprecedented co-location inside Parliament House was originally regarded as a temporary matter of convenience, largely because a permanent Parliament House on Capital Hill was scheduled to supersede the first building. However, this set a new precedent for the Westminster model. But by the time such a building eventuated in 1988, the Canberra model saw the executive and the

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federal publishing company FPPG deeply embedded inside the ‘sovereign’ space of the new Parliament House. The terms of engagement for executive– FPPG relations are ill-defined, characterised by the arbitrary use of executive power to punish journalists for breaches of privilege. In 1931, the Scullin Labor government removed a media pass from Melbourne Herald reporter J.A. Alexander for five months for writing a story based on leaked cables between Scullin and members of the Labor Party, while in 1942, the Curtin Labor government banned Press Gallery journalist Richard Hughes from his workplace for an article headlined ‘Those meddlesome old men of the Senate’, and also removed media passes from all of Hughes’ colleagues in the Sunday and Daily Telegraph bureaux. In 1955, Frank Browne and Brian Fitzpatrick from the suburban newspaper the Bankstown Observer and the Things I Hear newsletter were brought before the bar of the House of Representatives and imprisoned for writing a scathing criticism of a government backbencher. The divisive effects of the executive’s arbitrary exercise of ‘fear and favour’ explains the Press Gallery’s history of avoiding action or complaint when major injustices were meted out to their colleagues. These incidents can be seen as definitive examples of the way ad hoc arrangements primarily work in favour of the executive’s media management. They demonstrate that the executive has the capacity to keep political journalists on unpredictable ground and make their rights of access to political information subject to political whim. This also helps explain the executive and parliament’s long-standing resistance to any form of institutional recognition of the Canberra fourth estate. Constitutional scholar Geoffrey Sawer described the arrangements under which the Australian media has access to the parliament as ‘wholly contingent and discretionary’. In the late 1960s, after the FPPG had grown larger, more diverse and unwieldy, the parliament produced a set of guidelines. They were not a step towards institutional recognition, but rather a guide to the ‘rules of engagement’—a product of a reactive process overseen by the parliament’s Standing Committee on Procedure. Since the 1970s, new rulings have been made in response to developments in media technology. The end result is a large number of defensively detailed guidelines to control journalists’ audio, photographic and television coverage of parliamentary proceedings. The advent of radio, television and electronic wire services significantly changed the FPPG’s size and configuration. Between the 1950s and 1980s, the Press Gallery grew exponentially from around 20 permanent members to 180. In the 1960s and 1970s, new icons of the press gallery—following Joe Alexander and Alan Reid—began to emerge, including Alan Ramsey, Laurie Oakes, Michelle Grattan and Paul Kelly.

The new parliament building now accommodates 300 journalists, as well as support staff such as photographers and camera crews. Fifty FPPG media bureaux occupy 3000 square metres of the building, and are charged a ‘licence fee’ based on market rental rates. The FPPG and parliamentary officials have been notoriously slow to respond to the advent of online and digital platforms. In the early 2000s for instance, Crikey had to fight for recognition, a media pass and space in the Press Gallery wing. Even the FPPG Committee fought against the notion of a Gallery website until June 2013, when its hand was largely forced by a Freedom of Information request from Margo Kingston—a former Gallery journalist and editor of the Sydney-based online No Fibs newsletter. The website visual tour of the FPPG wing inside Parliament House (http://pressgallery.net. au) shows the physical organisation of the FPPG reflects the dominance of traditional media. This mind-set continues to create tensions over office and studio space. New media start-ups and smaller online political journalists are granted media passes but often have to work from the parliament’s café, whilst there are empty desks in the big Fairfax Media and News Limited offices. The dilemma was epitomised in early 2013 when Michelle Grattan left the Age newspaper to work on start-up website The Conversation, and her only option was to join an already over-crowded one room office rented by the specialist online newsletter Inside Canberra. The ABC (Radio and Television) and Sky News Australia are responsible for selected parliamentary broadcasting of proceedings. Television footage is taken from fixed cameras set up by the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS). The DPS, administered by the Speaker of the House and President of the Senate, both appointed by the executive, exercises proscribed editorial controls over the work of political journalists through a set of Media Rules (the most recent were issued in 2013 are available at www.pressgallery.net.au). Still photographers must also follow strict guidelines and when journalists cover proceedings in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, there is a blanket ban on tape recording, mobile telephone recording and photographing. REFs: H. Ester, ‘Fault Lines in the Federal Fourth Estate’, Australian Parliamentary Review, 26(1) (2011); C.J. Lloyd, Parliament and the Press (1988); G. Sawer, ‘The Media in Parliament: Background Paper’, in Proceedings for 4th Workshop of the Australian Study of Parliament Group (1983). HELEN ESTER

FED ER AL P U B LISH IN G C O M P AN Y The Federal Publishing Company Pty Ltd (FPC) began in 1934 with the launch of the Randwick District News by Norman Hannan (1895–1973).

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feminist media The Hannan family amassed their fortune after the arrival of Francis Hannan (1854–1907) from Ireland (via New Zealand) through butcheries and Sydney real estate. In 1958, the company acquired the Double Bay Courier in partnership with Ezra Norton. In the early 1960s, the Hannan family became embroiled in aggressive suburban power-plays involving the Murdoch, Packer and Fairfax groups, resulting in Eastern Suburbs Newspapers, half-owned by the Hannans and half by Suburban Publications Pty Ltd (a Fairfax and Packer joint venture), with five newspapers turned into three: the Wentworth Courier, the Weekly Courier and the Southern News. FPC began to develop its printing empire in 1968 with the acquisition of its first web-offset press and the establishment of Hannanprint in Sydney, by Michael Hannan. By the early 1980s, the company was at the forefront of changing print technology, printing colour on gloss for its Courier newspapers in 1985. By 1986, it had the largest printing facility in the southern hemisphere. In 1995, the company acquired full ownership of two large printing companies—Inprint Ltd and Offset Alpine Printing. The company expanded into distribution with Newsagents Direct Distribution in 1987. In the 1980s and 1990s, FPC developed a magazine publishing sector with leisure and special-interest magazines such as Two Wheels and Modern Boating. In 1998, the various arms of FPC merged under a new company banner, IPMG (Independent Print Media Group), half owned by the Hannan family and half by Marinya Media. It bought the Sydney Weekly (a local newspaper covering Sydney’s north shore) and City Weekly (a CBD commuter publication) from Text Media, and launched Super Food Ideas. IPMG diversified into custom publishing with the establishment of Brandmedia in 1999. The following year, FPC Magazines reorganised its magazine stable into FPC Living (lifestyle, homemaker) and FPC Power (men’s special interest, websites), and acquired another Sydney commuter magazine, Nine to Five. The acquisition of Australian Good Taste in 2002 saw FPC become the leading publisher of food magazines in Australia. The magazine side of the company expanded further through a licensing deal with Condé Nast to publish a range of Vogue titles. In 2003, IPMG became 100 per cent owned by the Hannan family. FPC Courier, the company’s stable of suburban newspapers, acquired new titles on the Sunshine Coast and the Kiama Independent, Lake Times and Northern Leader from the Weston family in 2005. This arm of the FPC company was rebranded as Southern Independent Publishers. In 2007, IPMG sold Southern Independent Publishing (including FPC Magazines and FPC Courier) to News Limited, a total of 46 newspapers, magazines and online titles. The online arm

of the business was re-branded as Independent Digital Media (IDM). REFs: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981); http:// www.hannanprint.com.au/our-company/history. MEGAN LE MASURIER

F E DE RAT ION OF A US T RA L IA N COMME RCIA L T E L E V IS ION S TAT IONS see Free TV Australia F E DE RAT ION OF A US T RA L IA N RA DIO BROA DCA S T E RS see Commercial Radio Australia

FEM IN IST M ED IA Australian feminist media production began with a radical 19th-century feminist journal, the Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women (1888–1905) and its publisher, Louisa Lawson. Her didactic feminist editorials sought to revolutionise women’s lives, and she controlled the entire publishing process from writing and editing through to printing, subscriptions and distribution. One of the longest-running journals of its era, Dawn far exceeded the lifespan of other early feminist periodicals, including Maybanke Wolstenholme’s Woman’s Voice (1894–95) and Vida Goldstein’s Woman’s Sphere (1900–05). While Australia’s first-wave feminists sought the vote and better social conditions for women, the Australian women’s liberation movement, which began in the late 1960s and reached its peak in the 1970s, used various media to focus on issues such as family planning, abortion, childcare, domestic violence, rape and child sexual assault. The Women’s Electoral Lobby, with its focus on political engagement and reforming electoral processes, was established in 1972, alongside women’s liberation groups in most Australian capital cities. Women’s liberation focussed on revolution, not reform, and sought to overthrow the patriarchy, not join it. The activism, energy and excitement of the women’s liberation movement (WLM) generated a plethora of feminist journals and book publishing ventures. The first feminist periodicals, Shrew and Hetaera, appeared in Brisbane in 1970. In Sydney, the first issue of women’s liberation newspaper Mejane (1971–74) featured articles on 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the history of women’s liberation. Other newsletters in 1971 included Liberation (Adelaide) and Sisterhood (University of Adelaide). The long-lived Refractory Girl (1972–99) grew out of the conflict between a growing feminist consciousness and academic traditions. Other feminist periodicals in the early 1970s included Hobart’s Liberaction (1972–75), Melbourne’s Vashti (1973–81), Darwin’s Apron Strings (1974), Perth’s Sybil (1974–83) and Sydney’s Womanspeak (1974–94). The year 1975 was declared International Women’s Year in recognition of sexism as the source of women’s oppression. The second equal

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feminist media pay case (1972), the supporting mother’s benefit (1973), and ‘no-fault divorce’ under the Family Law Act 1975 had paved the way for women to enter the public sphere. In 1975, too, Joyce Stevens wrote her inspiring account of the reasons for joining the WLM. First published as an International Women’s Day broadsheet, this has been reprinted hundreds of times since. International Women’s Year inspired more feminist periodicals and journals: Cauldron (1975–77), Mabel: Australian Feminist Newspaper (1975– 77), Scarlet Women (1975–92), Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women’s Liberation (1975– ) and Lip (1976–83). The Black Women’s Action Committee in Sydney produced the first Indigenous feminist journal, Koori Bina (1976–79), while Girls Own (1981–85) devoted two special issues to the concerns of black and immigrant women and women from developing countries (number 10) and Aboriginal women (number 12). Hecate, which set out to ‘employ a feminist, Marxist or other radical methodology’, is today Australia’s longest surviving feminist journal. Other academic journals include Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (1984– ), Australian Feminist Studies (1986– ), Australian Women’s Book Review (1989– ), the Australian Feminist Law Journal (1993– ) and Outskirts (1996– ). Feminist journals were precursors to the feminist presses founded in the mid-1970s, which then printed these same feminist journals. Some feminist presses provided much needed printing services unmediated by the male-dominated print industry. In order to run their presses and publish books and journals, those women who possessed editing, design, layout, typesetting and production skills shared their expertise with others. Some also bought printing presses and taught themselves and others how to use them. Feminism ranges politically from conservative to radical, and so does feminist media. In 1974, in response to concerns about sexism in children’s literature, the Women’s Movement Children’s Literature Co-operative (later Sugar and Snails Press) was established in Melbourne, producing the first non-sexist children’s books published in Australia. In 1976, two collectives—Everywoman Press in Sydney and Sybylla Co-operative Press in Melbourne—established feminist printeries. Sybylla Press became the longest surviving feminist press in Australia. Sisters Publishing (1978–85) pursued a feminist vision of publishing women’s poetry and fiction in Melbourne, simultaneously establishing Australia’s first feminist mail-order book business, Sisters Book Club. Feminist co-operative, Women’s Redress Press in Sydney (1983–96), acquired a membership of almost 300 women and published a diverse feminist list, including anthologies that gave voice to migrant women and their daughters, while Tantrum Press (1987–94) in Adelaide featured reading performances as well as anthologies of locally produced women’s plays. Australia’s most visi-

ble and productive feminist publisher, Spinifex Press (1991– ), has produced a diverse list of 250 titles across a range of genres, selling international and translation rights, and reaching a large feminist readership in the United States. On radio, The Coming Out Show was produced weekly by the Australian Women’s Broadcasting Co-operative at the ABC to commemorate International Women’s Year in 1975 and continued for 20 years. The Co-operative, which was open to women at the ABC who wanted to learn radio skills, launched the careers of broadcasters Liz Jackson, Penny Lomax, Julie Rigg, Julie McCrossin and Jo Upham. The legacy of The Coming Out Show reappeared in 2013–14 in the Coming Out, Again program produced for International Women’s Day. Since the 1980s, women have also leveraged the power of community radio to produce and present feminist shows such as Women on the Line (3CR), Burning Down the House (6RTR FM) and Options for Women (City Park Radio, Launceston). Women on the Line, a national women’s community radio program founded to amplify women’s voices and provide a feminist and gender analysis of contemporary issues, celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006 with an eight-part radio series, On The Record: 20 Years of Women’s Radio. Access to community radio stations also resulted in increased diversity in Australian music content and provided airplay for feminist musicians. Feminist filmmaking, often supported by the Women’s Film Fund (1976–89), was yet another significant area of feminist cultural production to emerge from the fervor of the WLM. In 1979, Gillian Armstrong directed the Australian feature film My Brilliant Career, after which Australia gained a reputation for providing opportunities for women filmmakers. Filmmaking has diversified since the 1990s with women making arthouse films, short films and documentaries as well as mainstream cinema and television drama. Women’s liberation in combination with the 1960s sexual revolution also led to the creation of popular magazines Cleo, Cosmopolitan and POL. In 1965, America’s Cosmopolitan (or Cosmo) was transformed into a bestselling magazine for single women when Helen Gurley Brown was appointed editor-in-chief. Cosmopolitan’s rapid commercial success can be directly linked to the emergence of single employed women as a consumer market. POL was founded in 1968 by Gareth Powell Publications, with Richard Walsh as inaugural editor. Germaine Greer appeared as guest editor in 1972. Conceived as a women’s magazine, POL soon targeted everyone interested in Australian culture and was Australia’s best-designed lifestyle magazine in its time. In late 1972, after Australian Consolidated Press lost Australian rights to the revamped Cosmo to rival company John Fairfax & Sons, the Australian women’s magazine Cleo emerged, under

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film reviewing founding editor Ita Buttrose, to compete with Cosmo. Cleo successfully packaged women’s liberation together with sexual liberation, and the first issue—with a print run of 105,000— sold out within 48 hours in 1972. In keeping with Aretha Franklin’s 1985 assertion that ‘sisters are doing it for themselves’, feminist blogs, websites and social media now represent one of the greatest democratic advances in feminist media. Created by individual women and groups seeking to educate, entertain or empower other women, these feminist digital blogs, magazines and websites include Collective Shout, The Dawn Chorus, Discordia, Destroy the Joint, Feminaust, The Fury, Fcollective, Sheilas, the musing tiger, No Place for Sheep, Women’s Agenda and Young Vagabond. Easily accessible social media tools—including text messaging, email, photo and video sharing, and social networking—can now reach receptive audiences with instant precision. In October 2012, the famous ‘misogyny speech’ by Australia’s first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard—overlooked initially by mainstream media—went viral worldwide via social media. Operating in this way outside mainstream networks offers women a powerful way to converse about feminist issues and coordinate collective action. REFs: L. Poland, ‘Setting the Agenda: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics in Australia, 1974–2003’ (PhD thesis, 2007); Refractory Girl (eds), Refracting Voices (1993); S. Sheridan, ‘Louisa Lawson, Miles Franklin and Feminist Writing, 1888–1901’, Australian Feminist Studies, 7–8 (1988); Z. Simic, ‘Ita, Kerry and Cleo’, History Australia, 8(2) (2011); M. Spongberg, ‘Australian Women’s History in Australian Feminist Periodicals, 1971–88’, History Australia, 5(3) (2008). LOUISE POLAND

F IL M RE V I EW I NG Film reviewing in Australia dates back to the first public viewings in October 1896, with reviews appearing in a number of mainstream daily newspapers. Both general and specialist media outlets reviewed films, including the Salvation Army’s the War Cry (1883– ). The Bulletin (1880–2008) was an early home of film coverage, with early reviews sometimes criticising a perceived ‘lower orders’ approach to the new medium. Many publications covered the release of the film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), often referred to as the world’s first feature. Journalist, editor and publisher Martin C. Brennan (1877–1937) made a profound contribution to Australian film reviewing through establishing and maintaining a number of important film publications that spanned most of the 20th century. Starting as a vaudeville columnist, he represented American Variety and a number of British film publications in Australia. He founded Australian Variety (1913–20), which merged with the generalist weekly Everyone’s

(1920–37). He then founded the long-running Film Weekly (1926–73). By the 1920s, a large number of film journals, magazines, fan newsletters and trade papers published film reviews. At Smith’s Weekly between 1927 and 1940, Kenneth Slessor’s reviews and essays on film culture and production often occupied two pages under the heading ‘Through Smith’s Private Projector’; reviews by the poet and editor of the paper (1935–40) were promoted as ‘The Most Reliable in Australia’. From its first issues, the Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ) actively reviewed films; Beatrice Tildesley, secretary of the Good Film League of New South Wales, was the magazine’s first film critic. The Women’s Weekly paid particular attention to representations of women and, increasingly, to Hollywood. Distributors and exhibitors published their own periodicals, including Paramount Punch (1921–24) and Hoyts (Screen News, 1927–65). Australia also has a long history of popular movie fan magazines, such as the Picture Show (1919–23) and Movie Life (1945–60). In the inter-war years, American film interests set up clubs through Australian radio stations, including the MGM Radio Movie Club (2GB), the Fox Movietone Club (2UW) and the Fox Hoyts Radio Club (6ML). Meanwhile, organisations such as the Good Film and Radio Vigilance League of New South Wales (c. 1945–55) emerged to complain about suggestive lyrics, too much drinking and too many murders in serials. In 2011, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) estimated that there were 120 film reviewers working in Australia. However, relatively few Australian reviewers can earn enough money from film reviewing and writing to support themselves fully. The major employers of film reviewers are Fairfax Media, News Corp Australia, and ABC Radio and Television. Most other major media outlets contract with film reviewers, including SBS, most major metropolitan radio networks and Networks Seven, Nine and Ten. The coming of Nation in 1958, together with film festivals, provided an outlet and fodder for younger film critics such as Sylvia Lawson. A large number of smaller organisations and independent magazines have used professional film reviewers, including Meanjin, Overland, Quadrant and Crikey, and even religious media ranging from the Catholic Weekly to the Australian Jewish News. Media job cuts have also affected film reviewers; by 2010, many media organisations were reusing the same reviews in a number of different publications. The NFSA’s estimate of reviewers also heavily under-states the number of Australians actually writing film reviews. With the growth of online blogging, many thousands of Australians write and post reviews, mostly for no pay. Unpaid reviews also appear on community radio and

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fisk, sir ernest thomas (1886–1965) television channels. The differences between ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ reviews have blurred. A substantial number of film reviews, feature articles and other film commentary written by overseas critics and commentators regularly appear in Australian media outlets. Australia has long had a strong and active cinema culture, resulting in numerous publications and organisations devoted to film. This trend has been especially marked since the 1970s. Many film reviewers helped to champion the new and successful films by Peter Weir, Gillian Armstrong, George Miller, Bruce Beresford, Phillip Noyce and other directors. Australian film reviewers have also taken a public leadership role in opposing censorship of films. Noted film publications include Filmviews (1955–88), Movie News (1965–82), Film Index (1966–2004), Filmnews (1971–95), Cantrill’s Filmnotes (1971–2000), Cinema Papers (1974– 2001), Metro (1974– ), the Australian Journal of Screen Theory (1976–84), Continuum (1987– ), FilmInk (1997– ), Urban Cinefile (online, 1997–) and Senses of Cinema (online, 1999– ). Australia has two associations of film critics: the Sydney-based Film Critics Circle of Australia and the Melbourne-based Australian Film Critics Association, both of which run annual awards. A number of Australian film reviewers have also received significant Australian honours and awards for their work. The Order of Australia has gone to John Hinde, Bill Collins, Margaret Pomeranz and Evan Williams. Film reviewers who have won the Pascall Prize include Sandra Hall (Sydney Morning Herald and previously the Bulletin), Adrian Martin (the Age and ABC Radio National), Julie Rigg (Radio National) and Paul Byrnes (Sydney Morning Herald). David Stratton is the only film reviewer to have received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Australian Film Institute. Meaghan Morris, chief film critic for the Sydney Morning Herald (1979–81) and the Australian Financial Review (1981–85), is now a distinguished cultural studies professor. Since the late 1990s, the two most influential Australian film reviewers have been David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, hosts of The Movie Show on SBS Television (1986–2004), then At the Movies on ABC Television (2005– ). Their impact has been so substantial that economist Jordi McKenzie has identified a ‘Margaret and David effect’: positive reviews by them can add a statistically significant amount to a film’s box office takings in Australia. Stratton believes that reviewers have no effect on the performance of Hollywood blockbusters, but can make a major difference to Australian films. Australian distributors, filmmakers and reviewers all generally believe that reviews can have an impact on a film’s box office success, and research shows that to be true. Distributors occasionally refuse to allow advance screenings

of certain films so that negative reviews will not affect early box office takings. There is a widespread belief that many Australian reviewers ‘go easy’ on Australian films. Stratton readily admits that he ‘tends to embrace a film which tells an Australian story in an Australian setting with Australian accents’. Sometimes reviewers feel pressure to say positive things about Australian films. McKenzie’s research shows that Australian film reviewers tend to give Australian films significantly more positive ratings than non-Australian films. REFs: S. Hall, ‘Reviewing’, in The Oxford Companion to Australian Film (1999); N. King, C. Verevis and D. Williams, Australian Film Theory and Criticism (2013); B. Reis, Australian Film (1997). DON PERLGUT

F INA NCE RE PORT ING see business and finance

reporting

FISK, SIR ER N EST TH O M AS (1886–1965) Introducing Fisk at the University of Sydney in 1948, radio engineer Raymond Allsop said ‘the pioneering history of wireless in Australia is steeped in Sir Ernest’. From 1945–51, Fisk was managing director of Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) in London. EMI was much bigger and more global than Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA), but it was at AWA that Fisk made his reputation, as managing director from 1916 and also chairman from 1932. Fisk first visited Australia in 1910 as a ship’s wireless operator and moved to Sydney a year later as Australasian representative for Guglielmo Marconi’s London-based wireless company. When AWA was formed in 1913, he became technical and general manager and a director. He was the dominant figure at the 1923 conference held to consider the licensing of radio broadcasting services in Australia. Born in Sunbury-on-Thames, Fisk was 10 when Marconi obtained his first patent and 15 when a wireless signal crossed the Atlantic. At 20, Fisk was on Marconi’s payroll, operating wireless equipment on Cunard’s trans-Atlantic ships. His life became a series of claimed ‘firsts’ and records: the first ship to use wireless in the Arctic and one of the first on the England–Australia run; and a record ship-to-ship transmission on his way to Australia. This continued at AWA: the first official direct wireless telegraph messages and the first wireless telephone conversation between Britain and Australia; and the first Australian demonstration of what became broadcasting. His greatest achievements were the instantly successful commercial wireless telegraph services opened between Australia and the northern hemisphere in 1927–28 and AWA’s electronics manufacturing business.

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fitzgerald, thomas michael (1918–93) Fisk learned commercial aggression at Marconi’s and taught it at AWA. The transmitter site for the international wireless telegraph services was called Fiskville, while AWA’s best broadcast receivers were Fisk Radiolas and Radiolettes. He was criticised for speculating publicly that wireless could be used to communicate with the dead. His great political ally was William Hughes, who drove AWA’s plan for an international wireless service through parliament as prime minister in 1922 then joined the company’s board, remaining a director for life. Like Hughes, Fisk was an Englishman who became an Australian. At EMI, he called himself ‘an Australian living in England’ but it wasn’t enough to persuade Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies to let EMI buy the Commonwealth’s half-share in AWA. REF: J. Given, Empire State: Ernest Fisk and the World Wide Wireless, ABC Radio National Hindsight, February 2012 and June 2013. JOCK GIVEN

F IT Z GERAL D, T HOMAS M ICHAEL (1918–93) Tom Fitzgerald was one of the most influential financial journalists of his time, yet his struggle for editorial independence and non-dogmatic economic analysis often kept him apart from mainstream journalism. Fitzgerald studied economics at the University of Sydney (1936–40), where he was exposed to the new work of John Maynard Keynes, then volunteered for bomber navigation during World War II. Fitzgerald’s history of political dissent—from both sides of politics—began when he was working as a financial journalist at the conservative Bulletin. Editing its stablemate, the Wild Cat Monthly, from 1948 allowed considerable independence. When he applied for the position of financial editor at the Sydney Morning Herald in 1950, Fitzgerald was instead given the position of ‘commercial editor’. He formally took over as financial editor in 1952, and remained in the position until 1970. In 1958, he borrowed £5000 and joined George Munster to launch Nation, a fortnightly encouraging broad discussion of Australian life from new, more critical writers. Attempts by Sir Frank Packer and Rupert Murdoch, amongst others, to indirectly control the journal via financial support were resisted. Eventually, readership fell and Nation was sold to Gordon Barton and subsumed into Nation Review (1972). After a brief, unhappy period as editorial director of Murdoch’s the Australian (1970–72), Fitzgerald began working for the Senate Select Committee on Securities and Exchange. He was also a consultant to the Department of Minerals and Energy under the Whitlam Labor government, producing the highly controversial Fitzgerald Report, which identified tax breaks and

loopholes by foreign-based mining companies. In 1975 he became executive officer to H.C. Coombs’ Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration. He was economic adviser to NSW Premier Neville Wran from 1976 to 1983. Fitzgerald contributed invited articles to the Herald, Quadrant, the National Times, Australian Society, the New Internationalist, Bowyang and other publications through the 1980s, and book reviews for the Herald into the 1990s. Fitzgerald’s writing presented the evidence in a practical, non-ideological way before grappling with conceptual issues to make sense of it all. His set of six Boyer Lectures for the ABC (published as Between Life and Economics in 1990) gave an account of Australia’s economic policy journey until the 1990 recession. His project on the intellectual capital of wartime prime minister John Curtin remained uncompleted at the time of his death on 25 January 1993. REFs: T. Fitzgerald Papers (NLA); K.S. Inglis (ed.), Nation (1989). JERRY COURVISANOS

FM R AD IO FM (or Frequency Modulation) was created in the United States in the early 1930s by Edwin Armstrong. Despite initial reluctance, the popularity of the medium grew. In Australia, the VHF band is used within the range of 88–108MHz (with some narrowcast stations sitting outside this band). FM radio in Australia developed slowly. Radio technician Raymond Allsop was instrumental in its commencement, and while the concept was put on hold during World War II, it was pursued enthusiastically following the war. Yet the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) was slow to act on implementing the new technology. Experimental services were set up in 1948 as a forerunner to a full introduction of FM services. The test broadcasts were introduced into major capital cities, and were a simulcast of existing ABC services. The general public did not have access to FM receivers, so the services ran largely unnoticed for over a decade. The other major reason for the slow implementation of FM radio in Australia was the reluctance of existing AM commercial broadcasters to allow access to the FM band, largely to protect their own interests. This was supported by manufacturers, looking ahead to the advent of television in Australia in 1956. Television’s arrival and growth forced existing radio operators to adapt. Dramas and serials were on the decline, and Top 40 music formats were popular. The Federation of Commercial Radio Broadcasters expressed its opposition to the concept of FM to protect existing operators and not allowing new operators into the market.

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fm radio It was Raymond Allsop, together with a number of lobby groups, who led the push for the introduction of FM broadcasting in the late 1960s. Prominent in this push was the Fine Music Society (MBS). The reason for this was simple: classical music sounded better in stereo. The Whitlam Labor government provided the catalyst for FM radio’s introduction into Australia. The 1972 report by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board found that there was enough interest from broadcasting groups to open up the band. Once television broadcasters were moved from the FM VHF band to the UHF band, stations were ready to broadcast, and the first was 2MBS FM in late 1974, followed by 3MBS FM soon after. As well as fine music stations, there were a number of educational or ‘E’ category licences issued to stations like 4ZZZ in Brisbane (1975), 3RMT (renamed 3RRR) in Melbourne (1976) and 2SER FM in Sydney (1979). The ABC was also able to establish an FM station in 1976. This was part of an opening up of both AM and FM frequencies to increase ABC services. ABC-FM (now ABC Classic FM) broadcast classical music as well as arts programs. Initially broadcasting in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, the service is now national. In many regional areas across Australia (and also Darwin), some of the other ABC radio networks broadcast on the FM band, including youth station Triple J, which broadcasts nationally. Commercial radio gradually warmed to the idea of FM broadcasting; however, during the early to mid-1970s, the government decided to keep the FM band free of commercial interests. This decision was overturned in 1976, when the newly established Australian Broadcasting Tribunal paved the way for up to two FM licences in each of the capital cities. It would be a further four years before the first services commenced full-time broadcasting. The first commercial service to commence broadcasting was Melbourne FM Radio Pty Ltd, which operated under the call-sign EONFM (now Triple M Melbourne) from 1980. The format was almost anti-Top 40, with disc jockeys permitted to select the music during their shifts. Innovation was encouraged, with announcers given the opportunity to experiment with stereo sound. EON featured a solo female announcer in the breakfast shift and even provided the soundtrack for aerobics sessions. FOX-FM in Melbourne plus two stations in Sydney, 2Day-FM and 2MMM, followed EONFM. Perth had 96fm, Brisbane FM104 and Adelaide SA-FM. All stations took some time to pick up audience share, due to the gradual take-up of new FM receivers, but also changes (particularly in the case of Melbourne) in format to more popular styles, including Top 40 and rock formats. Throughout the 1980s, the commercial FM broadcasters continued to build in popularity

at the expense of AM music formats. Stations such as 3XY in Melbourne gradually faded from existence, and a clear delineation of bands occurred, with FM the domain of music and community radio stations, and AM used for talk stations and easy listening formats. The existing AM operators tried to compete with their new stereo counterparts in a number of different ways. AM stereo was introduced in 1985, but was unpopular with the public as it was an inferior sound compared with the crisp FM sound, and required listeners to purchase a radio equipped to receive the signal. Under the National Radio Plan, the Hawke Labor government allowed a limited number of capital city licences to be auctioned off so existing AM operators could convert their services to FM. The competition was fierce among AM commercial broadcasters, which felt that converting was the last opportunity to make their stations viable. Some paid over-inflated prices for licences and struggled financially in the years that followed. Stations that converted include 2UW (KIIS 1065 Sydney), 3DB (now Mix 101.1 Melbourne), 4BK (B105 Brisbane), 5KA (Triple M Adelaide) and 6PM (92.9 Perth). Towards the end of the 1980s, the FM band was also being opened up to a growing number of community broadcasters (including sub-metro broadcasters), as well as additional SBS language stations. By the 1990s the radio spectrum was overflowing with broadcasters of many styles and formats, with both community and commercial broadcasting growing and expanding. Regional areas were slow to receive commercial FM radio services, with Canberra gaining service in 1988, the Gold Coast and Newcastle in 1989 and the rest of the country gradually acquiring FM throughout the 1990s. These regional stations by and large are now part of big networks, with a few independent exceptions. Many FM radio stations receive networked and syndicated programming. In the late 1990s, the Australian Broadcasting Authority opened up spectrum space in the capital cities for a new commercial service. This was picked up by DMG (owned by the London Daily Mail Group) across the country for a new Nova network. In 2005, in Sydney and Melbourne, DMG purchased another licence for the Vega network (now smoothfm 95.3 in Sydney and smoothfm 91.5 in Melbourne). Spectrum space during this time was at a premium in the capital cities; however, some community radio licences were allocated in Sydney and Melbourne. With the FM spectrum in Australia now full in the capital cities, attention is on the take-up of digital radio services across the country. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); P. Marcato, ‘In Exquisite Stereo’ (BA Hons thesis, 2004). PETER MARCATO

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food journalism and reviewing F O O D J OURNAL I S M AND REVIEWING Food’s ubiquity has ensured coverage in a wide range of Australian media. This account is confined to cookery journalism and restaurant reviewing—the meeting of advertisers’ and consumers’ interests around recipes (dining in) and restaurants (dining out). The earliest newspapers carried recipes and hints; by 1875, the Queenslander headed the section that featured them ‘The Housekeeper. Recipes’. Cookery instruction was an intrinsic element of women’s magazines such as the Australian Woman’s Mirror (1924–61). The first issue of the Australian Women’s Weekly (10 June 1933) offered a £5 ‘Prize for Best Recipe’; the magazine soon established a test kitchen, and Women’s Weekly cookbooks became big business. In 1956, the Women’s Weekly sponsored a tour by American celebrity chef Dione Lucas. Sri Lankan-born Charmaine Solomon, Australia’s first major Asian food identity, was discovered by a Woman’s Day recipe competition in 1964. Dining out has also long received attention, and journalist and novelist Marcus Clarke reported in a highly entertaining way on 19th-century Melbourne’s café and restaurant life. The arrival of explicitly ‘gourmet’ or ‘epicurean’ journalism was signalled by the launch in 1966 of two long-running magazines, Australian Gourmet (later Gourmet Traveller) and the more stylish Epicurean. Graham (‘Galloping Gourmet’) Kerr began his Australian television show in 1965. The son of British hotelkeepers, he joined the New Zealand Air Force as a caterer and became an instant television hit with the Kiwis. No lightweight, Kerr introduced the recipe collection from his first Australian series with the fear that ‘our whole life is being undermined’ by the ‘mass production’ of food, and produced the nation’s first independent restaurant guidebooks, Guide to Good Eating in Sydney (1968) and Guide to Good Eating in Melbourne (1969). Another British immigrant, Len Evans, started the Wine Buyer monthly for an exclusive audience in 1968, the same year that publisher of ‘fine books with the common touch’ Paul Hamlyn brought out the mass-selling Margaret Fulton Cookbook. As cookery editor of Woman’s Day, Fulton helped to introduce food from such exotic places as Spain, Italy, China and India. Such successes paved the way for increasingly serious approaches within metropolitan newspapers. Sydney advertising man and later arts administrator Leo Schofield began two decades of weekly restaurant reviews in the Sunday Telegraph in 1971, moving to the Sydney Morning Herald. He encouraged the ‘less is more’ onset of ‘mod Oz’ cuisine. More rabble-rousing, Richard Beckett wrote as ‘Sam Orr’ in Nation Review from 1970. Beckett swung between restaurants, his larrikin gourmandism egging on the ‘Bollinger Bolsheviks’ and ‘Chardonnay socialists’ of the Whitlam era.

A new, educated generation soon looked forward to Tuesday newspaper food sections. ‘Epicure’ first appeared in the Melbourne Age as a weekly column in 1976 and a dedicated section in 1986. Associated restaurant guidebooks gained enormous sway: Claude Forell and others started the Age’s Good Food Guide in 1980; the Sydney version arrived four years later and Brisbane’s in 1986. Restaurant ‘performances’ were reviewed as seriously as novels, movies and operas. Handing out ratings and chefs’ hats, critics were respected and feared. Aimed at relatively defenceless small businesses, the ‘spectator sport’ of negative comment was held in some check by defamation laws, which caught up the likes of Leo Schofield, John Newton and Matthew Evans (all Sydney Morning Herald critics). Unlike ‘anonymous’ restaurant critics, cooks as entertainers became familiar faces across the media, both nationally and internationally. In the 1980s, French chef Paul Bocuse used television to demonstrate careful technique, whereas English gourmand Keith Floyd took cooking on location, including Floyd on Oz (1991); both chefs were seen on SBS. Peter Russell-Clarke and Ian Parmenter (both on the ABC) were leaders in long runs of short, weekly television segments. Many presenters came to be known by their first names, such as Jamie (Oliver) and Nigella (Lawson) from the United Kingdom, and Huey (Hewitson) and Bill (Granger) locally. The advice of such celebrities as Bernard King, Maggie Beer, Kylie Kwong and Curtis Stone was often enhanced by their related business interests. ‘Home cook’ and food writer Lyndey Milan, who appears on television and in print, is a director of Sydney Studio Kitchen, purpose-build to shoot culinary content for television and film. Some commercialism was blatant, as when recipes specified ingredient brands, but even respected journalists did not always reveal industry backing. To the dismay of the dairy industry, Australians took to ‘Mediterranean cuisine’ in the early 1990s, after the edible oil industry flew at least 50 Australian food writers and chefs to the United States and Mediterranean for a series of quasi-scholarly conferences. Supermarkets reported immediate runs on products embedded in such television blockbusters as MasterChef (Ten, 2009– ) and My Kitchen Rules (Seven, 2010– ), which also generated further culinary celebrities, such as Poh Ling Yeow, who was snapped up to host Poh’s Kitchen for ABC Television. SBS began publishing an annual guide to ‘ethnic eating’ in 1992. There is now a substantial food section on the SBS website, and food programs tend to be concentrated on SBS Television on Thursday nights. Imported programs have been accompanied by local commissions highlighting Australia’s culinary diversity, from Maeve O’Meara’s Food Safari to Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam.

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foreign correspondents’ association In 2004, Foxtel launched the LifestyleFood channel, and in 2013 Fairfax Media relabelled all of its Tuesday supplements in print and online ‘Good Food’. By 2012 cooking programs were so ubiquitous that they were being parodied by Audrey’s Kitchen, produced by Working Dog Productions for ABC Television. The internet’s combination of mass and individual communication ‘democratised’ recipe-sharing and restaurant reviewing. Online restaurant guides, such as Telstra’s eatability. com.au, adopted user recommendations. Meanwhile, blogs such as Grab Your Fork, Not Quite Nigella and Almost Bourdain tended to concentrate on either cooking or dining out. While bloggers may be chatty and surprisingly literate, they have not been able to surpass wordsmiths such as Marcus Clarke in capturing a meal’s conviviality or a wine’s truth, or critics such as Leo Schofield in actually lifting restaurant standards. REFs: ‘The Foodie Files’, Weekend Australian Review, 2–3 June 2007; M. Symons, One Continuous Picnic (2007). MICHAEL SYMONS

FOREI GN CORR ESPONDENTS’ ASSOCIATION The Foreign Correspondents’ Association (FCA) was formed in 1985 to address the needs of overseas journalists reporting on Australia, such as access to news-makers, including government officials and institutions, particularly Parliament House in Canberra. Its aims are to promote the professional interest of foreign correspondents working in Australia and the South Pacific; to foster good relations between foreign correspondents and Australian authorities and local press; to assist foreign correspondents and journalists visiting Australia; to provide forums for discussion of current affairs and matters of professional concern in Australia and the South Pacific region; and to provide a social meeting place and entertainment, on a non-profit basis, for members and their guests. From the 1970s, a number of foreign news agencies and news bureaux with broad interests in South Pacific affairs established offices in Sydney. This coincided with an upsurge of internationally relevant stories from the region, including the activities of the Whitlam Labor government, political disputes in Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Bougainville, and nuclear-related issues in Palau (US nuclear port rights), Mururoa (French nuclear testing) and New Zealand. At a lunch in Sydney’s Chinatown in 1985, a number of journalists, including Radio Australia’s Trevor Watson, Australian Associated Press bureau chief Peter O’Laughlin and Newsweek correspondent Carl Robinson, decided to establish an association to promote the professional interests of overseas correspondents.

The association established a presence in Parliament House in Canberra for visiting Sydney-based journalists for overseas news services. The FCA provided a forum for reporters to be addressed by ‘news-makers’ who were aware of the different audience for their message (non-domestic populations and decision-makers). In 1995, the Keating Labor government set up an International Media Centre (IMC) in Sydney as an operational base for the FCA and to facilitate the work of international correspondents. The IMC in Margaret Street allowed FCA members to meet, read newspapers and access wire-services. The facilities included a radio and television recording and editing studio, provided by FCA sponsors. After the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the Howard Coalition government reduced support for the IMC, which meant that it functioned more as a liaison institution with the government of the day. The FCA does not have a ‘clubhouse’ for social gatherings outside of the organised presentations. The FCA has developed relationships with state tourism bodies, and invites ‘news-makers’ to address brief functions and present policy statements. Prime Ministers and Foreign Affairs Ministers have addressed the FCA. In 2011 the association partnered with the National Press Club to host the 2011 General Assembly of the International Association of Press Clubs (IAPC). Overseas reporter members of the FCA include stringers and freelancers, local reporters employed by international news agencies and overseas nationals posted to Australia. The membership has changed with shifting priorities in overseas reporting. In particular, general and political news from Australia and the region has given way to a growth in business reporting. There is now less focus on Sydney, with a number of agencies—including Bloomberg and Reuters—establishing offices in Canberra to address the growth of interest in economic news. Increasing interest from Chinese agencies in Australian news has seen more reporters to cater for this market. The membership categories of the association have also expanded beyond overseas correspondents to include domestic journalist members and associate members (diplomats, public relations officers and others with an interest in international reporting). In 2014, the FCA had around 140 members. REFs: J. Tebbutt, interview with T. Watson, 24 May 2013; http://www.foreigncorrespondents.org. JOHN TEBBUTT

F ORE IGN OW NE RS HIP see media ownership

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foreign reporting F O R E I GN REPORT I NG Reporting of foreign news is evident from Australia’s earliest news-sheets—as are the limitations of doing so. The first edition of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1803 included news of ‘a wife-selling at Manchester’. Personal letters, shipping news and reprints from colonial papers were key sources of international news in the early colonial period. Wellington’s victory at Waterloo in June 1815 was not reported in Australia until January 1816. In the colonial period, there was an extraordinary demand for news from ‘home’ and competition for overseas news had an ongoing impact on the structure of Australian press. In the late 1800s, eastern colonial newspapers formed a combine to manage this competition. This continued into the 1930s with the formation of Australian Associated Press (AAP). Foreign news continued to be distributed via traders and travellers well into the 20th century. News arrived faster with better transportation: the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, shortened the distance between Australia and Europe, and steamships began to replace sails in the 1880s. Media was electrified, and from 1872 the Overland Telegraph Line helped connect Europe and Australia. However, telegrams were expensive and slow, and the press service was secondary to more profitable delivery of commercial information, private telegrams and telegraphed remittances. Consequently, telegraph and cable news tended to supplement overseas newspaper reports with background material. While costs gradually reduced following the introduction of wireless telegraphy in 1927, expensive cable rates thwarted systematic international reporting. Inter-empire telegraphic cable favoured communication with London. Monopoly companies charged exorbitant fees for connecting services. Differentiation in international news provided competitive advantages for Australian metropolitan papers, and the Age and the Argus in Melbourne developed supplementary services. In 1895, these combined to form the Australian Press Association (also known as the United Cable Association or UCA), which secured exclusive rights to distribute Reuters news in Australia. UCA journalists gathered news at the London offices of Reuters and cabled it to Australia. Reuters had enormous power as the main source of news and played agencies against each other until the major metropolitan newspapers formed Australian Associated Press in 1935 to be the exclusive agent for Reuters news in Australia. There was little systematic gathering of international news by Australian reporters for a national audience until after World War II, when technological developments—including an opening of Australia to world via telecommunications—facilitated foreign news reporting.

The exceptions in colonial foreign reporting concerned conflict, commerce and cricket. Imperial military operations against the Maori in New Zealand led to the earliest eyewitness correspondent reports. In 1863, the Argus sent Howard Willoughby to cover the Maori Wars. In 1878, the Sydney Morning Herald sent John Stanley James to New Caledonia to report on an uprising against the French. A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson reported the Boer War for various Australian newspapers between 1899 and 1900. Trade and commerce shaped early foreign reporting. In 1886, James reported on the Indian and Colonial Royal Exhibition in London for the Argus. Early Australian newspapers addressed readers’ interests in Pacific affairs and the business opportunities associated with European plantations and missions in the Pacific Islands. At this time, islanders were kidnapped to work as slaves on Australian and Fijian plantations. The Age publisher David Syme chose a young journalist, George Ernest Morrison, to join an expedition from Queensland to the Pacific in 1882 to expose the trade. Later, ‘Chinese’ Morrison became an influential journalist based in Asia for the London Times. Reports on commercial activities from traveller-investors were sometimes fictionalised to further investor interest; however, it was often men in business who had the independent means for such travel. In the 1870s, James Hingston (1830–1902), a Melbourne-based investor, travelled overland through India, the Middle East, and Asia including Japan, China, Singapore and Java. The Argus published his travel writing fortnightly. Occasionally newspapers commissioned foreign reporting. After financing Morrison’s trip to the Pacific, the Age supported Alfred Deakin to visit India and Ceylon, and published his subsequent articles. In 1901, the Sydney Morning Herald commissioned reports from Banjo Paterson as he toured Asia on his way to Europe. This tradition of commissioning traveling writers continued into the 1930s. Frank Clune reported on his Asian and New Guinea travels for the ABC. Australian cricket tours to England provided opportunities for foreign reporting. Prior to international regulation of cricket in the early 1900s, commercial promoters ran these tours. A number of early editors and journalists in Sydney were cricketers, and supported the tours—and themselves—with cricket writing. Professional journalists, such as Donald Macdonald of the Argus, also travelled with the teams. McDonald accompanied more than 40 such tours from the 1880s until the 1920s. In the late colonial/early Federation period, news contributors were expatriates writing for British or American papers, or stringers on English-language newspapers in imperial trading ports. An Australian by birth, W.H. Donald reported from China for American newspapers and occasionally sent stories to Australia.

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foreign reporting Alice Henry, an expatriate journalist living in Chicago, wrote on labour issues and feminism for widely distributed trade union journals between 1908 and 1915. Later, Peter Russo, an Australian academic who lived in Japan, wrote on the culture of that country until he returned shortly before the outbreak of the Pacific war in 1939. In 1946–47, he was a correspondent for the Argus in Hong Kong. In 1909, following a Senate select inquiry, the Commonwealth government sought to break UCA’s monopoly on international cable news to Australia by providing subsidies to assist diversification. A new company, the United Cable Service, centred on the Sydney Sun and the Melbourne Herald, was formed. With World War I, (Sir) Keith Murdoch was hired to establish the service in London. Along with C.E.W. Bean, the official war correspondent, he reported news from Europe via cable. In the late 1920s, as wireless undercut cable delivery costs, the cable companies dropped their prices significantly. An enterprising Dorothy Jenner took advantage of this, initially writing a feature on a bull-fight in Majorca while travelling with her aunt. Then, in the early 1930s, Jenner supplied weekly entertainment news from New York for the Sun in Sydney under her pen name, ‘Andrea’. In October 1935, the ABC used sound effects in a news broadcast about the Italian invasion of Abyssinia. Newspaper reports roundly criticised this, and the commission subsequently restricted news to the spoken word. In August 1937, the ABC’s federal news director, Frank Dixon, arranged for a journalist in Shanghai to provide news from China. By December, the Japanese had sacked Shanghai and cables were considerably delayed. World War II saw increasing state intervention in international communication, including nationalisation of Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd’s wireless receiving services and opening direct communication links to the United States. Until then, news had been delivered to Australia across the Pacific Ocean via an imperial connection at Vancouver. During the war, more Australian journalists were posted overseas than ever before. The Sydney Morning Herald sent 23 war correspondents to various fronts and the Daily Telegraph 14, while the ABC sent 18 journalists into the field. A small number of women were also sent to gather news overseas. The Australian Women’s Weekly’s Adele Shelton-Smith reported on Australian troops stationed in Malaya prior to the Japanese invasion. Dorothy Jenner, who had returned to Australia from New York, was appointed by the Sun in September 1941 to report from Asia. She was in Hong Kong when the Japanese invaded in 1942, and was interned for four years. Elizabeth Riddell opened and ran the Daily Mirror’s New York bureau. Experience during the war increased Australian journalists’ appetite for international

reporting. Journalists such as Richard Hughes saw that Asia offered exciting international stories. Hughes left Australia in 1945 to base himself initially in Japan and then Hong Kong, reporting for primarily for European but also Australian newspapers. After the war, Australian journalists began to have a more direct role in reporting to national audiences. The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC), formed in 1946, oversaw the dismantling of the expensive imperial cable system. OTC managed international telephone and telegraph services, including cable, wireless and eventually satellite channels, facilitating cheaper, more efficient communications. In 1947, AAP finalised an agreement with Reuters to share bureaus in Asia. Denis Warner was appointed to oversee the Tokyo AAP–Reuters office (1947–49). Between 1949 and 1955, he was based in Asia as a ‘roving correspondent’ for the Melbourne Herald. Following the war, Australia looked to build independent links with Asian and Pacific nations. Journalists with experience in the region became influential commentators, and were sought out by policy-makers for their insights. In particular, Warner’s experience in Asia and that of Peter Hastings with Australian Consolidated Press in Papua New Guinea and later as foreign editor at John Fairfax & Sons made significant contributions to foreign policy debates. The decolonisation process following the war increased Australian government concern about the need for timely information and the influence of communism. External Affairs Minister (Lord) R.G. Casey supported increasing the presence of AAP and ABC journalists in the region. He argued that the wartime propaganda broadcaster, Radio Australia (RA), had a role to present Australian values in Asia. The ABC, which managed RA, suggested a broader reporting role would be more effective. The government agreed, and the ABC set up a news bureau in Singapore in 1957. Colin Mason was the first South-East Asian Representative. At the same time, New Zealander (Dame) Christine Cole reported for the ABC from Jakarta. Later that year, the Singapore office began to manage Visnews, a British initiative to establish an international television news agency, which became one of the most effective and respected international news providers and employed Australian camera operators such as Neil Davis. Television also arrived in Australia in 1956. Initially it was too expensive and complicated to broadcast international news to Australia. Visnews provided footage to Australian commercial television stations on subscription, much of it shot by ABC camera operators. The 1960s saw an incredible growth in Australians reporting international news, especially in Asia. The Sydney Morning Herald maintained freelance journalist Peter Robinson in Tokyo for a decade (1954–64). By 1965, the Melbourne

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Herald had five journalists in London, three in New York and full-time correspondents in Paris, Rome Singapore and Rabaul. It employed stringers or freelancers in many other cities. In 1966, the Sydney Morning Herald posted Margaret Jones to the United States, although she had to resign and pay her own airfare, then be re-employed in the Washington bureau. The ABC increased its international presence, opening bureaux in various Asian cities, including Jakarta (1959), Kuala Lumpur (1963), Saigon (1965), and Tokyo and New Delhi (1966). The 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games was covered by the ABC and commercial stations, in cooperation with the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK). Daily reports were compiled in Tokyo and rushed by plane to Australia for transmission within 24 hours. Commercial radio’s focus on entertainment left little scope for international reporting, however 5AD Adelaide sent disc jockey Bob Francis to Vietnam for a week in 1968 to report on the lives of ‘diggers’. Plane delivery was the most common way to transport television footage. Radio could be delivered over telephone lines; however, the lines often had to be booked up to a day in advance. There was a ban on Australian radio broadcasters using trunk lines and international telephone lines for live broadcasting until early 1962. This protected government investments in telephones from competition by radio. From 1965, Australia was served by satellite delivered information via Intelsat, with daily satellite news reports available from 1966. Satellite delivered news and, from the 1970s, lighter and more mobile electronic news-gathering (ENG) technology that combined sound and vision recording, doing away with the requirement for a sound operator in the field, made television news cheaper and faster. In 1983, the Los Angeles offices of Australian television networks Nine and Seven were using a trans-Pacific satellite service to beam stories direct to their studios in Sydney. The introduction of satellite telephones meant voice reports could be delivered far more efficiently. However, the requirement for uploading television footage made correspondents’ reports vulnerable to control and intercession. Satellite links were expensive, and provided only small windows for transmission, which could curtail reports. Nine’s 60 Minutes has been reporting from around the world since 1979. SBS’s Dateline (1984– ) was followed by the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent (1992– ). ABC Radio programs include The World Today and the weekly Correspondents Report. Since the 1980s, more and more women foreign correspondents have emerged, particularly at the ABC, including Helene Chung, Monica Attard, Jane Hutcheon, Sally Sara and Zoe Daniel. In 1998, SBS took advantage of smaller digital cameras to send reporters into the field without a crew. This innovative response to

financial constraints led SBS to pioneer newsroom-directed video journalism. Computer editing in the field, and filing across the internet, have increased the flexibility of foreign correspondents to deliver news. In addition, smaller cameras and recorders, and a more ‘media savvy’ population, have seen non-professional ‘reporters’ provide international news. In 2011, the ABC’s Four Corners combined a video recording by animal welfare activists with its own recording and reporting to produce a program that led to shutting down live cattle exports from Australia to Indonesia. Frequently footage from mobile phones shot by amateurs is used in reporting international news stories on Australian television. Funding cuts and changes to news delivery, largely due to the formation of a 24-hour news channel, have continued to impact on the ABC’s international news bureaux. While a rationalisation of services was averted in 2010, similar cuts were threatened with Commonwealth budget reductions in 2014. REFs: J. Bonwick, Early Struggles of the Australian Press (1890); G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981); D. Warner, ‘The Foreign Correspondent’, in L. Revill and C. Roderick (eds), The Journalist’s Craft (1965). JOHN TEBBUTT

FO U R C O R N ER S Four Corners is one of the longest-running television current affairs programs anywhere, and an important flagship of the ABC. It has aired continuously since 1961, making it an Australian television institution and putting it second only internationally to the BBC’s Panorama (est. 1953), with which it has often been compared. It was significant in its early period for developing a national audience for news and current affairs. It also played an important role in the cultural and political transformations of the 1960s and 1970s, bringing to light social issues with a sometimes shocking directness that had not been seen before. But it has become best known for a string of high-profile investigative journalism reports, which have precipitated governmental or judicial inquiries and processes of political reform. The best-known example is ‘The Moonlight State’ (1987), investigating high-level corruption in the Queensland police force. Four Corners was originally conceived out of conversations between the ABC’s assistant general manager (programs), Clement Semmler, presenter Michael Charlton and producer Robert Raymond. The name was chosen with reference to a line from Shakespeare’s King John: ‘Come the three corners of the world / And we shall shock them.’ By Charlton’s account, it was thought that an Australian current affairs program might offer a ‘fourth corner’.

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fourth estate The program has had a number of formats. For its first two years, it was closely identified with Charlton, whose background was as a vaudeville host, celebrity interviewer and cricket commentator. The program had a magazine format, and the emphasis was, as director of talks Alan Carmichael put it, on ‘topicality, informality and immediacy’. It drew a sizeable audience, and Charlton was voted TV Week’s most popular personality of 1962. The directness and immediacy of television always gave the program the potential for controversy. A minor storm occurred over a 1964 episode that showed heavy drinking in an episode about the RSL. Middle-class norms of gentility were challenged through a new mobility of the camera and documentary crew, shining a light on social areas that previously had been relatively concealed. Notable topics included living conditions in remote Aboriginal communities, the Vietnam War, gender inequalities and drug-taking. Four Corners’ alumni include some of Australia’s most respected television journalists and presenters, including Paul Barry, Jenny Brockie, Richard Carleton, Liz Jackson, Caroline Jones, Tony Jones, Paul Lyneham, Ray Martin, Chris Masters, Jeff McMullen, Sally Neighbour, Kerry O’Brien, Andrew Olle, Bill Peach, Marian Wilkinson and Mike Willesee. The program has won more than 30 Walkley Awards. Three programs have won Gold Walkleys: ‘Aiding and Abetting’ (1983, reporter Mary Delahunty, producer Alan Hall); ‘French Connections’ (1985, reporter Chris Masters, producer Bruce Belsham); and ‘Stoking the Fires’ (2006, reporter Liz Jackson, producer Lin Buckfield, researcher Peter Cronau). Four Corners’ formula has sometimes hardened, threatening its continued relevance. A significant reform occurred in the 1980s, first under executive producer Jonathan Holmes, who introduced a ‘filmmaking’ aesthetic from British television and documentary, and later under Peter Manning, who introduced a harder investigative focus brought from experience in newspaper journalism at John Fairfax & Sons. The later Four Corners has been remarkable—even internationally—for its continuing commitment to long-form reporting and investigation of institutional processes. While it has retained a prime position in the schedule on Mondays at 8.30 p.m., it has also been prepared to pursue stories without an obvious visual ‘angle’ or easy narrative focus around personality, sharply differentiating itself from the direction of commercial current affairs. The 50th anniversary of Four Corners was marked with a travelling exhibition, a commemorative episode, a book and an anniversary website. REFs: S. Neighbour (ed.), The Stories That Changed Australia (2012); R. Pullan, Four Corners (1986); http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/50years/. MARK GIBSON

FO U R TH ESTATE A mix of self-promotion and definitional flexibility has enabled the notion of the news media as the fourth estate to endure. The concept of the press fulfilling an autonomous role in the political system, as a representative of the people and independent of political or commercial power, has evolved with national variations depending on constitutional, legal, commercial and regulatory conventions. In the United States, the concept was embodied in the First Amendment to the US Constitution, passed in 1791, which prohibited laws that abridged freedom of speech or inhibited freedom of the press. In the Australian colonies, there was no such constitutional protection, but many newspapers were first published when the notion of the fourth estate was taking hold in England. Rod Kirkpatrick’s research shows that these ideals were embodied in the founding principles of many newspapers published in the colonies, which also helped to define and promote new regions and settlements. In colonial society, with limited franchise and no system of representative local government, newspapers sought to fulfil roles that have subsequently been subsumed by other institutions. A review of inaugural editorials reveals that many colonial newspapers adopted an explicit fourth estate framework. In these small settlements, editors sought to maximise readership by being independent, although others were more overtly aligned with landholders and others with power, which weakened claims to autonomy and representing the people. Even at this time, the tension between the commercial and public interests of the newspaper was evident: financial success could ensure independence but also increase the pressure to be more closely aligned with powerful interests. The ideal of the fourth estate has endured— indeed, the term is often used as shorthand for the news media. However, the notion of the news media fulfilling an autonomous, representative, public role that transcends its commercial obligations has been undermined by the self-interested power and influence of the industry, ethical failures, the creation of a wide range of formal regulatory and monitory institutions, and the growth of informal social media. Nonetheless, it retains an important place in the rationale of the news media, the self-definition of editors and journalists and the expectations of the public. Unlike the other formal institutions of representative democracies, elected parliaments and independent judiciaries, the press always had one foot in politics and the other in commerce. At a time of limited suffrage and growing literacy, the press became the self-appointed voice of the people, and scrutiniser of politicians and official behaviour. The brilliance of this model was that the commercial success that came from sales and

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foxtel advertising underwrote the cost of news-gathering. This helped ensure both political independence and influence. The result was a myth that helped maximise commercial returns. The tension in this role has been long recognised, as Rupert Murdoch noted in 1961, when he was a fledgling newspaper owner: ‘Unless we can return to the principles of public service we will lose our claim to be the Fourth Estate.’ Decades later, as the owner of one of the largest media empires in the world, Murdoch still cynically claimed the role of overseeing official behaviour and giving voice to the concerns of the people, but in practice the principles of public service were more often framed by a partisan agenda, thought to coincide with Murdoch’s personal views. The unapologetic political agenda of some of News Corp’s outlets—most notably the Fox Network in the United States—has delivered strong commercial returns, although its impact on public debate and the political system is a matter of dispute. In the middle years of the 20th century, the dominance of the social responsibility model shaped the behaviour of the press, television and radio. In a mass media environment, the commercial requirement to maximise audience by not offending combined with antipathy to regulatory oversight by the state to encourage professionalisation of journalism and a methodology that expected objectivity, accuracy, fairness and impartiality. In this context, journalists and editors actively pursued investigative reporting, seeking to reveal corruption, dishonesty and malfeasance as independent representatives of the people. This became an important element of the self-definition of the commercial news media and public broadcasters—most notably the ABC, which particularly pursued investigative journalism as a manifestation of a fourth estate role. The ability of the traditional news media to fulfil the fourth estate role has been weakened by structural changes that have threatened the economic viability of the industry. As a result, the resources available for providing a comprehensive record and undertaking major investigations have diminished. The proliferation of other institutions with a monitory role has also professionalised the ‘watchdog’ role once undertaken informally by the press as the fourth estate. As John Keane has documented, the rise of monitory democracy in the later years of the 20th century has meant that the role once informally undertaken by the news media has been supplemented by a wide range of regulatory, oversight and investigative agencies. An important development that has weakened the role of the traditional news media as a quasi-institution is the internet, which has democratised political and social communication, and demonstrated the weakness of the professionalisation of journalism. The legitimacy of the commercial media’s right in the 21st century to continue to exercise oversight has not only been challenged by

self-interested behaviour, but by the collapse of the business model that effectively financed the legitimacy and influence of this role. As the mass media of the 20th century gives way to the connected and distributed social media model of the 21st, the capacity of traditional news media to retain this quasi-institutional role is under an assault from which it is unlikely to recover—although a ‘fifth estate’ of always-on social media may replace it. The notion that power needs to be scrutinised may endure, but it is likely to be a task undertaken by a much larger group of people and institutions. REFs: J. Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009); R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Shield of the People? The Provincial Press and the Fourth Estate’, Australian Journalism Review, 20(1) (1998); J. Schultz, Reviving the Fourth Estate (1998). JULIANNE SCHULTZ

FO XTEL Foxtel is the largest pay television provider in Australia, broadcasting more than 200 channels to approximately 2.4 million households. Foxtel provides cable, direct broadcast satellite television and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services, the means by which live television and internet services are delivered through highspeed access channels. Foxtel was formed in 1994 as a joint venture between the Australian government-owned Telstra and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation to deliver—initially at least—a cable-based pay television service. The service was designed to help Telstra defend its dominant market position in fixed-line telephones in the face of a new competitor, Optus, which had earlier announced a cable rollout and multi-channel pay TV service to help attract phone customers. Optus had promised to deliver its phone service and multi-channel pay TV on the same cable. Foxtel would only provide the pay TV service, because Telstra already had the phone infrastructure in place. News Corporation, which owned the 20th Century Fox studio in Hollywood, would provide the programming for the Foxtel service. Legislators in Australia had been focused on the use of satellites to deliver multi-channel pay TV, and in 1994 a new company, Australis Media, paid approximately $200 million at auction for satellite licences, as well as for providing digital set-top boxes in homes. By comparison, there was no bidding system for cable, and News Corporation was able to secure its cable licence for a mere $1570 (the Australian Broadcasting Authority fee for two or more cable licences). Additionally, Foxtel faced no restrictions on the number of channels able to be delivered by cable, and the Keating Labor government gave Foxtel (and Optus) the right to decide on exclusive access to their cable networks.

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free tv australia The justification for this monopoly access was ‘not to delay the rollout of cable in Australia’. News Corporation and Telstra initially invested $150 million in a joint company to manage their cable venture. Telstra, however, funded the $3–4 billion extensions to its existing cable network, reflecting the importance it placed on defending its phone business from an aggressive new competitor. News Corporation executive chairman Rupert Murdoch himself described this pay TV alliance, in which Telstra would pay for the cable infrastructure and the connection into the home, as ‘the deal of the century’. The cost of the licences and the expensive development of a unique MPEG digital technology to deliver its Galaxy service became too much for Australis, and it collapsed in 1998, with Foxtel acquiring the Galaxy subscribers from the Australis liquidator. That year, Kerry Packer’s Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, which had previously backed the rival Optus Vision consortium, purchased half of News Corporation’s shares, giving each a quarter ownership of Foxtel. This was sold back to News Corporation in 2012 for $2 billion, thus restoring the 50 per cent ownership of Foxtel by News. Foxtel announced its first profit in 2006, after incurring a cost of nearly $10 billion in developing satellite and cable infrastructure, and obtaining sport and movie programming. It has expanded rapidly, boasting a penetration rate of approximately 35 per cent, and its programming is available to over 70 per cent of Australian homes. However, this rate is significantly lower than market penetration rates in the United States, and subscription fees are higher than in either the United States or Europe. Cable subscriptions are sensitive to global economic conditions, and Foxtel is also under pressure from providers of streaming video, including Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon. In response to these challenges, in 2013 Foxtel introduced Foxtel Play, a broadband streaming service that does not require a set-top box and operates by monthly subscription instead of contract periods. REF: M. Minehan, ‘Pay TV in Australia and the Concentration of Media Ownership’, MIA, 92 (1999). MIKE MINEHAN

FRANCI S , BOB (1939– ) Adelaide’s longest-serving commercial radio announcer began his career in 1957. The Top 40 announcer, who claimed to be the first disc jockey on Adelaide radio, was known on air as Big Bob Francis. 5DN listeners were greeted with his signature welcome: ‘I’m the big guy, 10 storeys high’. In 1964, he obtained some 80,000 signatures to change The Beatles’ Australian tour itinerary to include Adelaide, and he interviewed the band on the balcony of the Adelaide Town Hall. The visit attracted an estimated

crowd of 300,000—the largest public gathering to see The Beatles in the world. In 1967, as host of 5AD’s morning timeslot, Francis became one of Adelaide’s first talkback announcers. His program was topical and lively, and addressed issues relating to the Vietnam War; in 1968, Francis spent a week living as a ‘digger’ in Vietnam. Also in 1968, then federal opposition leader Gough Whitlam appeared with Francis and Angela Stacey, spending over an hour answering listeners’ questions. In 1957, Francis had been suspended for 10 days for using the word ‘bloody’ on air. Later, at 5AA, he courted controversy, adopting an increasingly conservative image. His comments in 2004, following the death of an Aboriginal youth and a riot in the Sydney suburb of Redfern attracted an Australian Broadcasting Authority investigation. It found that Francis had breached the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice by inciting or perpetuating hatred against Aboriginal people, but he escaped without penalty. That year he was also held in contempt of court after he declared that a man brought to trial for the possession of child pornography was guilty, and that the magistrate who granted bail should have his ‘face smashed in’. He was fined $20,000 and given a suspended jail sentence. Francis was later partnered on air with Andy Thorpe. After his 5AD morning show ended in around 1976, Francis became the station manager. In the mid-1980s, he moved to 5AA to host the night-time session. In 1998 he was appointed OAM for service to the community. In 2005, just days after being lambasted by Media Watch for labelling an elderly caller a ‘dick brain’, Francis was inducted into the Commercial Radio Hall of Fame. He retired in 2013 after 57 years on radio. LIZ GOULD

FR EE TV AU STR ALIA Free TV Australia is an industry body that represents commercial free-to-air television licensees in Australia. Free TV was known as the Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations (FACTS) from 1960–2002 and as Commercial Television Australia (CTA) from 2002–04. Its origins can be traced back to 1956. The original free-to-air commercial television licensees—Sydney’s ATN7 and TCN9, and Melbourne’s HSV7 and GTV9—found it necessary to establish a forum for the discussion of industry issues and a body that would represent the interests of the commercial television industry to stakeholders. One of the most important concerns of the government, industry and the public in the 1950s was the formulation of general standards for television advertising, although this was an area that had not yet been canvassed for community attitudes. The stations established

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freedom of information the Television Advertising Board, governed by the sales managers of existing commercial television stations. The board was established with the purpose of producing industry codes that, together with the Australian Broadcasting Control Board’s television standards, would regulate television advertising. However, by 1960 it was clear that the industry’s concerns were far broader than simply advertising. For this reason, FACTS was formed on 1 September 1960, based in Sydney. The Television Advertising Board was incorporated into FACTS, and every commercial station in operation became a member. Arthur S. Cowan was appointed the first general manager of FACTS after relinquishing his role as head of the Federation of Commercial Broadcasting Stations (now Commercial Radio Australia). According to its charter, FACTS aimed to ‘stimulate general interest in and organise and develop television broadcasting’. It sought to ‘help extend the television broadcasting industry; protect and defend the rights and interests of licensed television stations, individually and collectively; to form a code of practice to simplify and facilitate all business relating to television broadcasting; to promote or oppose legislative or other measures affecting television broadcasting, and oppose any proposed restriction or interference’. FACTS met annually to determine policies and deal with general issues. During these meetings, an executive committee of six was elected and given power to oversee the operation of FACTS between these general meetings. By the 1970s, FACTS included a full-time secretariat of 18 executives and staff. Consultants supplied additional support on a range of issues when necessary. Over time, demands on and within the industry forced FACTS to expand beyond its secretariat and provide additional services to members. FACTS prepared position papers and regulatory submissions on a range of matters, including the broadcasting reforms of the Fraser Coalition government, children’s television, and violence on television. One of the key issues championed by FACTS throughout its tenure (with details of its lobbying exposed by the Australian Financial Review in 1980) was the self-regulation of the commercial television industry. It was not until the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 that the commercial television industry was able to formulate its own programming guidelines. A Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice was established in accordance with community standards and expectations, and negotiated in consultation with the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) and the public. However, the areas of children’s television, Australian content and advertising remain under the jurisdiction of the ABA’s Programming Standards. The Code of Practice has been updated periodically, most recently in 2010. The incumbent regulator, the

Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), is responsible for monitoring the implementation and effectiveness of the code. A board representing all the major commercial networks—Nine, Seven, Ten, Prime Television, Southern Cross Austereo, NBN, WIN and Imparja—oversees Free TV. Several committees support the board, providing expertise in areas including policy and regulation, engineering and technical concerns, and marketing. In its dealings with government and in public statements, Free TV continues to maintain that Australia’s commercial television broadcasters are the most heavily regulated in the market, compared with pay television and mobile and online services. Julie Flynn has been CEO since 2001. REFs: FACTS annual reports, 1975–79; http://www. freetv.com.au. MADELEINE TURNER

FR EED O M O F IN FO R M ATIO N Freedom of information (FOI) legislation came to Australia in 1982. By that stage, it had become a part of the armory of investigative journalists and public-interest groups in the United States— attracting attention as both check and balance to the kinds of abuse of power demonstrated by government during the Watergate scandal and a reaction to excessive secrecy by government. In Australia, political acceptance was assisted by tying the reforms to the simultaneous creation of citizens’ right to access personal information held by government agencies, as well as rights to correct and amend such personal records. FOI was a part of a package that saw the establishment of an Ombudsman’s office, with a right to review bureaucratic action, extensive rights of appeal in administrative tribunals against routine decisions made by bureaucrats, and a right of judicial review in the courts in cases where government had exceeded or abused its powers. From the start, the Commonwealth legislation proclaimed that its purpose was to promote public participation in government, and the establishment of a general right to know. One section of the Freedom of Information Act 1982 created a duty within government departments to publish and make available details of their general activities and processes; another created a legal right to government documents within a specified period, unless they were held to be exempt for some reason. The onus fell on an agency to prove that documents were exempt; in some cases, review bodies could weigh the public interest to determine questions of access. In other cases, however, their officials were able to issue a ‘conclusive certificate’ keeping material from the public record. While journalists had generally grumbled about a culture of secrecy inside government and about the need to look at what the United States was doing, few played a role in the development of the Act or, in the beginning, in making

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freedom of speech requests for policy-oriented materials or records. Most reporters were working to daily deadlines. The expectation—fairly quickly proved in practice—was that officials would take ages to process requests, and would be predisposed to limit disclosure and to over-claim on exemptions. The introduction of fees created a new hurdle, even before processing began. Challenges quickly became highly legal, technical and procedural, accentuating the feeling among many reporters that FOI was hardly worth the effort. An additional problem among journalists was a tendency to imagine that documents ought to disclose, on their face, evidence of malfeasance, abuse of power or some sort of ‘smoking gun’. Yet most government files record and detail bland and routine administration by people generally doing their best. A few early attempts were disappointing, when access to information, often after considerable delay, revealed no scandal. That need not have made the request a failure: for the good journalist such information could add extra layers of understanding to a story, and be the springboard for fresh questions and inquiries. However, there were a few journalists who were prepared for the Act, and lodged early claims—many of which were run through the appeal tribunals, even up to the High Court. Some newspapers, such as the Canberra Times, the Australian, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, and several television stations, including the ABC and Channel 7, had dedicated journalists making use of the Act, often for long-term stories, even if the majority of their reportage concerned obstacles to access to information. From time to time, there were successes—for example, revealing profound military and administrative doubts about a $1 billion Defence plan for compulsory land acquisitions in central New South Wales for artillery ranges and tank training grounds, and showing that a federal minister had misled parliament about his involvement in a tender process. In the meantime, serious scandals in state administrations—for example with the Fitzgerald Inquiry into systematic corruption by politicians, police and public servants in the Bjelke-Petersen Queensland government, and the WA Inc scandals in Western Australia—saw commissions of inquiry recommending urgent changes to the systems of checks and balances in such administrations, including FOI. It was expected that the passage of such legislation would help create a culture of open government, by which much more material would be routinely available for public access. Against this was a developing tendency by politicians and their minders to want to control and politicise the flow of even unimportant information out of an agency, generally to promote or protect the interests of the minister. Called news management, the shift saw agencies instruct staff that all requests from the media

were to be directed to public relations branches (often located in the minister’s office). Although the FOI process stood outside media relations, the capacity to FOI to affect the image of agencies and ministers saw more and more obvious political control of the process. There was ever a tendency of oppositions to promise that they would substantially ‘reform’ FOI to make it work better—particularly for journalists—but as Senator Gareth Evans joked just before taking office as Attorney-General in the first Hawke Labor government, he had to move fast before the public servants got at his colleagues. As it turned out, the reforms put forward by Evans delivered a lot less than he had initially promised. In 2007, Labor promised substantial reform—particularly designed to make processes quicker and cheaper, and with better appeal processes, led by an Information Commissioner. The amendments, which passed through the parliament in 2010, did reduce the range of possible exemptions, and have led to a considerable increase in the use of the Act by journalists. Even if journalists are mostly focused on tomorrow rather than next month, many more have realised the capacity of well-crafted requests to add extra information to the story mix. Unfortunately, the hopes for quicker and more efficient appeal processes were not realised; indeed, within a year of the amendments coming into effect, the Office of the Information Commissioner was running nine months or more behind on appeals. Some agencies have taken advantage of this sluggishness. However, the amendments have seen the legislation become a far more integral part of the journalist’s toolkit. REF: P. Bayne, The Freedom of Information Act (1984). JACK WATERFORD

FR EED O M O F SP EEC H Most Australians know about the first amendment in the US Constitution guaranteeing freedom of the press and free speech. But Australia does not have a Bill of Rights, meaning that freedom of speech is not explicitly recognised or protected. Instead, the right to free speech is seen as inherent in a free and democratic society. But competing with it are many other social objectives: protecting people’s reputations (defamation), upholding the court process (contempt and restrictions on publication of some information), protecting children and sometimes adults from violent or sexually explicit material (through a classification system, obscenity laws and internet filters), national security (sedition laws) and fostering tolerance (racial vilification). Without an explicit guarantee, the right to free speech is vulnerable to laws that are often introduced for sound policy reasons, but with serious consequences for free speech. Hence

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freedom of speech there is an ongoing debate in Australia about where the line should be drawn. Apart from the implied freedom discussed below, the courts are obliged to uphold a law that shows a clear intention to restrict freedom of speech. In the 1960s, most countries relaxed their laws against obscenity. But in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, most Western democracies have been prepared to countenance tougher sedition laws. Groups such as Civil Liberties Australia argue that not having a Bill of Rights makes Australia more vulnerable to curtailing of the right of free speech. It also leaves those who assert the right to free speech having to fight long and expensive court cases. The High Court has delivered several important judgments that have clarified a right to political expression. This takes the form of an ‘implied freedom of political communication’, which the court has inferred from the nature of the electoral process laid down by the federal Constitution. In 1992 it declared the Political Broadcasts and Political Disclosures Act 1991 invalid. This law, introduced by the Hawke Labor government, prohibited the broadcasting of politically related material on electronic media during the period leading up to an election (except in news, current affairs or talkback radio programs). Instead, it obliged broadcasters to provide ‘free time’ to political parties to air advertisements. The commercial broadcasting industry mounted a challenge on the grounds that the new laws interfered with a right to free political speech implied in the Constitution. They also argued that the parts of the Act requiring that broadcasters give ‘free time’ to certain people was an unjust acquisition of property. The Commonwealth government argued that the laws enhanced democracy because they prevented corruption that could accompany political fundraising and that they would allow parties that did not have large amounts of money to access radio and television broadcasting. The High Court ruled that the Act had the effect of limiting the freedoms previously enjoyed by citizens to publicly discuss political matters. The Act impaired freedom of communication, and privileged those political parties or interest groups already represented in the parliament. The law would also hinder groups such as trade unions, charities or employers’ groups with a legitimate desire to make political statements. In 1997, the High Court found freedom of political speech implied by the words of the Constitution. This means that Australians are free to talk about politics. In Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Lange, sued the ABC for defamation over a 1990 broadcast on Four Corners. The program, a re-run of a NZ Frontline program, alleged that the New Zealand Labour Party had been improperly under the influence

of large business interests, as the result of large donations to its 1987 election campaign. The court sought to clarify the interaction between the implied freedom of political communication and defamation laws. The implied freedom was held to be an ongoing freedom, and not limited to election periods. The court modified the requirements of the common-law defence of qualified privilege because it did not adequately accommodate the requirements of the implied freedom of political communication. In the context of a publication about governmental or political affairs, the court held that all voters had an interest in receiving information about such matters, so there was a duty on publishers to publish that information. In theory, the High Court opened the door to a far more liberal discussion of the activities of politicians without fear of being sued for defamation, but in practice the courts have held publishers to high standards of reasonableness, as they did in the case of Obeid v John Fairfax Publications in 2006. In early 2013, the High Court further extended the freedom of political speech. In a case brought by the union movement against a NSW government ban on union and corporate donations, the court said such a ban ‘impermissibly burdens the implied freedom of communication on governmental and political matters, contrary to the Commonwealth Constitution’. But whether freedom of speech extends beyond political speech is doubtful. Two 2013 decisions in the High Court suggest limits. In one case, street preachers in Adelaide’s Rundle Mall lost their fight to espouse Christian fundamentalism in a public setting. In the other, the judges were equally divided on whether people who allegedly sent offensive letters to the families of soldiers killed in Afghanistan should have their right to do so recognised by the High Court. Some constraints on free speech, such as defamation and contempt, must be enforced through the courts, and judges are often cognisant of the balancing act they must perform. The far more contentious area is when governments propose to enforce the constraints on free speech themselves—through either criminal sanctions or regulatory bodies. And when governments propose to involve themselves in qualitative judgments about what is fair, the warning lights flash. Digital media are now challenging previous philosophical assumptions about when governments are justified in intervening to regulate media. For example, in broadcasting, governments imposed obligations through licence conditions because of scarcity of spectrum, which was said to give rise to obligations on broadcasters to meet certain standards: fairness in news broadcasts, Australian content and requirements to serve local communities. Newspapers were said to have no real barriers to entry, so were permitted to self-regulate through an industry-funded Australian Press Council.

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But that philosophy has been under challenge as digital services proliferate and the boundaries between media become blurred. Starting a blog or a website has no real barriers to entry, so why should the internet be government-regulated? And newspapers regularly broadcast video news on their websites, so why should they be regulated differently from broadcasters? If there are multiple channels, why not let the viewer decide what they want to see and hear? One answer has been a drift towards self-regulation or hybrid models, where the government regulator, now the Australian Communications and Media Authority, serves only as a backup. That trend is likely to continue. But in the wake of widespread phone hacking by the UK News of the World, there was a fierce backlash against the claim by the press that it can regulate itself. Several senior News Corp staff were prosecuted on criminal charges, and the public felt short-changed by self-regulatory bodies’ failure to deal with the allegations. That concern was taken up in Australia by the Gillard Labor government. Retired judge Ray Finkelstein was appointed in 2012 to produce a report for the government that proposed a new model of regulation of the media. It introduced Bills that would, among other things, create a Public Interest Media Advocate, which many media saw as introducing potential government influence over their freedom of speech. The Bills received very little support in the parliament, even from government MPs. At the same time, the government’s Convergence Review included treatment of some similar issues. But after the Finkelstein report, and the failed 2013 media reforms of Minister for Communications Senator Stephen Conroy, there was little government appetite to take on media proprietors. The debate about the need for more explicit protections for free speech might have fallen off the agenda for now, but is almost certain to be revived. Ironically, it might take a reversal to prompt more steps forward.

FR O N TLIN E This satirical television situation comedy has become an Australian classic. Shot in a mock documentary style, and produced by the team that became known as Working Dog Productions—comprising Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy and Rob Sitch—three series of Frontline, each consisting of 13 half-hour episodes, were screened on ABC Television in 1994, 1995 and 1997, and have been repeated frequently ever since. The Working Dog team had enjoyed earlier successes in television sketch comedy with The D-Generation (1986–87) and The Late Show (1992–93), and after Frontline the team produced two highly popular feature films, The Castle (1997) and The Dish (2000). Set in the production studios of a fictional commercial current affairs program, Frontline was seemingly modelled on the long running A Current Affair, and satirised the murky production culture of tabloid television journalism. Often the situations depicted were thinly fictionalised versions of well-known events or ethical controversies, which were used to criticise the sensationalist and exploitative tactics of ratings-driven current affairs shows. The character of the narcissistic host, Mike Moore (played by Sitch), was a clever amalgam of attributes drawn from some of the household names in television journalism. The cast also included comic versions of some familiar stereotypes: the shallow, appearance-obsessed female reporter Brooke Vandenberg (played by Kennedy), the headline-chasing ‘whatever it takes’ cowboy reporter Martin di Stasio (Tiriel Mora) and the producer/researcher Emma Ward (Alison Whyte), who ‘gets the job done’, despite some misgivings. REF: S. Cilauro, T. Gleisner, J. Kennedy and R. Sitch, Frontline (1995). GRAEME TURNER

REF: R. Pullan, Guilty Secrets (1994). ANNE DAVIES

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G G A M E SHOW S ‘Game shows’ include radio and television quizzes and panel shows. Distinctions are made in terms of the kinds of questions asked and the people involved. Quizzes are generally seen as asking more serious questions about matters of fact, while game shows can be more frivolous. Both are likely to include ordinary members of the public being asked questions or set tasks by a presenter. Panel shows feature—and sometimes create—celebrities. The popularity of the genre fluctuates, partly reflected in scheduling. Conventionally late-afternoon programs, they move into prime time either when the prizes are large or the risks or innuendo are substantial. The prize pool necessary for prime-time presence shifted from Coles £3000/$6000 Question (1960–72) and the cars offered in Sale of the Century (1970–2002) to the titular amount of the international format Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (1999–2010), hosted by sports celebrity and Nine Network CEO (2006–07) Eddie McGuire. Game shows have been more important for commercial radio and television than for public broadcasting, probably because the usual aim is to win prizes. Public broadcasting shows focus more on the kudos of winning, and tend to be more serious, such as ABC’s Mastermind (1978–84) and The (New) Inventors (1970–81, 2004–10), and SBS’s Letters and Numbers (2010–12). Both commercial and public broadcasters also screen panel shows without prizes, featuring ordinary and celebrity participants (Graham Kennedy’s Blankety Blanks, 1977–78), but more commonly mixing comedians with other celebrities (Spicks and Specks 2005–11, 2014– ). An important early radio example, Quiz Kids, started in 1942 and became a staple of Sunday evening listening. Host John Dease asked factual questions, submitted by listeners for modest cash prizes, of a rotating number of young children. It transferred with Dease to television, first to ATN7 in 1957 then, after a break, to the ABC (1964–68). The transfer of popular radio shows to television was common: Bob Dyer and his wife Dolly took Pick-a-Box from the Macquarie Network to ATN7 (1957–71). Following their televisual

success, game shows disappeared from radio, although questions with prizes continued, integrated into regular programs. The centrality of game shows can be seen from the first night of official television broadcasting, 16 September 1956. Name that Tune, based on an American original, followed the opening documentary about the medium, both presented by Bruce Gyngell. Formats were not initially licensed, although game shows have subsequently become one of the most lucrative types of franchise. Reg Grundy founded the Grundy Organisation on game shows, starting on radio in 1957 with Wheel of Fortune; he sold a television version of the show to TCN9 before developing a large stable of mainly American-derived shows and then adding Australian-generated soaps. Overwhelmingly, like Wheel of Fortune, game shows are hosted by men, still often accompanied by decorative women (‘hostesses’), who introduce contestants, set up props and display prizes, but do not ask the questions. The Weakest Link (2001–02) reversed the hosting convention as well as the customary genial relationship between those on screen by having a minatory female questioner, Cornelia Frances, increasing the show’s characteristic humiliation of unsuccessful contestants. Compatibility shows, where contestants choose dates (Perfect Match/Blind Date, various versions between 1967 and 2002), or couples reveal the extent of their knowledge of one another (The Marriage Game, 1966–70), enable game shows to draw questions from everyday understandings. The Price is Right (1958–2012, intermittently) used knowledge of household commodity prices, although it was best known for the catchphrase ‘Come on down’ to summon a contestant from the studio audience. Game shows are valuable places for acquiring and displaying celebrity. Very successful contestants—like future politician Barry Jones, who started on Quiz Kids and was Pick-a-Box’s biggest winner—can gain a high profile. Short spin-off series matching champions against one another provide a staging post, though recently such variants have more often involved celebrities playing to win money for charity (Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?).

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gardening Talent shows pitting ordinary contestants with entertainment talent against one another have been designed to bring some kind of fame to the winner since they began on radio. More recent examples, like Australia’s Got Talent (2007–14) and The Voice (2012– ), are centred more on the celebrity judges or coaches. Unlike other game show types, most of these allow viewer votes to help determine outcomes. REFs: A. Moran and C. Keating, Historical Dictionary of Australian Radio and Television (2007) and Wheel of Fortune (2003). FRANCES BONNER

GARDENI NG The earliest periodicals to include significant Australian horticultural content were British monthlies such as Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (1787– ) and the Botanical Register (1815–47), in which ‘New Holland exotics’ were depicted in hand-coloured engravings and lithographs. The accompanying letterpress often transcended the scholarship of botany to address the newly emerging ‘science’ of horticulture, as well as the fast-changing world of garden-making. Some of these periodicals were published by nursery proprietors. Of greater relevance to Australian garden journalism was the establishment in London by John Claudius Loudon of the Gardener’s Magazine (1826–44), which included much of Australian interest, including first-hand observations by local correspondents. Loudon had railed at the expense of the Horticultural Society of London’s Transactions (1807– ) and initiated a new era in Britain of relatively inexpensive, small-format, magazine-style periodicals. As the Australian colonies lurched towards stable settlement, the floricultural and horticultural magazines edited by George Glenny, and especially the Gardeners’ Chronicle (1841– ), with its redoubtable editorial combination of botanist John Lindley and garden designer Joseph Paxton, built on Loudon’s pioneering journalistic foray and achieved worldwide circulation. In Australia, the earliest garden journalism had been confined largely to the utilitarian seasonal advice of horticulturists, a format that followed the earliest such advice in yearly almanacs (from 1803). Whereas early periodical botanical works had been painstakingly issued fascicule by fascicule, the advent of mechanised printing fostered the growth of magazines with journalistic rather than predominantly scientific content. Yet early Australian attempts at establishing specialised horticultural magazines met indifferent success, as the date spans of the Victorian Rural Magazine (1855) and Gardener’s Magazine and Journal of Rural Economy (1855–56), South Australian Horticulturist (1856), Victorian Agricultural and Horticultural Gazette (1857–61), and South Australian Farm and Garden (1858–63) attest. The Sydney-based

Horticultural Magazine (1864–71) was the first Australian garden-based periodical to focus exclusively on garden-making. Newspapers provided the most scope for journalists, with gardening advice commonly published from the 1860s in the weekly newspapers such as the Australasian (1864–1946), Leader (1856–1946), Sydney Mail (1860–1938) and the Queenslander (1866–1939)—themselves offshoots of dailies such as the Argus, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Brisbane Courier—where these notes sat alongside agricultural advice for the ‘yeoman’, a conjunction apparent in contemporary periodicals such as the South Australian Garden and Field (1875–1940) and the Australian Agriculturist (1893–1925). Garden journalism in the 19th century was replete with pseudonyms and rhetorical flourishes; many articles were reprinted (and generally credited) from other Australian and overseas sources; illustrations were few until the 1870s; much was written and edited anonymously; and major contributions were from botanic garden directors, nursery proprietors and progressive voices from the horticultural fraternity. Of overseas journals, the idiomatic voice of William Robinson’s the Garden (1876– ) found a local following, but there were relatively few distinctive Australian voices. At Federation, Australia’s love of gardening showed no signs of abating. From inauspicious beginnings as the Austral Culturist in 1903, the Journal of Horticulture of Australasia (1906–11; Home and Garden Beautiful from 1911–16) captured the mood of the moment. Suburban houses on large blocks in burgeoning capital cities with extensive floral displays, shrubberies, vegetable gardens, and orchards were the desideratum of domestic bliss. Journalism in such magazines, including also the long-running Australian Garden Lover (1925–80) and Australian Home Beautiful (1925– ), was often by women. While not unknown in the 19th century, and still sometimes masked by a pseudonym, such female voices provided a major feature from the 1920s as the careers of Edna Walling and Olive Mellor, and a host of less-known contemporaries took off through their garden journalism. The introduction of radio in the 1920s led to new opportunities for Australian garden journalism. Early broadcasts were mostly confined to studio talk shows, leavened by the occasional ‘actuality’ broadcast, while the role of presenter was usually placed in the hands of an ‘experienced man’, typically with a background in the nursery trade. Magazines dispensing purely horticultural advice were soon joined by other popular titles such as Wild Life (1938–54) which, through its pioneering coverage of Australian plant gardening and stable of expert nature writers such as (Philip) Crosbie Morrison and Charles Barrett, garnered a wider audience interested in the

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gay and lesbian media Australian environment. National coverage for garden magazines was always hampered by a low population, dispersed centres of readership and widely differing climatic zones. Gardening in post-war Australia took a sharp turn, with the United States becoming the dominant influence. In the media, this was seen by the promotion of a relaxed Californian modernism. Pools, decks and patios were prominent features in new homemaker magazines such as Australian House and Garden (1948– ). Increasingly, Australian plants, bush gardens and low-maintenance planting schemes sat alongside traditional showy annuals, fruit trees and vegetable growing. The advent of full-colour printing in the 1950s and 1960s meant each new floral variety was able to be illustrated in a manner once reserved for more expensive books. With the advent of television in Australia in the late 1950s, a new mode of garden reportage emerged. Early televised broadcasts combined the radio voice with moving pictures, but increasingly the use of semi-permanent display gardens, wherein seasonal progress could be followed, and the inclusion of non-studio segments ensured that the new medium evolved into a freer and ultimately immensely popular vehicle for viewers and advertisers alike. Like radio, television was dependent on commercial cross-promotion for its lifeblood, cementing the ABC as a voice of disinterested authority. The incursion of radio and television into the traditional sphere of newspapers, magazines and journals promoted the cult of the personality. Listeners and viewers came to know and trust familiar names: from Jack (Plumridge) and Ted (Gattenby) in the 1950s, then to Kevin (Heinze) and Jane (Edmanson), and more recently Don (Burke) and Jamie (Durie). The internet has provided additional journalistic avenues, but not outstripped conventional media. Arguably the best garden journalism now appears in Australia’s daily newspapers and specialist magazines, where the exigencies of the seasonal tip and short grab can be exchanged for greater depth and wider horizons. .

REFs: R. Aitken and M. Looker (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Gardens (2002); H.M. Cohn, Australian Plants, the Garden and Botany in the Nineteenth Century Periodical (1995). RICHARD AITKEN

G AY AND L ESBI A N MEDIA Any minority group living among an unsympathetic majority, and hoping to change attitudes, needs an articulate voice. Australia’s gay and lesbian communities have been well served by their media since 1970 in attempting to win over the hearts and minds of Australians to accept new ways of perceiving homosexuality; however, other ‘dissident sexualities’, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer communities still face major challenges.

Even in the early 1970s, the main determinants of Australian attitudes to homosexuality were still the church, the law and the views of the medical profession. The various churches saw homosexuality as a sin, while the emotional and sexual lives of male homosexuals remained illegal in all states and territories. The medical profession was agonising over whether homosexuality was an abnormality, a sickness or a ‘perversion’ (innate or acquired); it still regarded ‘aversion therapy’—electric shocks delivered to the genitals of gay men—and psycho-surgery as acceptable practices for ‘curing’ homosexuals. For a ‘political’ movement built around sexual orientation, how homosexuality was handled by the media would be critical. As Dennis Altman pointed out, Australian mainstream media reporting of homosexuality or gay liberation was not particularly sympathetic, with misrepresentation, distortion or just sheer omission common. Ironically, given its conservative views today, it was only the Australian, in its early ‘liberal’ phase, that gave a reasonably objective coverage to the emerging gay movement. The first ‘gay’ publication in Australia appeared in Melbourne in 1969, when a chapter of the American lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis produced a newsletter, which continued until 1972; however, it was available only to members. In November 1970, CAMP Ink, the newsletter of the recently formed Sydney-based gay group Campaign Against Moral Persecution Inc (CAMP), came out—a very public declaration of what lesbian and gay activists saw was wrong with legal and medical impositions on their lives. With the appearance of CAMP Ink (which ran until 1977), homosexuals in Sydney and other cities in Australia had access to a magazine that provided news and relevant information from their own perspective. In 1971, Gay Times, a free bar paper, appeared in Sydney, and within another six months the first gay commercial magazine, William and John, appeared there. This pattern, of activist publications followed by free bar papers and then commercial ventures, was similar in all Australian states. In those early days, as new activist gay groups emerged with their own agendas, new publications also appeared; university groups were a major source of many gay and lesbian newsletters. Within less than a decade, a ‘gay’ media had emerged in Australia, and there were many more publications in the following decade, so that by the late 1980s there were gay and lesbian newspapers, magazines and newsletters of various groups— everything from political groups to religious groups and everything in between—available in all Australian states and territories. The emerging gay press fulfilled several critical functions in the early decades. It ensured that ‘anything, no matter how obscure, that was in any way involved with anyone or anything “homosexual” was eventually reported’. In this,

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gay and lesbian media it was probably no different from the newspapers and publications serving various ethnic communities, giving out information of interest only to that minority group. Second, it allowed a gay perspective to be presented. This had been a significant purpose behind the creation of the various community-based newspapers that emerged during the 1970s. But it is important to note that, over time, various gay perspectives have been presented, and the gay press has served as the major purveyor of these differing views. Another major role of the gay press was to help promote a sense of gay identity, and thus of a gay ‘community’. The gay press directed attention to the gay and lesbian subcultures emerging in the major cities and the increasing number of homosexual men and women who were now participating in these subcultures. Indeed, several parts of this gay press even acted quite explicitly to both foster the idea of a gay identity and help to generate a sense of community, with advertisements like ‘Think Gay, Buy Gay’. In late 1981, one article in Campaign—the first gay monthly in Australia (est. 1975)—was even entitled ‘What “Identity” Offers You’. The various arms of the emerging media also played an important role in keeping suburban and rural gays in touch with news and information of relevance to homosexuals. Today, their role is often to create a broader sense of community and culture by presenting codes of non-heterosexual behaviour to a queer audience. One recurring issue from the early days was the provision of an appropriate media for lesbians. An ongoing early criticism was that the ‘gay’ press increasingly targeted a gay male audience, as opposed to a lesbian, bisexual, transgender or broader ‘queer’ audience. Even though the various community newspapers initially might have tried to deal with issues of concern to lesbians, little was done for the other ‘dissident sexuality’ communities. Indeed, much lesbian material often appeared in publications by and for the women’s movement, where issues and relevant information were likely to be treated far more sympathetically than in the mainstream ‘gay’ press. Lesbians on the Loose, a monthly magazine that aimed to be ‘a regular source of information about what activities and resources are available’ for lesbians, first appeared in 1990. A continuing issue for the gay press is that its implicit or explicit ‘charter’ of being a ‘community voice’ is often constrained by its dependence on advertising revenue. This revenue is necessary for its survival, but can limit the extent to which it can provide ‘independent’ advocacy for or representation of the GLBTIQ community. Thus various commercial publications often had a fairly ambivalent attitude to gay politics. However, there have been several periods in which the role of the gay media has been crucial. One was in 1978, when there were major confrontations between police and gays in the

streets of Sydney at the first Mardi Gras parade. These events received enormous coverage in the mainstream Australian media—not all of it favourable—so reporting on the events from a ‘gay’ perspective was critical. It is also perhaps not insignificant that it was soon after this that a rash of new papers appeared, among them the Star (est. 1979), which became the Star Observer, still publishing today. Another period during which the gay press could not remain uninvolved was during the onset of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s. Its appearance at a time when gay men’s sexual and emotional lives were still illegal in most states meant that those most affected—gay men and their communities—were sure to be targeted. The mainstream media were decidedly unsympathetic. In this situation, the need for gay media that were able to deal objectively with the AIDS crisis was critical. Radio was another important medium in the pre-electronic era, before Twitter and Facebook and emails. It allowed those in distant places to not only access information, but also feel part of the growing community—a community not confined by contiguity or needing propinquity. Gay Waves had a weekly program on 2SER FM from 1979; today, the country’s only full-time gay radio station is JOY 94.9FM, set up in Melbourne in 1993. The trend towards privatisation that was a feature of the business world and stockmarkets in the 1980s and 1990s was mirrored in the gay and lesbian media. From early 1999, the Satellite Media Group began acquiring various gay publications around Australia, and the company was floated on the Australian Stock Exchange in November 1999. However, its spectacular collapse in 2000 severely damaged the reputation of the Australian gay and lesbian communities as places in which to invest and do business, as well as taking down much of Australia’s gay and lesbian media. Over time, some of them reappeared, often started up again by former employees of the various publications, but under different names. New players, such as Evolution Media (now Evo Media), have also entered the field. Much of the gay and lesbian print media circulated—and still circulates—interstate, with a number of free periodicals being distributed throughout the whole of Australia. Today, while print still flourishes, the growth area is the electronic media. All the major print media have their electronic versions, and there are separate purely web-based groups such as SameSame.com.au and Pinkboard.com.au. There are also gay dating services and gay sex-contact websites. In Victoria in 2013, Queer Young Thing—a first-of-its-kind Australian television show for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex youth—went to air on community station Channel 31, giving a voice and visual representation to people who are rarely seen on television.

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A healthy society needs a free and independent media, and while publications including Gay Rays and Sydney Fart were one-offs, and publications such as Gay Community News, Labrys, Green Park Observer, Lesbian News,  Gay Changes, Cruiser, Sydney Advocate, OutRage, Playguy, Canary, Libertine, 9PM, Melbourne Star Observer, Oxford Weekender News, Lesbiana, Bliss, Now, Westside Observer, Village Voice, Gay Information, Harbour City Times and Wicked Women are now defunct, the media of Australia’s various gay and lesbian communities over the last four decades have provided support, information and a sense of community, and have played an ongoing and important role in helping GLBTIQ people become an accepted part of Australian society. REFs: S. Robinson, ‘Queensland’s Queer Press’, Queensland Review, 14(2) (2007); G. Wotherspoon, City of the Plain (1991) and ‘Telling It Like It Is: The Emergence of Australia’s Gay and Lesbian Media’, in L. Featherstone, R. Jennings and R. Reynolds (eds), Acts of Love and Lust (2014). GARRY WOTHERSPOON

G E E L ONG ADVERT I S ER Part of News Limited’s regional media holdings since August 2003, this is the oldest newspaper in Victoria and the second oldest in Australia after the Sydney Morning Herald. The Advertiser started as a weekly on Saturday, 21 November 1840, serving a population of 400, and moved to daily publication in 1849. The Advertiser has maintained continuous publication ever since, with 2013 circulation of 21,291 on weekdays and 37,654 on Saturdays. Now a tabloid, it was first published as a free, four-page demi-folio weekly, printed on the second-hand press Melbourne businessman John Pascoe Fawkner (1792–1869) had used for his short-lived Melbourne Advertiser (1838), shut down because it was unregistered with NSW authorities. Fawkner commissioned scientist and inventor James Harrison (1816–93) to bring out Geelong’s first newspaper. The ‘man of ink and ice’ was editor until 1865, though with a gap of six years from late 1854. Harrison owned the Geelong Advertiser until 1861 when, overtaken by insolvency, he sold it to Alfred Douglass and Joseph De Little, with the former becoming sole owner in 1864. Refrigeration experiments, including the invention in 1856 of the world’s first ice-making machine, occupied increasing amounts of Harrison’s time. In addition, he stood successfully for office in municipal and later colonial politics. He had also overseen the launch of the bi-weekly Ballarat edition of the Advertiser—the Intelligencer, edited by his brother, Daniel—for Douglass and De Little. The Intelligencer ran from 1849 until 1851, when it was absorbed into the Advertiser to form the Geelong Advertiser and Intelligencer. By August

1856, the older newspaper had reverted to its original title. Harrison served as editor of the Advertiser under the new proprietorship until 1865, when he started a rival newspaper, the Geelong Register. In September 1866, he moved to Melbourne, where he pursued refrigeration experiments while working as editor of the Age. The Register was absorbed into the Advertiser in 1869, its second owner, Graham Berry, taking over as the first of a quick succession of Advertiser editors, while Alfred Douglass remained its proprietor until his death in October 1885. The Geelong Advertiser (known affectionately by readers as ‘the Addy’) punched well above its weight in colonial Melbourne politics. It gazetted much of the early public scrutiny of policy and planning in what became, in 1851, the separate colony of Victoria. On 7  July the same year, the Geelong Advertiser broke the story of the first gold strike at Ballarat with the headline, ‘Gold! Gold! Gold!’—announcing that ‘the long-sought treasure is at last found’. Three years later, a major newspaper libel suit was brought by Crown Prosecutor George Mackay following Harrison’s critical report of his apparent drunkenness on the Bench. As publisher of the offending material, Harrison had £800 (about $73,000) damages awarded against him, but the Geelong populace rallied and raised most of the funds in a show of local support for him. By 1925, as noted in former Advertiser editor Walter Randolph Brownhill’s The History of Geelong and Corio Bay (1955), the Advertiser had either swallowed or outlived eight rival publications. Part of the Geelong Advertiser Group— which also includes the free Geelong News (1965– ) and the Echo (published in various local editions since the 1980s)—the Advertiser outsells its Melbourne counterparts in its circulation area, covering most of southern Victoria up to Bendigo and across to the outskirts of Melbourne. More than 280,000 people live in the newspaper’s catchment, and many avidly follow the newspaper’s sponsorship and support of Geelong’s nine-time Premier AFL team, the Cats. Named the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association 2009 Newspaper of the Year (25,001–90,000), the Geelong Advertiser is a strong supporter of Geelong and its surrounds. The Geelong Advertiser’s current editor is Nick Papps and the group general manager is Wayne Buttner. It has operated from its premises in Ryrie Street, Geelong since April 1960. REFs: T.J. Bracher, ‘The Geelong Advertiser: “The Harrison Years”’ (BA Journalism thesis, 1983); E. Morrison, ‘“Grub Street Inventor”: James Harrison’s Journalism, Old and New, in Geelong, Melbourne and London’, in D. Cryle (ed.), Disreputable Profession (1997). JANINE LITTLE

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goldfields newspapers GI BS ON, GRA C E ISABEL (1905–89) Born in Texas, Grace Gibson worked as a sales executive for the Radio Transcription Company of America. 2GB’s managing director, A.E. Bennett, met her while on a buying trip to the United States and bought all of her available radio transcripts. When the programs proved to be popular and profitable, he persuaded Gibson to come to Australia in 1934 to help him set up his own transcription company. Though originally on loan for six months, Gibson stayed as managing director of American Radio Transcription Service of Australia (ARTRANSA), and became one of the most powerful women in radio. With the exception of a three-year hiatus when she was stranded in the United States during World War II, Gibson remained in Australia until her death. Returning to Australia in 1944, Gibson established Grace Gibson Radio Productions. It imported scripts from the United States, which were revised and then recorded for the Australian market. Her recipe was simple: ‘American scripts and Australian actors and producers’—and she was not flattering about the quality or speed of Australian writers. Her speciality was the ‘self-contained radio serial built around a continuing character or theme’ and she produced some of Australia’s longest running and most popular serials including Night Beat (1949–70), Dr Paul (1949–71), Dossier on Dumetrius (est. 1951) and Portia Faces Life (1954–70). Gibson was a shrewd businesswoman, and her negotiating skills were legendary. By 1957, she was reportedly the only woman director with her own radio production and distribution firm in Australia. Many programs were on-sold to Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the West Indies. Gibson and her third husband, Ronnie Parr, lived well, frequently holding large parties at their elegant penthouse in Potts Point. Part of Gibson’s success was her ability to adapt to the changing radio world: when the American scripts ran dry, she used local writers to extend the serials; and when the need for radio dramas had all but finished, due to the uptake of television, she produced five-minute radio dramas. By 1972, Grace Gibson Productions was the only company in the world producing drama for radio apart from the ABC and BBC. The company was sold in 1978, by which time it was estimated to have produced and sold around 40,000 quarter-hour episodes. The company still exists today. Gibson was awarded an OA in 1987 and a Grand Pater (Australasia Broadcasting) Award the same year. REFs: D.R. Combe, ‘Radio Serial Industry in Australia’ (PhD thesis, 1992); R. Lane, Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama (1994). TONI JOHNSON-WOODS

G O LD FIELD S N EW SP AP ER S The boom-and-bust nature of gold rushes in the Australian colonies in the 19th century typified newspaper development. The rushes brought wild, extravagant times to the colonies in the post-transportation era, and sometimes the wildest extravagances were the newspapers themselves. Three newspapers could spring up on a goldfield in less than a month, as they did at Croydon in far north Queensland in August and September 1887. Although many newspapers survived, others were as short-lived as the rush they served. ‘Miners as a class are very excitable and seldom stay long’, wrote mining journalist George Dunmore Lang. ‘The faintest rumour of fresh gold … flies to their heads at once and fairly intoxicates them.’ Newspapers established on the goldfields were more susceptible to failure than those in farming areas. In New South Wales from 1860 to 1865, 47  country newspapers were launched—many on new goldfields—but only 12 survived until 1870. One printing press was used to publish different goldfields titles successively at Lambing Flat (later Young), Burrowa (now Boorowa), Gundagai and again at Burrowa. The rushes had their biggest impact on newspaper development in Victoria in the 30 years after 1851, New South Wales in the 1860s and 1870s, Queensland in the 1870s and 1880s, and Western Australia in the 1890s and the first decade of the 20th century. One estimate was that the gold-rush era brought into existence nearly 1000 newspapers—almost six times as many as existed before the end of the 1850s. The number of newspapers published outside the capitals in the three mainland eastern states at the start of 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880 and 1890 reflected, to a significant extent, the impact of the gold rushes: Victoria 4, 33, 68, 103 and 159; New South Wales 3, 21, 46, 96 and 173; and Queensland nil, 3, 17, 40 and 69. Eight of the 11 dailies published in provincial Victoria before 1860 were in goldfields towns, and the only provincial daily in New South Wales by then was published on the Braidwood goldfield. In the 19th century, 30 dailies were published in seven Victorian goldfields towns. After gold was discovered near Bathurst, New South Wales, in May 1851, and two months later near Ballarat, Victoria, the rushes changed the face of Australian society, accelerating migration from England and America, and hastening rail and port development and the electric telegraph. Initially, newspaper development was adversely affected—especially by the rushes to Ballarat in 1851–52. Newspapers ceased publication in centres such as Geelong, Warrnambool and Adelaide as thousands of their readers and advertisers—and often members of their staff—joined the headlong rush to the goldfields. There was a positive impact on the press once more goldfields opened, at Sandhurst (Bendigo), Mount Alexander (Castlemaine), Beechworth, Ararat,

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gordon, bruce (1929– ) Stawell and other places in central Victoria, and at Araluen, Kiandra, Lambing Flat, Forbes and Grenfell in New South Wales. Newspapers sprang up to meet the emerging needs for expressing views, telling news and advertising goods and services. The papers were also used for carrying messages to and from home—the Adelaide papers were full of messages from the diggings, and vice versa, a sort of ‘lost and found’ column. The population of Victoria outstripped that of New South Wales during the 1850s, as did the number of provincial newspapers established. New South Wales did not catch Victoria, in terms of population and provincial press numbers, until the end of the 1880s. In the final decade of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, 60 newspapers sprang up in WA goldfields towns. Twelve dailies were published in five mining towns between 1894 and 1899. One, the Kalgoorlie Miner (est. 1895), is still published. The diggings were hotbeds of discontent. The Ballarat Times (1854–61) trumpeted the dissatisfactions of the diggers in 1854, and was seen as contributing to what has been termed the only civil rebellion on Australian soil, the Eureka uprising of 3 December 1854. Twenty-four diggers and five members of the government forces died. Henry Erle Seekamp, editor-owner of the Times, was imprisoned for sedition. Disturbances also occurred because of ethnic conflict. Lambing Flat was the main scene where European diggers cruelly maltreated Chinese diggers—in December 1860, and January, February, June and July 1861. On 30 June 1861, 3000 white diggers gathered at Lambing Flat in an anti-Chinese rally that led to riots and attacks on Chinese diggers, and pillaging and destruction of their property. Two ringleaders were jailed for two years. Hence the NSW government passed the Chinese Immigration Restriction and Regulation Act in 1861 to control the numbers of Chinese people migrating to the colony.

His friendship with Bruce Gyngell, TCN9’s manager, led to his next career move. In 1962, TCN9’s chairman, Sir Frank Packer, suggested Gordon as sales manager for Desilu Productions (established by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball) in Sydney. In 1968, Desilu was acquired by Paramount and Gordon was appointed managing director of Paramount International in Sydney. In 1972, he moved to New York as vice-president of Paramount International television sales, relocating the office to Bermuda in 1985. Gordon retired from Paramount in 1997 and the following year was awarded one of the television industry’s highest accolades, the Nymphe d’Honneur at the Monte Carlo Television Festival. While living in New York in 1979, Gordon decided to buy into regional television in Australia and acquired a controlling share of the Wollongong-based WIN4 from Rupert Murdoch. Gordon observed that this deal involved a ‘whole weekend argument’ before the price was agreed upon, with Murdoch receiving Gordon’s shares in Sydney’s 0–10 as part of the bargain. By 2009, Gordon’s WIN regional television network reportedly reached 42 per cent of Australia’s 8.5 million homes. WIN’s interests included 27 television stations, radio broadcasting, pay television, film and television production, and control of the new youth-oriented digital channel GO! In 2005, Business Review Weekly (BRW) estimated Gordon’s personal wealth at $1.3 billion. Gordon has continued to maintain a keen interest in the Wollongong-based WIN Corporation. By 2010, he was deputy chairman of the board alongside executive chairman Andrew Gordon (his son by a first marriage), his second wife, Judith, and their daughter, Genevieve. In 2013, Gordon’s 14 per cent stake in Network Ten became a key factor in the rival Nine Entertainment Co. bid to retain cricket broadcast rights.

REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000) and The Bold Type (2010). ROD KIRKPATRICK

REFs: ‘Australia’s WIN Television Celebrates its 30th anniversary’, Video Age International (October 2009); S. Washington, ‘Rich 200 Profile—Under the Radar’, BRW, 19–25 May 2005. SUE TURNBULL and STEPHANIE HANSON

G O R DON, BRUCE (1929– ) Bruce Gordon left Cleveland Boys High School in Sydney at the age of 14 to join the Gang Show, a troupe of Boy Scouts performing around Australia. His show, Bruce Gordon’s Magical Moments, was booked by Sydney’s Tivoli Circuit Theatre in 1952, and Gordon was subsequently employed to handle the theatre’s advertising and promotions, then stage, house and business management. Gordon was appointed business manager for the theatre’s regional circuit chain, handling productions such as West Side Story. On his interstate trips, Gordon became aware of the threat posed to regional theatre by television.

GOS S IP COL UMNS see celebrity; social pages

G O TTLIEB SEN , R O B ER T (1941– ) Having joined Melbourne’s Herald in 1959 as an 18-year-old general cadet, reporting police rounds, radio, racing and football, Robert Gottliebsen began a storied career in finance when he was transferred to the business section, then poached by the Age. After a year with (Sir) Frank Packer’s failed Australian Financial Times, he spent two years with the Sydney Morning Herald before returning to Melbourne

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government printing as the bureau chief of the Australian Financial Review (AFR). Gottliebsen succeeded in reviving the AFR, recently hamstrung by mass defections to the new Australian, through a series of scoops about BHP, Australia’s largest company but among its most inscrutable. His trademark became the informative but breezy corporate profile accessible to the lay reader. For five years from 1969, the headiest days of the Poseidon boom, Gottliebsen worked with the high-flying stockbroking firm Patricks, although he also contributed anonymously to the Bulletin’s celebrated ‘Wildcat’ column. He rejoined the AFR in June 1974 as it was about to go daily, inaugurating its enduring ‘Chanticleer’ column: entertaining, well-informed and strewn with personalities, it was read by professionals and retail investors alike. He won a Walkley Award in 1976 and the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year in 1977. Handing ‘Chanticleer’ on to Alan Kohler in 1980, Gottliebsen became the founding editor of Business Review Weekly (BRW, 1981–2013) when it was devised as an insert for the National Times to counter Kerry Packer’s new fortnightly Australian Business (1980–91), then redesigned as a stand-alone title. After three years, he stepped back from editorial responsibilities to work as a writer, and to help found BRW’s successful stablemates, Personal Investment (est. 1983) and Shares (1996), which later merged. He also became a popular broadcaster with the ABC, hosting Business Daily on ABC Asia Pacific. From 2000, Gottliebsen was business commentator for the Australian. In 2007, he joined Kohler at the pioneering Business Spectator website and became its most-read columnist. REF: Personal information from R. Gottliebesen. GIDEON HAIGH

GOVERNME NT PRINTING Before Federation in 1901, the printing of official records, statutes, ordinances, electoral rolls and general jobbing work was the responsibility of government printers who were appointed by colonial governments. Prior to this, various private printing businesses undertook ‘official’ work, sometimes as self-proclaimed government printers. George Howe was appointed government printer by Governor John Hunter around 1800, remaining in the position until his death in 1821. Curiously, Howe was also allowed to pursue private work, which included his publication of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1803. The New South Wales Government Printing Office was formally established by Governor Sir George Gipps in 1840, and operated from a building at Phillip and Bent Streets, Sydney. New premises were designed and built in Ultimo in 1959. Here the office remained until its

closure in 1989, when government printing was contracted to private companies. In 1851, Victoria became a separate colony and gold was discovered at Ballarat. That same year, the Victorian Government Printing Office was established by the Lieutenant-Governor, Charles La Trobe. In November 1851, John Ferres, previously manager of the Melbourne Herald, was appointed government printer. A large, three-storey dedicated printing office was completed in 1858 on a site behind the Treasury and Parliament buildings. After Ferres’ death in 1887, management of the Government Printing Office was passed on to his nephew, R.S. Brain. From 1901 until his own death five years later, Brain held the joint positions of federal and Victorian government printer. After Federation, the federal parliament and many departments of the federal government were based in Melbourne, pending a decision about the location of the national capital. Responsibility for both Victorian and federal printing requirements was held by the Federal and Victorian Government Printing Offices. To cope with the new government’s incredibly high demands for printing, large contracts were let for the supply of machinery and materials. Under a formal agreement, each office was to purchase its own paper and consumables. Each office would also purchase its own machinery, which was shared for the duration, and Victoria hired the staff. In 1927, the transfer of federal government departments and personnel to Canberra began. In June 1927, 86 male employees and 15 female bookbinders were transferred to Canberra to initiate the Commonwealth Government Printing Office. From 1906, Herbert Green supervised government printing for both Victoria in Melbourne and for the Commonwealth in Canberra until L.F. Johnston assumed sole responsibility as Commonwealth Government Printer in 1929. A new modern plant began operation in 1963, with 600 personnel. Hansard and many other publications and reports were phototypeset and printed on modern high-speed offset presses. The Commonwealth Government Style Manual was first published in 1966. This manual was and still remains an important reference for authors, editors and printers. It is currently in its sixth edition. Seven government printers had occupied the office by the time Frank Atkinson was promoted to the position in 1972. Atkinson was a qualified compositor, a technical education teacher and had completed an Honours degree in commerce. He resigned the position in 1977 to become Victoria’s government printer. The Australian Government Publishing Service (AGPS) was established in 1970 under the recommendations of the Erwin Committee on Parliamentary and Government Publications.

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grant family The Commonwealth Government Printing Office later became a part of the organisational structure of the AGPS. Both continued to serve the government for many years until they were privatised in 1997 and replaced by an authority with individual departments having the power to outsource their own printing. The Victorian Government Printing Office moved to modern premises in Macaulay Road, North Melbourne in 1961, but was abolished in 1997. Government printing offices in Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland were similarly responsible for official printed material; however, as in the cases of New South Wales and Victoria, government printing eventually became the realm of contractual arrangements with private firms. REFs: T.A. Darragh, Printer and Newspaper Registrations in Victoria, 1838–1924 (1997); D. Hauser, Printers of the Streets and Lanes of Melbourne (1837–1975) (2006). DON HAUSER

G R A NT FAMI LY In 1942, Walter J. Grant (1904–61) became a major shareholder in Western Broadcasters Pty Ltd, which owned the licence for 2DU Dubbo. A Scottish-born engineer who had worked at 2KY Sydney, Grant had helped found 2LT Lithgow in 1939. He waged an ultimately successful campaign for an increase in 2DU’s transmitter power, ensuring that 2DU was one of the regional stations heard furthest across New South Wales. R.G. Osborne, an Australian Broadcasting Control Board chairman, remarked that ‘Wally’ ‘really understood country broadcasting’; in just one day in 1944, 2DU raised £101,070 for the Second Victory Loan, and in the 1954–55 floods, 2DU became a vital link in communications. Remembered by Osborne as a most ‘entertaining character’, Grant also served as an alderman on Dubbo Council. However, a consortium with which 2DU was involved in 1959 failed to secure a television licence. After Grant’s death, his widow, Christine, served as managing director of Western Broadcasters until 1972, and then chairman until 1977. Their daughter, Janet M. Cameron (1938– ), formerly a teacher, became managing director, and her husband, Dugald, chairman. By 1986 Grant Broadcasters Pty Ltd also owned radio stations in Mudgee, Nowra and Parkes. Then, in what Janet Cameron described as ‘the worst decision I ever made’, the company sold three stations, keeping only 2ST Nowra. This was a time of acute uncertainty in the broadcasting industry, and Cameron accepted a lucrative offer for most of her company. Soon regretting the decision, Grant Broadcasters bought stations in Muswellbrook, Bega, Wollongong, Bendigo, Geelong, Mildura, Murray Bridge and Darwin. In 1990, Cameron became a founding shareholder in, and director

of, Sea FM. Her experience with a listed company was not a happy one. Describing herself as a ‘plain-vanilla kind of person’, she was irritated by analysts who were always urging new, ‘sexy’ purchases. When Sea FM was taken over in 1996, Grant Broadcasters banked a healthy profit. Cameron concentrated on building up her family company, taking advantage of new rules allowing broadcasters in regional areas to acquire second licences, and buying nine Tasmanian stations in 2000. The company was now worth $125 million, and Janet’s three children occupied executive positions in it, with Grant and Dugald Cameron Junior looking after the Sydney and Melbourne operations, and Alison O’Neil the chief financial officer. Janet Cameron also served as the first female president of the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (now Commercial Radio Australia) in 1985–86. In 2009, Grant Broadcasters entered into a joint venture with Kevin Blyton’s Capital Radio Network; in 2011, it purchased former Fairfax Media radio assets; and in 2013, it acquired Prime Media’s 10 radio stations in Queensland. This meant that Cameron’s network had interests in every state and territory. It is also involved with the Radio Sales Network and operates narrowcasting licences supported by tourism organisations. REFs: Australian, 22 September 2008; M. Dormer, Dubbo (1988); SMH, 25 May 1996. BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

G R ATTAN , M IC H ELLE (1944– ) Michelle Grattan is a highly regarded and distinguished political reporter with a career spanning more than four decades. She has worked as a reporter and editor for four significant Fairfax Media newspapers since 1970. In 2013, she left the Melbourne Age to take up a professorial fellowship at the University of Canberra while also holding the position of associate editor (politics) and chief political correspondent for the independent online news website The Conversation. She also continues to commentate on the ABC’s Radio National Breakfast program and other television news programs. After studying politics at the University of Melbourne, Grattan joined the Age in 1970. A year later, she joined the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. She was the Age chief political correspondent from 1976 to 1993. Grattan became the first female editor of a metropolitan daily newspaper in Australia when she was appointed editor of the Canberra Times in 1993, before returning to the Age in 1995 as political editor. She then joined the Australian Financial Review as a columnist and senior writer in 1996. In 1999, she was appointed chief political correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, then returned to the Age again in 2002 as political editor.

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groom family The industry has long recognised the quality of Grattan’s political journalism. She was awarded the prestigious Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year in 1988 and noted as ‘a pre-eminent political reporter’. In 2004, she was appointed AO for her distinguished service to Australian journalism, and in 2006 she received the Walkley Award for Journalism Leadership. In 2008, Grattan shared the Melbourne Press Club Lifetime Achievement Award with Laurie Oakes for outstanding political correspondence over the past 40 years. Grattan has been outspoken about what she has perceived as a decline in journalistic standards, and the problems of media concentration. In a public lecture in 1995, she lamented that newspapers often failed to produce ‘first-rate’ journalism, ‘the kind that tells people what they would not otherwise know, tweaks the tails of the power wielders, turns over rocks to stir the dark life beneath’, and that they ‘don’t quite know how to handle a future they can’t quite envisage’. In her book Editorial Independence: An Outdated Concept? (1998), she criticised the ascendancy of commercialisation in Australian newspapers. In a public lecture on the same topic, she argued that the country’s newspapers were under the control of two major operations—News Limited and John Fairfax Holdings—and that Rupert Murdoch’s company, News Corporation, had such vast global interests that ‘no day can pass when one bit of the empire is not faced with the task of reporting on another section of the empire’. Grattan wrote Back on the Wool Track (2004) and has co-authored a number of books, including Can Ministers Cope? with Patrick Weller (1981); 31 Days to Power with Robert Haupt (1983); Reformers with Margaret Bowman (1989) and Managing Government with Fred Gruen (1993), as well as two edited collections, Reconciliation and Australian Prime Ministers (both 2000). LOUISE NORTH

GREENW OOD, IRENE ADELAIDE (1898–1992) Born Irene Driver in Albany, Western Australia, Irene Greenwood’s interests in feminism and the peace movement were formed through her mother’s involvement with women’s organisations. After attending Perth Modern School and working as a secretary, Irene married Albert Greenwood in 1920 and moved to Broome. The family relocated to Sydney in 1930, and Irene began speaking out on social justice and feminist issues in the Domain. She made lifelong friends among the feminist activists in her milieu. To support her family, Irene began broadcasting on radio. In 1935, the family returned to Perth, where Irene’s weekly ABC broadcast commented on international news from a women’s perspective. In 1945, a new position of women’s broadcaster

with the ABC was created, but Irene was overlooked in favour of Catherine King. Although they were good friends they became competitors in the same market when, in 1948, Irene began a daily women’s radio program, Woman to Woman, on the Whitford Network. Irene fully documented the success of this commercial radio work, maintaining files of running scripts, interview transcripts with guests and correspondence files from listeners. In 1954, Greenwood presented Books Worth Reading, sponsored by a Perth bookshop. Irene had a lifelong need to comment in print. She was a regular contributor to letters to the editor columns—in particular to the West Australian. She ‘wore out’ five typewriters and had correspondence with successive prime ministers from John Curtin on. Irene received numerous awards for her considerable achievements, including being appointed OAM, the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate at Murdoch University, the United Nations Association of Australia Silver Peace Medal, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Medal and appointment to the National Advisory Committee on Women’s Affairs in 1974. The flagship of the Western Australian state fleet, MV Irene Greenwood, was also named in her honour. Irene died in 1992, following a stroke that had left her frustratingly speechless in a nursing home. REF: I. Greenwood Collection, Murdoch University Library. GRANT STONE

G R O O M FAM ILY For Henry Littleton Groom (1860–1926), the day that the Toowoomba Chronicle (est. 1861) passed from the hands of the Groom family, after 46 years, into the hands of the Dunn family was the saddest of his life. The newspaper for which he had gradually become the managerial backbone in the 1880s and 1890s before formally becoming managing director in 1901 had slipped from the family’s grasp because of the secret decision of one family member. William Henry Groom (1833–1901), ex-convict, storekeeper, politician and five-time mayor of Toowoomba, bought an interest in the Chronicle in 1874 and became the sole proprietor in 1876. He invigorated the paper, which had been struggling against its rival, the Darling Downs Gazette. Groom held a seat for Drayton and Toowoomba in the Queensland Legislative Assembly almost continuously from 1862 until his election to the first federal parliament in 1901. In August 1901, he became the first federal MP to die in office. Groom relinquished his sole proprietorship in 1900, when W.H. Groom & Sons Ltd was formed. Three of Groom’s sons—Henry, Fred and William—ran the newspaper business after his death in 1901, and a fourth son, Littleton

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grundy organisation Ernest, won his father’s federal parliamentary seat and served with distinction for 34 years. He was knighted in 1924. In Toowoomba, Henry was in charge at the newspaper, and he made it a daily in April 1906. He was a member of the Queensland Legislative Council (1906–22), and president of the Queensland Country Press Association (1912–23). He continued his day-to-day administration of the Chronicle’s affairs, but in his absence squabbling and bickering emerged among the Groom brothers. William Groom, the newspaper’s accountant, disregarded his father’s wish that the family should not sell the Chronicle. He held power of attorney, and is said to have secretly arranged the sale of the newspaper in June 1922 to Andrew Dunn and family, who owned dailies in Rockhampton, Maryborough and Warwick. Having effectively lost his inheritance, William Henry George Groom (1900–84), a son of H.L. Groom, forged a wide-ranging journalism career in Toowoomba, Maryborough, Brisbane, Longreach, Melbourne and Bundaberg before establishing a small group of newspapers based in Innisfail, and including Atherton and Cairns. He published his Innisfail paper daily from 1940 to 1973. A sister, Marion Flora (Dolly), and a brother, Spencer David, worked with him at Innisfail. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘The Chronicle: Groomed to Survive’, in B. Hinchliffe (ed.), They Meant Business (1984). Rod Kirkpatrick

G R U NDY ORGANI S ATION The Grundy Organisation was the second of three companies owned and operated by Australian television production mogul Reginald Roy Grundy, AC, OBE (1923– ). It was established in 1979 as a springboard for the international expansion of the company, and became a successful transnational empire. Born in Sydney, Reg Grundy joined commercial radio in the 1940s as a sporting commentator and time salesman. He developed a radio game show, Wheel of Fortune, which he took to TCN9 in 1959 as an independent producer who would ‘package’ a television version of the quiz show for the station. Following a trend in Hollywood and US network television, Grundy incorporated himself as a company, Reg Grundy Enterprises, thereby achieving considerable tax savings. The 36-year-old worked as both host and producer on the television version of Wheel of Fortune, just as he had with the radio version. This show itself was Grundy’s own invention; however, the new ‘packager’ soon discovered that he did not have the time or capacity to develop new quiz programs. Instead, realising that US network television could serve as a ready source of new quiz show ideas, Grundy began visiting the United States to source attractive

formats for adapting and remaking back in Australia. During the 1960s, Reg Grundy twice suffered the simultaneous cancellation of all his shows, but by 1970 he had rebounded. His Australian television production empire grew apace. To safeguard itself against program cancellation, it stepped up its quiz show output and brought in independent producers to make drama series, telemovies and children’s fiction. It also added a very successful drama serial division, which produced hits like The Young Doctors, The Restless Years, Prisoner, Sons and Daughters and Neighbours. Beginning in 1980, the company began to move offshore, bankrolled by the cash flow from its Australian operation. Television systems internationally were undergoing multiplication, commercialisation and, in the case of public service broadcasters, privatisation. A US production office was set up in 1979 and Grundy sold several game shows to the US networks for their daytime line-up. One of the most successful of these was Sale of the Century, a US-originated quiz show that the company copied as early as 1970, and that it would later purchase outright and remake in more than a dozen different territories. The Grundy US operation also found itself devising other quiz and game shows, some of which became US network programs while other versions were remade in other territories. However, although Grundy was personally committed to success there, the US network market closed up. The rise of talk shows squeezed opportunities to sell quiz shows. Moreover, Dangerous Women—a US spin-off of his groundbreaking and iconic Australian soap opera Prisoner that he financed himself—did poorly. The company, now known as Grundy World Wide outside Australia (where it continued as the Grundy Organisation), fared much better in the United Kingdom, Western Europe, South America and parts of Asia. Altogether, it produced quiz and drama in more than 20 countries, generating considerable wealth. In 1995, Grundy sold the company to the UK Pearson Television group for A$380 million. It was one of 20 company acquisitions by the group, which eventually was bought out by the German Bertelsmann Group, adopting the name FremantleMedia. The Australian branch plant of the conglomerate was known as Grundy Television from 1995 to 2005 but eventually adopted the name of the parent operation. Why did Reg Grundy sell? He was 72 years of age at the time, had no heirs to carry on the business (he was estranged from his only daughter), and achieved an excellent price with himself still at the company helm. He probably continued to smart from the US disappointment, and realised that he did not have the means to turn his company into a mega conglomerate through merger and acquisition.

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gyngell, bruce (1929–2000) Grundy has four claims to continuing significance. First, he was among the first Australian independent program ‘packagers’ and the only Australian television producer to take his business offshore, becoming an important international media presence in the process. Second, he amassed a sizeable fortune in the course of his production career. Third, he brought soap opera to Western Europe for the first time, so that some of his programs, originals and remakes were still on air after more than 20 years in production. Finally, he helped to pioneer and develop a program format industry that has changed the face of television across the world. REFs: R. Grundy, Reg Grundy (2010); A. Moran, TV Format Mogul (2012). ALBERT MORAN

GYNGEL L , BRUCE (1929–2000) Bruce Gyngell was a towering figure among Australia’s television pioneers. As manager of TCN9, he won instant fame on 16 September 1956 as presenter of the nation’s first live telecast, launching the Sydney station with the words ‘Good evening and welcome to television’. He was a showman, setting high creative standards for the fledgling industry with his innovative programming and promotional techniques. The press proprietors who controlled commercial television generally regarded it as secondary to their newspaper interests. With chief executive Ken G. Hall, Gyngell set out to win the resources and independence needed for the development of the new medium. Gyngell’s battles with Sir Frank Packer, owner of TCN9 and GTV9 Melbourne, were legendary. In 1969, he quit after Packer insisted on dictating the music to be played on the popular Sound of Music. As managing director of the rival Seven Network, Gyngell went on a buying spree and masterminded an aggressive publicity campaign

that catapulted it to ratings supremacy. Gaining international recognition, he would spend much of the 1970s and 1980s moving between the United Kingdom and the United States in senior management and consultancy roles. In 1977, the Fraser Coalition government persuaded him to become the first chairman of the newly formed Australian Broadcasting Tribunal, where his controversial reforms included the introduction of public licence-renewal hearings. In 1980, he agreed to oversee the start of SBS Television, where he resisted political pressure to devote the new channel almost entirely to foreign-language programs catering to the various ethnic communities, and decreed that the evening news bulletins must always be in English. He also made sure that foreign-language programs were subtitled. However, his policy was for programs to be presented by people from non-Anglo backgrounds. From 1984, Gyngell was managing director of Yorkshire Television after Kerry Packer bought into the company. He returned to Australia in 1993 as executive chairman of the Nine Network. That year, he delivered the inaugural Henry Mayer Lecture in Sydney. Many Australians know Gyngell only as the first face on television. He appeared that night by sheer chance when a technical glitch disrupted plans for transmission from another location. What purports to be a recording of the historic moment is really a recreation filmed a year later. It was the least significant of his many contributions to television. Gyngell’s son, David, was CEO of the Nine Network in 2004–05, returning to the role in 2010. REFs: D. Ritch, interview with B. Gyngell, 1983 (NLA); G. Stone, Compulsive Viewing (2001). GERALD STONE

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H H A L L , EDWARD SMI T H (1786–1860) Edward Smith Hall arrived in Sydney as a free settler in 1811. He attempted various careers, including farming, merchant, bank cashier and coroner. He was a prominent member of society, leading calls for the introduction of trial by jury, representative government and a House of Assembly. A deeply religious man from an Evangelical background, he was a founder of the NSW Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Benevolence, which later became the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, and involved himself in humanitarian and charity work. He had an unflinching belief in the application of the rights of Englishmen to all deserving individuals, whatever their status. These beliefs and principles were behind his founding of the colony’s third newspaper, the Monitor, in 1826. In its first issue, he outlined his intention of focusing on the cause of ‘the injured and oppressed, high or low, bond or free’. To achieve this, Hall intended to keep a close eye on the activities of those in authority. This quickly brought him into conflict with Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling, who had arrived in the colony in 1825 with orders to improve convict discipline. Soon he was fielding criticisms from Hall regarding mistreatment of convicts and other perceived injustices. Unused to such attacks, Darling sought to stifle press freedom by imposing a tax on newspapers. This was strenuously opposed by Hall, and ultimately disallowed by London, further increasing the enmity between the men. Darling then strengthened libel laws, leading to Hall’s imprisonment in 1829, but he continued to write from his cell. Hall edited the Monitor for 14 years, the only person at the time to remain in such a position for so long, meaning that his published views provide a valuable insight into a continuous stream of thinking regarding not only convicts but all aspects of colonial society. After leaving the Monitor in 1840, Hall briefly edited the Australian, and reportedly was involved with (Sir) Henry Parkes’ Empire in the 1850s. He never entered politics or any other form of official public life, and therefore his importance has often been overlooked. Despite this, in 1891 Parkes declared that ‘all

Australia can never adequately thank that singular pioneer in the cause of civil liberty, Mr. Edward Smith Hall’. REF: E. Ihde, A Manifesto for New South Wales (2004). ERIN IHDE

H AR R IS FAM ILY Robert Harris (1829–1904) became the patriarch of a four-generation newspaper dynasty in north-west Tasmania. He was a baby when he sailed for Australia with his convict mother in January 1831. He was apprenticed to printer Henry Dowling at the Launceston Advertiser in October 1845. He married in July 1853 and produced two sons, both of whom followed in the printing trade, and three daughters. Harris launched the Auction-Mart Advertiser in January 1863, renaming it the Launceston Times in July 1864. In June 1869, he bought the Cornwall Chronicle, made it a tri-weekly and incorporated his Launceston Times into it. He also introduced a weekly that, in February 1871, he and partner Thomas Cook Just renamed the Tasmanian. Harris sold his Launceston newspapers to Just in June 1871 and continued as a commercial printer. In Victoria on 28 September 1875, he launched the Colac Times in competition with the bi-weekly Colac Herald, but moved to Wellington in July 1878 to become head printer at the New Zealand News. He returned to Australia in 1881 and worked at the Melbourne Argus for nine years. His younger son, Charles James (1864–1913), served a printing apprenticeship in New Zealand. At the end of 1883, he briefly joined his father at the Argus before working as a journalist and manager on newspapers in Brisbane, Townsville and Sydney. He joined the Launceston Daily Telegraph where he became managing editor of the weekly Colonist. Encouraged by the mining boom in western Tasmania, Robert Harris enticed his sons to Burnie to launch the bi-weekly Wellington Times, which became the Emu Bay Times in November 1897. The family business was incorporated in 1894 with Charles in control; his father and brother ran the commercial printing and commercial side of the business.

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health and medical reporting The Harris company launched the North Western Advocate in Devonport in January 1899, and made it a daily five months later. They amalgamated it with the Emu Bay Times on 13 November 1899, with the North Western Advocate taking precedence but with Burnie becoming the publication centre. The North Western Advocate became the Advocate from 2 December 1918. Three of Charles’s sons—Russell Charles (1892–1935), Selby Upton (1894–1967) and Leonard Burnie (1890–1964)—ran the paper from 1913 to 1963. The fourth generation—Selby’s son, Geoffrey Philip (1917–98) and Leonard’s sons, Charles Ian (1916–92), Lloyd John (1921– ) and Warren James (1924–2000)—took over until the beginning of the 1990s. Geoffrey’s son, Paul Geoffrey (1948– ), replaced his father as managing director in 1991. From 1967 to the late 1970s, the Advocate fought off a bid by the Launceston Examiner to grab half of its rival’s readers. In 1990, Harris and Company Ltd (40 per cent) and Rural Press Limited (60 per cent) acquired the Launceston Examiner for $30 million. At the end of 2003, Rural Press took over Harris and Company and became part of Fairfax Media in May 2007. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, interview with L. Harris (2003); K. Pink, And Wealth for Toil (1990). ROD KIRKPATRICK

HARVEY, RONALD STUART (1916–88) A reader described Ronald Harvey as ‘an editorial beacon in [Queensland’s] sea of corruption and mismanagement’. The long-time editor of Bundaberg’s News-Mail (1960–81), Harvey began his journalism career as a cadet on the Bundaberg Daily Times (1934–38), before working in Grafton and Hobart, interspersed with four years of war service. He returned to Bundaberg in mid-1960, at the helm of the News-Mail, the paper against which his father, William James Harvey, as chairman of the Bundaberg Daily Times (1926–38), had fought so hard. Ronald Harvey became known for the independence and fairness of his editorials, his meticulous research and his careful use of language. He believed only a free and unrestrained press could effectively expose deception in government. Harvey read extensively on the Vietnam War and opposed US and then Australian involvement. As early as June 1970, he was attacking Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s approach to the unions. Bundaberg Council disliked Harvey, largely because his column whipped up opposition to any council schemes he thought were not in the public interest. His main encouragement came from unknown readers, who complimented him even when they did not agree with him. It would take Harvey about 90 minutes each day to write one

of his leading articles. He wrote them at home, and spent ‘hours in preparation’. He felt his most important leaders were on local issues. In the judgement of the chairman of the local irrigation committee, E.H. Churchward, the News-Mail and its editor played an invaluable role in helping to establish the Bundaberg district irrigation scheme. Under Harvey’s editorship, the newspaper won the Bowater Award for the best regional daily in Queensland in 1970, 1974 and 1977. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Editorial Beacon Shines in State’s Sea of Corruption’, PANPA Bulletin (March 2001); R. Kirkpatrick, interviews with R.S. Harvey, 16 May 1979, and P.W.J. Harvey 10 March 1992. ROD KIRKPATRICK

H EALTH AN D M ED IC AL R EP O R TIN G The birth of medical journalism in Australia can be attributed to an article on smallpox written by the Principal Colonial Surgeon, Dr Thomas Jamison, published in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on 14 October 1804. In the early days of the Australian press, medical advertising was a key source of revenue and contention. One criticism was that advertisements and columns promoting ‘quack’ remedies were often difficult to distinguish from news stories. By 1920, the Sydney Morning Herald directed all medical advertisements to a doctor, and would not accept any from unqualified persons. Health and medical issues were often topics of exposés. Truth’s exposure of quackery in the 1940s and 1950s involved reporters disguising themselves as patients with bogus complaints. In 1946, the Melbourne Herald published one of the first investigations into the state of psychiatric hospitals, which involved a journalist disguising himself as a doctor. In the 1920s, the Citizens’ Liberty League’s use of newspapers to criticise psychiatry drew attention to wrongful commitment. Newspapers and magazines began to include specialised sections on health issues and advice columns involving medical experts in the 1920s. The Australian Woman’s Mirror (1924–61) often discussed health-related topics, and by 1929 women’s pages in the Sunday press included health and beauty care. The Sydney Morning Herald initiated its own ‘Tell Me, Doctor’ column in the 1940s. Between 1941 and 1952, Woman employed Dr Norman Haire (aka ‘Wykeham Terriss’) as a sex education columnist. From 1960 to 1969, a semi-regular section in the Australian Women’s Weekly included advice articles reprinted from American Medical Association publications, and since the 1970s the magazine has hosted several columns dealing with health. Today, most capital city newspapers employ specialist health or medical reporters and editors.

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health and medical reporting While Dr Haire’s columns on sex in women’s magazines escaped the eye of the censors, his advocacy of greater use of contraception in a 1944 debate on ABC Radio led parliament to decide he should be denied access to the ABC. The battle over sex education broadcasts continued from 1944 to 1946, with the Postmaster-General banning broadcasts on venereal disease and sex. ABC broadcasts on tuberculosis were also censored in 1948 and 1953. Radio broadcasting on health has a long history. By the late 1920s, 2KY Sydney was broadcasting on health topics and by the 1930s health professionals were participating. Between the 1940s and 1960s, various health-related programs were broadcast on commercial radio. In 1956, physician Major-General (Sir) Frank Kingsley Norris presented a series of health talks nationally on the ABC. In 1966, 2GB Sydney Sydney began At Your Service, an hour-long program in which experts responded to listeners’ questions. ABC Radio’s Hospital Half Hour was first broadcast in 1938 and in 1966 became the Hospital Hour, hosted by Garry Ord. The program finished in 1975. In 1967, Dr Earle Hackett (acting chairman of the ABC in 1975) broadcast the first of a series of health talks and went on to host ABC’s The Body Programme in the 1970s. Dr John Knight (‘Dr James Wright’) was a prominent radio and television doctor in the 1980s, who continues to broadcast a daily health tip on commercial radio as well as providing online medical advice. Specialist commercial radio health programs include 2UE’s Healthy Living with Dr Ross Walker and 3AW’s Talking Health with Dr Sally Cockburn (‘Dr Feelgood’), both of which are syndicated. ABC Radio National broadcasts The Health Report (1985– ) with Dr Norman Swan and All in the Mind with Natasha Mitchell. The arrival of television expanded opportunities for public health education and ‘infotainment’. Television news and current affairs programs routinely broadcast medical ‘breakthrough’ and ‘scare’ stories. The ABC’s Bodyshow series (1988) is believed to be the first program dedicated to health on Australian television. A 1998 ABC series, Too Much Medicine, raised questions about the practices and commercialisation of medicine. Health- and lifestyle-related topics have also been the focus of programs such as Network Ten’s Healthy, Wealthy and Wise (1992–98) and the Nine Network’s Good Medicine (1997–2001) and What’s Good for You (2006–09). Other shows include Beyond 2000 (1985–99) and ABC’s Quantum (1985–2001) and Catalyst (2001–  ). Norman Swan also hosted Health Dimensions on ABC in 2001 and currently hosts Tonic on ABC News 24. Dr John D’Arcy has a regular segment on the Seven Network’s Sunrise and occasionally reports for Today Tonight in addition to his syndicated radio programs Health Check and Health Matters.

The turn of the century saw several new health magazine launches. Titles include Nature and Health (launched as a newsletter in 1979 and a bi-monthly magazine in 1994), Wellbeing (1984– ), Women’s Health & Fitness (1994– ), Good Medicine (1998– , now Good Health) and Men’s Health (1997– ). Specialist magazines targeting specific conditions include Diabetic Living (2005– ) and Heart Healthy Living (2006–10), which continues as HeartHealthyOnline.com. In 1998, News Limited’s Sunday papers began publishing the Body & Soul supplement, and in 2011, the Sun-Herald launched S.Well. Online and social media have also created new opportunities to disseminate health information. Another arm of publishing includes journals for medical practitioners, the first of which was the Australian Medical Journal (1846–47). A series of journals came and went before two were amalgamated in 1914 to form the Medical Journal of Australia. Medical magazines include Australian Doctor (1984– ) and Medical Observer (1987– ), both of which incorporate considerable pharmaceutical advertising. A notable example of online news and current affairs reporting is Croakey, which emerged in 2008 out of collaboration between public health advocates and Crikey. ABC Health & Wellbeing (started as Health Matters in 2002) is the online gateway to health and medical content on ABC Radio and Television, while The Pulse (2004– ) is an online weekly health and medical news column. Health and medical reporting has been recognised with numerous Walkley Awards, including Best News Story in 1961 to the Brisbane Courier-Mail’s Arthur Richards for his exposure of the poor state of Queensland’s public hospitals and in 1970 to Truth journalist Evan Whitton for his exposure of an abortion racket scandal. The West Australian’s Catherine Martin won four Walkleys, including the inaugural Gold Walkley (1978) for her investigation into mesothelioma and other asbestos-related diseases among mine workers. Martin also won eight media awards from the Australian Medical Association. In 1982, Kerry O’Brien won the Gold Walkley and the award for Best Television Current Affairs Report for his ATN7 documentary on the health effects of widely used chemicals. The 1986 Radio News Report award went to the ABC’s Gavin Gilchrist for his exposure of medical fraud and in 1987 a team at 2MMM won the award for Best Radio Current Affairs Report for a story about AIDS. Norman Swan won the 1988 Gold Walkley for his investigation into allegations of medical fraud against Dr William McBride. Doubts persist about the adequacy of lay media as a forum for the discussion of complex medical issues. Problems with reporting include a lack of accuracy, hype about the impact of new treatments, and failure to exercise scepticism. Several initiatives have been developed to

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herald and weekly times monitor and improve coverage. In April 2001, the Australian Press Council issued a guideline for the print media’s reporting of health and medical matters. In 2002, resource kits for reporting suicide and mental illness were made available to journalists and journalism educators as part of the Commonwealth government’s Mindframe National Media Initiative. REFs: A. Bashford and C. Strange, ‘Public Pedagogy: Sex Education and Mass Communication in the Mid-Twentieth Century’, Jnl of the History of Sexuality, 13(1) (2004); P. Martyr, Paradise of Quacks (2002); R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (1976). KATE HOLLAND

HENDERSON, RUPERT ALBERT GEARY (1896–1986) The Sydney-based Fairfax family maintained its pre-eminence in the newspaper industry in New South Wales during the 20th century, and also transformed itself into a national multimedia conglomerate by acquiring commercial television and radio licences and interstate newsprint media. The chief architect of this dramatic expansion was not a member of the family, but the company’s shrewd business manager, Rupert Henderson. Born in inner-city Sydney, Henderson was driven by the belief that John Fairfax & Sons needed to expand and move with the times. Starting as a cadet reporter on the Sydney Morning Herald in 1915, and after several editorial promotions, Henderson quickly rose to become general manager of Fairfax in 1938, then managing director in 1949. He was appointed chairman of Australian Associated Press (AAP) in 1940, president of the Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association in 1942 and Australian trustee of Reuters in 1952. In 1951, he launched the Australian Financial Review to challenge a rival publication from (Sir) Frank Packer. Henderson took Fairfax into the television era with a successful bid for ATN7 in 1956, followed by QTQ9 in Brisbane. His daring deal-making resulted in Fairfax purchasing the Australian assets of Lord (Lew) Grade’s Associated Television Corporation (ATV), which turned Fairfax into a commercial radio proprietor with a wholly owned subsidiary, Macquarie Broadcasting Holdings. Henderson’s record of sober business judgement was broken in 1960 when, against the wishes of Sir Warwick Fairfax, Henderson sold Truth & Sportsman Ltd, the assets of which included the Sydney Daily Mirror and Truth, to Rupert Murdoch. The deal gave the 29-year-old Murdoch entry into the critical Sydney media market. Henderson always referred to himself as a journalist, and earned respect from the profession for his refusal to submit to unreasonable wartime censorship edicts by the Minister for

Information, Arthur Calwell. When the Herald’s much-respected financial editor, Tom Fitzgerald, seized on the idea of launching a weekly magazine called Nation, it was Henderson who championed the project in the boardroom. He was known throughout the newspaper industry as ‘Rags’ (based on his initials), though never to his face. Senior editors called him ‘Sir’, while some Fairfaxes greeted him as ‘Mr Henderson’ rather than ‘Rupert’. Retiring as managing director of John Fairfax & Sons in 1964, Henderson remained a director until 1978. He acquired his own family media interests, including the Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser, the Illawarra Mercury, and television licences in Albury and Wagga Wagga. He was the subject of a portrait by Clifton Pugh in 1965. REF: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). ALEX MITCHELL

H ER ALD AN D W EEKLY TIM ES The Melbourne-based media group, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, originated in 1840 when George Cavanagh, a former editor of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, first published the Port Phillip Herald. In 1849, the newspaper moved to daily publication as the Port Phillip Morning Herald. In 1855, it underwent further changes in name, first to the Melbourne Herald and then the Herald. In 1869, the Herald became an afternoon newspaper. Its fortunes had fluctuated, but greater stability came in 1871 when it was acquired by a partnership headed by Samuel Winter, founder of the Advocate, who was to become editor and managing director. By 1880, daily circulation had reached 30,000. Following the death of his partner John Halfey in 1889, Winter arranged for a consortium to buy Halfey’s half-share. The investors included the printer Alfred Massina, aspiring state politician and lawyer Theodore Fink and financier William Baillieu. In 1891, the Herald was bought by the City Newspaper Company. The following year, the purchaser also acquired the Weekly Times as part of the sale of the doomed Daily Telegraph. However, when the new owner failed to meet scheduled payments, Massina and Fink forced the company into liquidation and the Herald’s former proprietorship was restored. With the boon of a new title in the form of the Weekly Times, Winter resumed the managing editorship. Consolidation came with the purchase of the rival Evening Standard in 1894, and a change of name to the Herald and Standard Company Ltd followed. In 1895, Massina introduced modern linotype printing machines. By the beginning of the 20th century, the Herald’s circulation was 50,000. Incorporation as a public company, the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), came in 1902. Winter died in 1904 but Massina remained chairman until 1909. That

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herald and weekly times year Fink marked his ascendancy to the role of chairman by representing the company at the first Imperial Press Conference in London. Frustrated in his attempt to enter federal politics, Fink’s public affairs ambitions would be channelled into building up the Herald. The newspaper prospered during World War I, not least thanks to its ‘eyewitness’ war correspondent, (Sir) Keith Murdoch, who had been transferred to London in 1915 as managing editor of the United Cable Service (UCS), managed by the Herald and (Sir) Hugh Denison’s Sydney Sun. In late 1920, Murdoch secured a promise of the editorship of the Herald from Fink—a move that created a bitter rival in Denison. Murdoch immediately set about establishing unilateral control of the HWT and began a modernisation process. Denison’s Associated Newspapers Ltd soon launched a challenge, entering the Melbourne market in 1922 with the morning tabloid Sun News-Pictorial, followed by the Evening Sun in 1923. The newspaper battle sharpened the Herald, with Murdoch promoting human-interest stories and competitions, and improving crime and sports coverage. He launched a bi-weekly sporting paper, the Sporting Globe. A number of magazines were added to the HWT ranks during 1924, including the society weekly Table Talk and the Melbourne Punch. Titles such as the Australian Home Beautiful and Aircraft would later join the stable. The Herald’s circulation continued to increase, and in mid-1925 Denison capitulated. The HWT took ownership of the profitable Sun News-Pictorial, which would ultimately rise to have the highest circulation of any Australian daily, while the Evening Sun was closed. (Another challenger, the afternoon Star, launched by the Argus in 1933, would also be fought off.) The HWT moved to purpose-built premises in Flinders Street, where it would remain for the next seven decades. In early 1924, the HWT board approved the erection of a radio station on the Herald’s roof as part of its shareholding with the Broadcasting Company of Australia (BCA). HWT publications were central to promoting this station, 3LO, and advertising the Herald ‘Wireless News Service’. In 1925, a weekly radio program magazine, the Listener In, was launched. In 1929, the HWT gained a wholly owned radio station in the form of 3DB. Expansion continued so that by 1935 the HWT, and Murdoch personally, held interests in 11 of Australia’s 65 commercial radio stations. It even gambled on the short-lived innovation of a Herald Newsreel. A more successful venture was the introduction of public opinion polling to Australia in 1941 by finance writer Roy Morgan. Murdoch drove HWT expansion beyond Victoria, beginning in 1926 with the purchase of the West Australian by a syndicate including

William Baillieu, W.S. Robinson and the HWT board. In 1929, the HWT syndicate bought the failing Register in Adelaide. Control of the Advertiser followed, so that by 1931 the city’s press was monopolised. The HWT began wielding political influence across increasing parts of the country through its coordinated strategies and syndicated coverage. The first edition of the HWT’s monthly internal magazine, House News, appeared in November 1929. It would run until 1986. The HWT board was often the scene of splits and infighting. Theodore Fink intended his son, Thorold, and not his former protégé, Murdoch, to follow him as chairman. In a bitter private account, Fink sniped that Murdoch had plotted to make the HWT ‘entirely a Baillieu–K.M. concern’. Theodore Fink died in 1942, with Thorold killed in an accident just months later. Murdoch became HWT chairman. In 1948, Murdoch persuaded the HWT board to sell him its holdings in the Adelaide News while retaining few Herald shares. He retired in 1949, although he retained the chairmanship of HWT, and died in 1952. The company was left in rude health—in 1950, the HWT titles accounted for 38 per cent of total circulation in Australia—and would continue to prosper during the next two decades. In 1956, the HWT took the leap into commercial television, launching HSV7, publicised as Herald Sun Vision. The following year, it gained control of Argus and Australasian Limited, including its stake in GTV9. The television shares were sold and the Melbourne Argus itself abruptly closed. By 1964, the Herald had reached a daily circulation of 500,000—a peak it would maintain for a decade. In 1969, the HWT again took ownership of West Australian Newspapers Ltd. In 1979, the company managed to fight off Rupert Murdoch’s first takeover attempt, but it continued to weaken. A new chief executive, John D’Arcy, was installed in 1985, but he couldn’t arrest the slide. Towards the end of 1986, Rupert Murdoch began his second, successful, takeover bid for the HWT. In 1987, he finally gained control and the HWT became a division of News Limited, with the television interests sold off in order to comply with cross-media ownership rules. Direct family ties were reinstalled, with Keith Murdoch’s daughter Janet Calvert-Jones serving as chair of the board for 20 years until 2009. Her own daughter, Penny Fowler, took up the role in 2013 (the company was headed in the interim by Julian Clarke). The Herald was controversially folded into the Sun News-Pictorial to become the tabloid Herald Sun in 1990. The HWT continues to publish the Herald Sun, Sunday Herald Sun, Weekly Times and mX (the Melbourne edition of News Corp’s free afternoon newspaper, founded in 2001) and their related digital versions. By 2013 weekday circulation of the Herald Sun had slipped to

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416,027, though this remains the highest figure for any Australian daily. REFs: R.G. Campbell, The First Ninety Years (1949); D.S. Garden, Theodore Fink (1998); W. Shawcross, Murdoch (1992). TOM D.C. ROBERTS

HERAL D SUN This daily newspaper was established in Melbourne when the broadsheet afternoon Herald merged with the morning tabloid Sun News-Pictorial on 8 October 1990. The Herald was the flagship of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) organisation, of which the Herald Sun is still part. Former Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser editor George Cavanagh started the Port Phillip Herald on 3 January 1840, and by 1848 was producing an eight-page newspaper with Australia’s first steam-driven printing press. It became a daily, and was renamed the Melbourne Morning Herald in 1849. Cavanagh sold it in 1853, and it became Herald two years’ later. It struggled under different owners in the 1850s and afterwards, but under part-owner and lawyer (Sir) Archibald Michie was a lively liberal critic of the administration of Governor Sir Charles Hotham. In 1855 it was sold to the London printing firm of Robson, Levey and Franklyn. The Herald’s three-way contest with the Argus and the Age was brought to an end when, in 1868, the Age’s David Syme purchased it, turned it into an afternoon newspaper and, in 1870, sold it. The new owners were journalist Samuel Winter and investor John Halfey. Winter had founded the Catholic weekly the Advocate (1868–90). The Herald secured a corner of the Melbourne market and was even-handed in news presentation. Same-day sporting results helped to establish the afternoon newspaper habit among suburban commuters. Circulation doubled in the 1880s boom. News replaced front-page advertisements from 1889, and the paper survived the economic collapse of the 1890s thanks to reorganisation, mergers and expansion, and popular football columns by Tom Kelynack (‘Kickeroo’). Linotype machines introduced in 1895 brought further economies. Lawyer and businessman Theodore Fink was instrumental in forming the HWT in 1902, when Herald circulation was 50,000 daily and business was profitable again. James Edward Davidson, trained in Detroit and a former Argus journalist, became editor in 1906. Three Goss printing machines were installed from June 1913. Davidson and Fink disagreed over conscription, and Davidson resigned in 1918. Meanwhile, the HWT had purchased the London Daily Mail’s cable service, special articles and photographs. (Sir) Keith Murdoch was appointed editor-in-chief in January 1921. The 1921 Gun Alley murder and the 1923 Melbourne police strike helped

him build circulation to 137,000 daily. Sporting events—especially during the VFL season— made Saturday the Herald’s biggest day. Name writers now included Henry Gullett (politics), C.J. Dennis (humour), Dale Collins (features), Will Dyson (cartoons), May Maxwell (daily social page), Douglas Copland (economics), Sir Daryl Lindsay (art) and Sir Archibald Strong (literature). By 1925, a challenge from Sydney magnate Sir Hugh Denison had failed. Another contender, the Star (1933–36), was beaten off. The Herald’s stance was conservative politically, but the paper was alert to new trends and home to talented journalist writers like Alan Moorehead, Clive Turnbull, John Hetherington and Noel Monks. Murdoch cultivated staff personally, along with initiatives like the 1939 exhibition of French and British contemporary art organised by its art critic, Basil Burdett. Its circulation was second only to that of its morning tabloid stablemate, the Sun News-Pictorial, but wartime newsprint shortages saw the paper size and advertising volumes shrink. In 1946, the Herald’s circulation compared favourably with that of the Sun News-Pictorial. This was maintained until 1954, when the Herald’s circulation was Australia’s largest for an afternoon paper and exceeded by only a few internationally. Quality news content, well-written features, solid business coverage, American-style personality by-lines and sport underscored its appeal. With multiple editions, the Herald captured the public transport commuter market, and a fleet of 62 delivery vans travelled more than a thousand miles daily around Melbourne’s suburbs. The Herald made news and influenced public attitudes, notably in opposition to the Chifley Labor government’s plans to nationalise the banks. The Coalition was supported at election time but balance was sought in news and features, with individually voiced staff and contributors including trade union leader Dr Lloyd Ross, architect Robin Boyd, foreign affairs expert Denis Warner, columnist E.W. ‘Bill’ Tipping and Methodist stalwart Sir Irving Benson. A challenge was mounted from the Age stable in 1969, but the Herald’s roots went deep and Newsday folded in May 1970. The Herald’s circulation peaked at 505,000 in 1971, but sales began to fall thereafter. Colour television was introduced in 1973 and the newspaper’s cost/ revenue equation was changing. A low cover price of four cents maintained until 1972 built circulation, which aided advertising revenue. As prices rose with inflation, circulation fell and advertising diminished. John Fitzgerald’s editorship (1974–79) saw major news stories such as Peter Game’s scoop of the Khemlani affair in 1975 that helped to bring down the Whitlam Labor government. By the end of the 1970s, circulation had fallen below the 400,000 mark. By 1980, it was below 280,000. But with a loyal readership the

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Herald’s decline was slower than afternoon newspapers elsewhere. Attempts to revive the paper’s flagging fortunes saw HWT stalwart Harry Gordon brought back from Brisbane as editor-in-chief in 1984, followed by Les Carlyon early in 1986. The successful takeover of the HWT by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited in 1987 saw attention turned to reviving the masthead, valued now at only $5 million dollars. Eric Beecher was the first of a succession of youthful editors. The Herald became a three-section paper: front news, tabloid lifestyle, and business and sport. By 1989, circulation was down to 175,600 daily and Murdoch had accepted that revival was impossible. The Herald’s last issue was on 5 October 1990. On 8 October, a merger of the HWT’s two daily papers appeared in the 88-page Herald-Sun, billed as ‘a 24-hour newspaper’ and quickly dubbed by wags ‘The Hun’. The Sunday Herald, launched in 1989, became the Sunday Herald-Sun in 1991. With the tabloid format preferencing the Sun News-Pictorial influence, the new Herald-Sun ran a variety of features from component papers. By late 1992 circulation was 578,000. Following massive investment by Murdoch in the Westgate Park Printing Complex, the first colour editions were rolled out in mid-1993. The Herald Sun (without the hyphen from 1993) is host to the controversial columnist Andrew Bolt. Editor-in-chief Bruce Guthrie was sacked in 2008 and in consequence successfully sued News Limited. The Herald Sun is the highest circulating daily newspaper in Australia, with 416,000 copies daily and an estimated readership of 1.3 million. REFs: D. Garden, Theodore Fink (1998); B. Guthrie, Man Bites Murdoch (2010); R.M. Younger, Let’s Go to Press (1996 HWT Resource Document). DAVID DUNSTAN

H E R E ’S HUMPHREY Humphrey B. Bear is the star of the Australian produced pre-school children’s television show, Here’s Humphrey. The character debuted in 1965 on The Channel Niners on NWS9 in Adelaide and was soon given his own show. Here’s Humphrey was screened nationally on the Nine Network and has been shown in a number of overseas countries. The character’s popularity led to a wide range of Australian-made merchandise. Rex Heading (1929–2010), the first program manager of NWS9, created the fun-loving, shaggy brown haired bear with a big black shiny nose who lives in a tree house in the Magic Forest. The character was first known as ‘Bear Bear’ until, after a viewer competition, he was renamed ‘Humphrey B. Bear’. Edwin ‘Teddy’ Duryea originally played Humphrey, although his identity was never

revealed. He came to resent the anonymity of the role and the uncomfortable suit. Because Humphrey neither speaks nor wears trousers, some people consider him to be a bad example for young children. Despite these criticisms, Humphrey won a Penguin Award for Best Children’s Personality in 1982 and a Citizen of the Year Award in 1994, while Here’s Humphrey won Logie Awards for Best Children’s Television Show in 1970 and 1982. In 2009, the Supreme Court wound up Banksia Productions, which owned the rights to Humphrey, sending him into hibernation. However, in 2012 Imagination Entertainment purchased the company’s assets and the following year Humphrey returned on community television stations in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. He also has his own website, Facebook page and YouTube channel. REF: http://humphreybear.com/. DERHAM GROVES

H IN C H , D ER RYN N IG EL (1944– ) Dubbed ‘the Human Headline’, Derryn Hinch has spent much of his 55-year career as a journalist and broadcaster living up to that epithet. Born in New Zealand, Hinch began work at the age of 15 on the Taranaki Herald, but moved to Australia in 1963. He joined the Sydney Morning Herald and by 1968 was head of its New York bureau, where he remained for 11 years. He reported on the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Watergate crisis, President Richard Nixon’s resignation and the moon landings. For most journalists, covering such stories would be a career peak; however, Hinch, was subsequently also a newspaper editor—of the Sydney afternoon newspaper the Sun—and a television presenter on shows as diverse as Beauty and the Beast, Midday and his own current affairs vehicle, Hinch, on the Seven Network. Yet he is best known for his several stints as a radio presenter, especially on Melbourne’s 3AW, during which he several times unsuccessfully fought the law. In what he describes as ‘the proudest moment of my life’, in 1985 Hinch announced to 3AW listeners the identity and prior convictions for child molestation of Michael Glennon, a former Catholic priest who was running a youth camp and facing court on his third set of charges. Glennon’s trial was delayed while Hinch appealed his own conviction for contempt of court all the way to the High Court, which upheld the verdict. The court ruled that his reporting of Glennon’s prior convictions had been prejudicial in law. Hinch spent 12 days in prison. In 2011, he served five months’ home detention for identifying convicted sex offenders, which he continues to argue strongly is in the public interest. In 2013 he was again convicted, after revealing details of the previous criminal history

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holmes à court, (michael) robert hamilton (1937–90) of an accused murderer on his website, http:// www.humanheadline.com.au. He refused to pay a $100,000 fine and in January 2014 began a 50-day prison sentence for the offence. Hinch’s personal life often made news: he has been married five times, twice to the actress Jackie Weaver. In July 2011, a liver transplant saved him from cancer that would have been terminal. He has written several memoirs: That’s Life (1992), The Fall and Rise of Derryn Hinch (2004), Human Headlines (2011) and The Human Deadline (2012). Hinch has been sacked 14 times, most recently from 3AW in August 2012. He is now a public affairs commentator for the Seven Network. RAY CASSIN

HOCKI NG FA MILY Sidney Edwin Hocking (1859–1935), a blacksmith’s son born at Nairne, South Australia, laid the foundations in 1894 of a 76-year newspaper ownership dynasty on the eastern goldfields of Western Australia. Educated at Prince Alfred College, Adelaide, Hocking joined the South Australian Advertiser as a general reporter in 1874 and later worked as a mining reporter, first for the Advertiser, and later for Sydney, Melbourne and Perth papers at Teetulpa, Baker’s Creek, Hillgrove, Broken Hill and Coolgardie. He first ventured into newspaper ownership when he formed a company with James MacCallum Smith (1868–1939) to launch the Western Australian Goldfields Courier as a weekly at Coolgardie on 8 September 1894. It was only the second goldfields newspaper, surviving until 1898. Just 24 days after starting the weekly, Hocking and Smith started the daily Golden Age, which continued until 1896. At Kalgoorlie, 40 kilometres away, where Decimus and Stanley Mott were displeased with the progress of the goldfields, Hocking inspected Hannan’s field and was so impressed he offered the Motts £250 for the Western Argus (1894–1936). They accepted eagerly. Within weeks, the Great Boulder mine began achieving returns that made the district famous as the Golden Mile. In a little hessian humpy, with a small hand press, Hocking and Smith launched a daily newspaper, the Kalgoorlie Miner, on 14 September 1895; within five years, the business was housed in a three-storey building. Hocking and his brother, Percy Stuart (1862–1900), who had joined the partnership, ran the company’s Kalgoorlie office and Smith managed the Coolgardie papers. The Hockings bought Smith’s interest in the Kalgoorlie paper for £500 in March 1896, and renamed the company Hocking and Co. Smith retained the two Coolgardie papers. In November 1895, the Hockings appointed John Waters Kirwan (1869–1949) editor and later made him a partner. He edited the Miner for 30 years, was elected to both the Western Australian

and federal parliaments, and was knighted in 1930. The Western Argus was loaded with news, district correspondence, short stories and pictures. Percy Hocking, manager of the Miner, died on 8 March 1900. Sid Hocking became the managing director. When he died in January 1935, his three sons took charge: Jack Kyle in the editorial department and as overall manager, Percy Stuart in the mechanical department and Ernest Nicholas (Ning) in the business department. The Hocking family’s control of the Miner ended in April 1970 when West Australian Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of Melbourne’s Herald and Weekly Times, acquired the company. Jack Kyle Hocking managed the Miner until December 1974. The paper has been the only Western Australian provincial daily since 1931. Martin Charles Hocking (1858–1927), a brother of the Miner’s founder, was a literary writer for the Adelaide Advertiser from the late 1870s, and was sports editor for about 30 years. He also wrote a column for the Sydney Referee and Sunday Times, and contributed to Western Australian newspapers. REFs: N. King, The Voice of the Goldfields (1995); R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Hocking Family Struck a Rich Newspaper Lode at Kalgoorlie’, PANPA Bulletin (April 2005). ROD KIRKPATRICK

H O LM ES À C O U R T, (M IC H AEL) R O B ER T H AM ILTO N (1937–90) Robert Holmes à Court is a name synonymous with the economic boom in Western Australia in the 1980s. His entrepreneurial flair took him to within a whisker of controlling BHP. He also emerged as a significant player in the media industry through the 1980s. Born in South Africa, Holmes à Court moved to Perth in 1962 to study law at the University of Western Australia. His first business deal, in 1970, was refinancing the Albany-based Worsted & Woollen Mills Ltd. It marked the start of a career in spotting cheap assets and conducting debt-backed corporate raids. Taking a controlling interest in the Bell Brothers earthmoving and transport group in 1974 began his corporate ascent. From what became Bell Group Ltd, other deals flowed. The profits from the sale of his stake in Ansett—to Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited—allowed him to finance the launch in 1980 of a Perth weekly newspaper. Holmes à Court bankrolled the Western Mail for seven years, challenging established interests, namely the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) which owned the West Australian. Among some genuine scoops the Western Mail also had some ignominious moments, including a front-page file photo of a space shuttle launch—a launch that was postponed after deadline. Holmes à Court made an unsuccessful bid for the London Times in 1980 and the HWT in 1982. In 1987, after Murdoch took over the

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HWT, the West Australian was sold to Holmes à Court. Another Western Australian tycoon, Alan Bond, took control of the Bell Group, and thus the newspaper, the following year. Holmes à Court held other media interests, including TVW7, which ended up in the hands of Christopher Skase, radio stations and the UK-based Associated Communications Corporation, which had stakes in Central Independent Television and ATV Music. His ownership of Western Australia’s first television station offered some fascinating moments in the cultural and popular zeitgeist, including a visit to Perth by the popular icon Michael Jackson in 1984 as part of a deal that saw Holmes à Court sell to Jackson a valuable catalogue of Beatles songs for about $48 million. Holmes à Court was famed for his long hours, little interest in fitness and a passion for cigars. His life ended suddenly when he died of a heart attack on 2 September 1990 in Perth. He died intestate and was survived by his wife, Janet, and four children. REF: G. Elliott, The Other Brother (2005). GEOFF ELLIOTT

visually alluring graphic design from inventive local commercial artists like Hera Roberts, who contributed more than 50 covers. Prominent camera artists, including staff photographer Harold Cazneaux, captured the comings and goings of stylishly clad socialites and created eye-catching advertisements. As advertising became an increasingly lucrative extension of magazine content, photography gained primacy over illustration, and the Home showcased the work of young innovators like Russell Roberts and Max Dupain. Seeking wider readership, the Home had begun to turn towards the mass market by 1928. Dress and knitting patterns featured regularly, the inclusion of recipes from 1932 boosted advertising revenue,  and  circulation was around 7000. Looking to challenge the market share of rival imported and local titles like Vogue (1909– ) and Fashion and Society (1929–49), John Fairfax & Sons purchased Art in Australia Ltd in 1934. Ure Smith retained co-editorship of the Home until 1938, when his departure instigated a discernible change of style for the magazine. Leon Gellert continued as sole editor until the Home ceased publication in 1942. REF: R. Holden, Cover Up (1995).

H O ME Published in Sydney by Art in Australia Ltd (1920–34) and John Fairfax & Sons (1935–42), the Home: The Australian Journal of Quality was the first locally produced women’s magazine to emulate international society magazines of the Condé Nast stable. Producing more than 230 issues during its 23-year print run, publisher Sydney Ure Smith (1887–1949) launched his prestigious and trend-setting quarterly publication in 1920 with Bertram Stevens as inaugural editor, and from 1922 assumed co-editorship with Leon Gellert. With an annual subscription price of 10 shillings and sixpence, the Home targeted the smart set and those who aspired to it, promising subscribers they themselves would never be old-fashioned or ordinary. Always far more than a fashion magazine, it promoted a modern lifestyle to the monied classes, many members of which appeared on its pages, while locating Australian readers within their international context. The Home’s high production values, quality art paper, layout and typography distinguished it from virtually all other Australian periodicals. It offered lavishly illustrated feature articles, full of sought-after information that encouraged cover-to-cover reading across five main areas: domestic architecture, interior decoration, the garden and the art of living, fashion and feminine adornment. Middle-class readers, upon whom the Home’s circulation and advertising impact depended, also valued its taste-making edicts and instructional content. Never a literary magazine, the Home published works by many leading Australian writers, including David Unaipon, and commissioned its

MARGOT RILEY

H O M IC ID E Made by Crawford Productions for the Seven Network, Homicide was screened in prime-time from 1964 to 1975. There were 510 episodes— mostly an hour long, but including several that were feature length. Homicide’s immediate predecessors were Crawford’s radio crime drama D24 and the courtroom-based series Consider Your Verdict. Homicide’s locally sourced stories, low budgets and suburban locations were deployed to enhance a certain gritty realism that enabled Australian viewers to see their own streets and backyards, and hear their own vernacular, on the small screen for the first time. Chases were usually on foot, guns were rarely needed and many stunts were performed by the actors themselves. The original cast of John Fegan, Terry McDermott and Lex Mitchell was soon joined by Leonard Teale, who became the squad’s longest serving member. Other notable actors in a rotating ensemble of (always male) detectives included Alwyn Kurts, John Stanton, George Mallaby, Norman Yemm and Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell. Later episodes were shot entirely on colour film, allowing for greater flexibility with locations. Adopting the show’s unwavering narrative structure (discovery of body, investigation, arrest), these final episodes proved an apt training ground for some of the key players in the resurgence of Australian feature film production that followed Homicide’s demise. These included directors Ian Jones, George Miller, Simon Wincer, David Stevens, Kevin Dobson, Paul

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horne, donald richmond (1921–2005) Eddey and Igor Auzins, as well as screenwriters Keith Thompson, Peter Schreck, Phil Friedman, Cliff Green and Everette de Roche. REFs: Paul Davies Script Collection (Fryer Library, UQ); http://www.classicaustraliantv.com/homicide.htm. PAUL DAVIES

HOPKI NS , LI V I NGSTON YORK YOURTEE (‘HOP’ ) (1846–1927) Known as ‘Hop’, Livingston Hopkins was the chief cartoonist at the Sydney Bulletin in the decades either side of Federation. He was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, and fought briefly as a teenager on the Union side in the American Civil War. From 1864 to 1882, he developed a strong reputation as a cartoonist and illustrator in the United States, until William H. Traill lured him from New York to work on the Bulletin in 1883. His arrival was decisive for the weekly’s visual aspect, both due to his talents as an irreverent illustrator and because he brought the first photo-engraving equipment to Australia. This technology permitted drawings to be transferred quickly to print, thus making immediately topical cartoons possible. Hop contributed thousands of cartoons to the Bulletin between 1883 and 1913, and became both a member of the editorial team and, eventually, a director. With Phil May and later Norman Lindsay, he provided continuity of style in a journal that also solicited illustrations from hundreds of freelancers. His spare lines and sharp—although seldom severe—satire reflected the economic isolationism, republican nationalism and cultural chauvinism of ‘the bushman’s bible’ in its heroic age under J.F. Archibald’s editorship. His most sustained caricatures were his versions of New South Wales-based politicians William Parkes, George Reid and (Sir) Edmund Barton, and his invention (later carried on by others) of the ‘Little Boy from Manly’, which became an emblem of both the youthful colony of New South Wales and the Australian Federation. A John Tenniel-like figure in rounded cap and breeches, the Little Boy was a piece of instant nostalgia, already harking back to an earlier era when first drawn in 1885. Hop himself was tall and angular, a significant figure in turn-of-the-century artistic Sydney, who ran an artistic camp at Balmoral with artist and critic Julian Ashton. He was a sometimes authoritarian father to his six children and, like many Australian cartoonists since, practised arts other than newspaper cartooning—in his case, etchings and making violins and cellos. REF: http://www.daao.org.au/bio/livingston-hopkins. ROBERT PHIDDIAN

HORNE, DONALD RICHM OND (1921–2005) Donald Horne was a journalist, editor, academic, university professor, philosopher, public intellec-

tual, political campaigner, university chancellor, chairman of the Australia Council (1985–90) and Ideas Australia (1991–93) and numerous other highly public committees, member of the Australian Constitutional Commission, recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, and author of more than two dozen books, including an autobiographical trilogy and three novels. He began his journalism career during World War II as editor of Honi Soit at the University of Sydney. In 1950, he went to London as a journalist and author, returning to work for (Sir) Frank Packer at the Daily Telegraph and then as editor of the Weekend magazine and the fortnightly intellectual periodical  the Observer (1958–61). During his first term as editor of the Bulletin (1961–62), he removed the magazine’s long-standing motto, ‘Australia for the White Man’. After leaving the Bulletin, Horne went into advertising and ran (Sir) Robert Askin’s successful 1965 campaign to become premier of New South Wales. He also co-edited Quadrant, the journal of the Association for Cultural Freedom (1963–66). After three years, he was back editing the Bulletin (1967–72). Horne was unorthodox and independent, without a consistent political allegiance. His ‘radicalisation’ emerged from the liberal movements of the 1960s and the realisation that ‘not doing anything is as risky as trying to do something’. He promoted the role of public intellectual. The Observer was probably Horne’s ‘pet’ intellectual commitment during his years as a journalist and editor, ‘one of the few desert flowers in a period when the cultural desert was beginning to bloom’. He saw The Lucky Country (1964), his first published book, as articulating ideas that some people ‘half believed or were ready to believe … for example, the criticisms of the White Australia Policy … and … of our treatment of Aborigines’. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Poll of the Century in 1999 voted this one of the three most influential Australian books of the 20th century. Appointed to the  University of New South Wales in 1973 as a research fellow, he became, without a university degree, a professor and chairman of the Faculty of Arts, retiring as Professor Emeritus. Donald Horne loved life, writing, editing, lecturing, stimulating ideas, and engaging in endless discussion of ideas through his writings and as a public intellectual to whom people listened—from people in the street to prime ministers. REFs: SMH, 9 September 2005; R. Hughes, interview with D. Horne, 16 January 1992. ELAINE THOMPSON

HOROS COPE S see astrology

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howe family HORT I C U LTU R E M E D I A AS S O C IAT IO N A U ST R AL IA INC. see gardening

H O W E FA MI LY When George Howe (1769–1821) published the first edition of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1803, he began a newspaper publishing and printing business that spanned 40 years and three generations of his family. George Howe’s father and older brother were government printers at St Kitts in the British West Indies, and the official gazette they produced provided the blueprint for the early Sydney Gazette. After serving his apprenticeship, Howe went to England, where he worked on the Times and other London papers. After being convicted for shoplifting, he was transported to Sydney in 1800. Almost immediately, he became government printer, and from 1803 until his death he published Australia’s first newspaper. Howe produced a variety of material for the Sydney Gazette, some of it drawn from his personal reference library. He also printed the first Australian books, from school primers to poetry and natural history. When George Howe died in 1821, his son Robert (1795–1829), having worked as his father’s apprentice, took over the family printing and publishing business. Following a dissolute youth, Robert was now a devout Methodist, and during the 1820s the Sydney Gazette often reflected his evangelical outlook. At the end of 1821, he had married Ann Bird (c. 1802–42), who agreed to raise his child, Robert Charles (1820–75), born to the convict Elizabeth Lees. The Sydney Gazette retained its primacy during the 1820s, and convict architect Francis Greenway designed a purpose-built printing office and elegant residence for the family. After Robert Howe’s death by drowning in Sydney Harbour in 1829, Ann took over the running of the Sydney Gazette. She aligned her newspaper with the reformist policies of newly arrived Governor (Sir) Richard Bourke, who oversaw the colony’s successful transition from penal colony to free settlement. Ann immediately appointed as her editor a ticket-of-leave convict, William Angus Watt, whom she later married in 1836. Jones used his power as executor and guarantor of outstanding loans to trigger a foreclosure, resulting in the transfer of ownership of the newspaper from Ann to Robert Charles, who aligned himself with Jones’ more conservative politics. However, Robert Charles steered the family business to failure and bankruptcy during the colony’s first depression in the early 1840s, and Australia’s first newspaper ceased publication in 1842. Assessments of the Howe family’s role and influence on early colonial culture and the emerging print media have differed over the years. Some compare George Howe to English

printer William Caxton. Indeed, George Howe is commemorated alongside Caxton in the State Library of New South Wales, where a stained glass window depicts the publisher presenting to Governor Philip Gidley King the first edition of the Sydney Gazette. Historians of the battle for the free press that occurred under Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling have labelled Howe as merely a subservient convict printer, and the early Sydney Gazette as an uninfluential government production. What is remarkable about the Howe family enterprise over three generations is that it was such a prolific printing and publishing business at a formative time in development of the New South Wales. REFs: S. Blair, ‘George Howe and Early Printing in New South Wales’, Wayzgoose, The Australian Jnl of Book Arts, 1 (1985); R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales 1803–1920 (1976). SANDY BLAIR

H U G H ES, R IC H AR D JO SEP H (1906–84) Richard Hughes was a respected and theatrical foreign correspondent who inspired fictional characters in books by John Le Carré and Ian Fleming, his employer as foreign editor of the Sunday Times. Under Fleming, Hughes had his biggest story, an interview with British spies Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess in 1956. After working as a publicist for Victorian Railways, Hughes was employed as a journalist on the Star in 1934. Two years later, he went to Sydney to work on the Daily Telegraph. When the owner, (Sir) Frank Packer, launched the Sunday Telegraph in 1939, Hughes was appointed chief of staff. Hughes’ interest in Asia led him to take leave and travel to Japan in 1940. He also visited China, until Packer insisted he return to Sydney. On the voyage home, he used a detailed diary to write stories for the Daily Telegraph. Later in 1941, he went to the United States as Packer’s representative, returning to Consolidated Press Ltd to join the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra. In 1942, following a satirical article about the Senate by Hughes, representatives of the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs were excluded from Parliament House for several months. The same year, Hughes published a book of mystery and crime stories, Dr Watson’s Casebook. In 1943, he was appointed a war correspondent in North Africa. When Australian troops were recalled for the Pacific War, he travelled with the New Zealanders. He spent his last months in Cairo, where he contracted rheumatic fever and was repatriated to Australia. When World War II ended, Hughes renewed his interest in overseas reporting, covering the Allied occupation of Japan. When Packer recalled him, he resigned. Back in Japan, he was appointed as manager of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Tokyo for a short time and

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hughes, richard joseph (1906–84) worked as a freelancer for various newspapers. The Sunday Times put Hughes on staff in 1948, beginning his friendship with Fleming. He also reported the Korean War. Hughes was put on a retainer by Consolidated Press in 1953 before transferring to News Limited in the 1960s. Hughes’ memoir, Hong Kong: Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time, was published in 1968; he also wrote The Chinese Communes (1960) and an autobiography, Foreign Devil: 30 Years of Reporting in the Far East (1972).

Hughes moved to Hong Kong in 1971 to write about China for several publications, including the Far Eastern Economic Review. He was a popular figure in the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, and was appointed CBE in 1980. REF: N. Macswan, The Man Who Read the East Wind (1982). JOHN TEBBUTT

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I IL L AWA RRA MERCURY One of the Australia’s most important provincial newspapers, the Illawarra Mercury has been defined by parochialism and localism since its foundation in October 1855 by Thomas Garrett (1830–91). Initially a weekly, the Mercury cost sixpence, and had a print run of 200. Garrett had pooled his resources with W.F. Cahill, who left after three months, to be replaced in 1856 by Thomas’s father, John, a Primitive Methodist. By 1856 the Mercury had become a six-column broadsheet and was distributed to Dapto, Jamberoo, Kiama and Shoalhaven by express coach. Involvement in community affairs and politics has characterised Mercury proprietors. John Garrett was elected Wollongong’s first mayor in 1859 and the editor, John Curr, was elected Wollongong’s first town clerk. Garret’s son, Thomas, was also a politician. Thomas took over the paper in 1862, and soon formed a partnership with Archibald Campbell, before selling out to Joseph Hart in 1867. Campbell was the sole owner from 1883 until his death in 1903; he was elected Member for Illawarra in 1891. In 1888 the Mercury was a tri-weekly of four pages, which featured a weekly serial. By 1901, it was published twice weekly. On Campbell’s death in 1903, his wife, Margaret, assumed control until Shellharbour local Edward Allen purchased the paper in 1905 and improved the news content. He was elected the Member for Illawarra in 1904, continuing a trend. An Irishman, Standish R. Musgrave, bought the Mercury from Allen in 1911 and ran it until his death in 1943. He assumed the editorship, increased sports coverage and published an edition each Friday. Soon after becoming managing director of the newly formed Illawarra Newspaper Co. Ltd in 1919, Musgrave also purchased the Bulli Times and Port Kembla Pilot. By 1932 the Mercury had competition from 2WL, established in 1931. Wilfrid S. Musgrave succeeded his father as managing director and editor. In 1950, he converted the Mercury to a daily, a mark of modernity for a provincial centre, and changed the masthead to the Illawarra Daily Mercury. The Musgraves were active members of the New South Wales Country Press Association

for more than 40 years. They mixed with the barons of the country press who sought to restrict competition, and had sympathies with the New England New State Movement and the Old Guard. However, the Mercury was making substantial losses when it was purchased by R.A.G. Henderson, the managing director of John Fairfax & Sons, in 1959. During the next decade, circulation doubled to over 25,000. In 1968, the Henderson family merged the Mercury with its main opposition, the South Coast Times, and appointed John Richardson executive editor. The following year Fairfax became the major shareholder for a cost of $2.4 million. Under David Lonsdale’s editorship, the newspaper became less parochial and more inclined to take on major community issues. Peter Newell became editor in 1976, then executive editor in 1978 and finally general manager in 1985. Illawarra Holdings Pty Ltd launched a new weekly, the Wollongong-Shellharbour Advertiser, in 1982. The Mercury introduced computer-based story-composition, and in 1986 pioneered the use of colour in daily newspapers in Australia. Journalists Bill Simpson and Carol Johnstone won Walkley Awards in 1986–87. However, the Mercury was labelled a ‘screaming red-top tabloid’ by James Hooke, Fairfax’s managing director of NSW operations, and in the early 1990s was regularly pilloried by ABC Television’s Media Watch. Innovation continued, with the Mercury producing its first electronically assembled editorial page composed by computer in 1994, and being printed on state-of-the-art printing presses alongside the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review at Chullora from 1999. The Mercury was awarded PANPA Newspaper of the Year in 2006 and Walkleys were won by Mercury journalists in 2003, 2008 and 2010 and photographers in 2008–09. The Mercury’s circulation in 2013 was 18,229. REFs: Illawarra Mercury, 15–16 October 2005; R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Guts-and-glory, murder and more during the Mercury’s 150 years’, PANPA Bulletin (September 2005); G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). IAN WILLIS

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illustrated newspapers I LL UST RAT ED NEWSPAPERS Colonial illustrated newspapers were part of an explosion of imagery in 19th-century Europe, North America and Australia, catering to an ascendant middle class. They were characterised by an expansion of oil and water-colour painting, the invention of photography and the development of a popular illustrated press. Indeed, the papers occupied a 50-year hiatus between the invention of photography in England and France in 1839, and the development of the photo-mechanical half-tone process in the United States in the late 1880s. Before this, illustrators’ sketches, photographs and paintings were nearly always reproduced as wood engravings. This printing technique was developed in England at the turn of the 19th century, and involved engraving across the end-grain of the very hard boxwood, which allowed for much finer detail. It was adapted by the Penny Magazine for the mass production of images in 1832, since the extreme hardness of boxwood also allowed for tens of thousands of images to be printed from a single block without any significant deterioration in image quality. When the Illustrated London News was launched in 1842, a mass audience had ready access to mass-produced, informative and visually realistic imagery of people, places and events for the first time. The starting point in producing an illustration was the original image. This would be copied on to a woodblock, in reverse, and then engraved. The block was usually a composite of several smaller blocks held together by a system of bolts and nuts. (This was because the trunks of the box tree rarely grew larger than 20 centimetres in diameter, and when sliced across the grain to produce woodblocks it was difficult to obtain a block larger than 12 x 12 centimetres.) It meant that the composite block could be taken apart again, and the various sections engraved separately at the same time, hastening the production process. When the block was put together again, the master engraver would knit the image together across the adjoining sections. The completed block was then ready for printing. When looking at newspaper illustrations, faint lines can sometimes appear to run vertically or horizontally across the image; this is the legacy of a composite block. In colonial Australia, the first illustrated newspaper was the Illustrated Sydney News (first series, 1853–55). In Victoria, following the gold rushes, there were numerous short-lived attempts at launching illustrated papers. Their failure was due to a combination of a lack of start-up capital, production problems (a shortage of skilled labour, inadequate equipment, limited supply of materials), targeted readership—the pastoral establishment or itinerant gold-seekers—and regularity of issue. This last factor was the most critical, as proprietors insisted on following the example of the Illustrated London

News, which was published weekly, yet even by 1861, Victoria had a population of little more than half a million, whereas that of Great Britain was nearly 29 million. The circuit-breaker was the Newsletter of Australasia (1856–62), which pioneered the idea of monthly publication linked to the departure of the monthly Royal Mail vessel to England. In 1861–62, two of Melbourne’s established daily newspaper businesses launched monthly illustrated newspapers. The Victorian newspapers were the Illustrated Melbourne Post (1862–68), launched by the Melbourne Herald, and the Australian News for Home Readers in 1861, ceasing publication as the Illustrated Australian News (the last of the 19th-century illustrated monthlies) in 1896, established by the Age. They were followed by the Australasian Sketcher (1873–89), founded by the Argus. In New South Wales, a second series of the Illustrated Sydney News (1864–94) was launched by Gibbs Shallard & Co., a stationery and printing firm. Their success was due to more start-up capital at a time when the earlier production problems were being resolved and social tensions between the aforementioned targeted readerships had diluted. Monthly issue was also more appropriate to colonial demographics, and distribution was facilitated by an expanding railway network, especially in Victoria with the opening of railway lines to both Ballarat and Bendigo in 1862; the network spread further over the next three decades. Between them, these papers produced an estimated 12,000 images across a broad and varied subject range. These subjects may be classified as four thematic groups. ‘Material culture’ depicts the physical progress of European settlement from a perceived pre-contact wilderness to a recognisable Western society. It comprises subjects such as buildings, streetscapes, panoramas of cities and towns, manufacturing and commerce, and infrastructure such as transport, maritime activity and the telegraph. In the ‘civic culture’ theme, there are civic occasions (processions, balls, opening ceremonies, funerals), portraits, leisure (sports and outdoor relaxation activities such as picnics), the arts (theatre, music, fine art) and the volunteer militia, which was an alternative to sport for men. With ‘frontier culture’, there is the interaction with the Australian landscape, with imagery of landscapes, Indigenous people, mining, rural life and natural disasters (fire, flood, drought). Finally, there is ‘beyond Australia’, with most imagery relating to New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, but also covering Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Africa. In July 1888, the Illustrated Sydney News became the first Australian newspaper to publish a half-tone reproduction of a photograph. It was to be the death-knell of monthly illustrated newspapers, as they were superseded by their weekly newspaper stablemates, which had

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indigenous broadcasting begun carrying a few wood-engraved illustrations in the 1860s. Better placed to take advantage of the introduction of the cheaper and faster half-tone process, as well as the new linotype machine, ‘companion’ weekly newspapers become lavishly illustrated, complementing their non-illustrated daily parent papers. Increasingly, illustrations were being included in dailies as well, especially the tabloids. The period after World War I saw the launch of an increasing number of tabloids and the advent of both radio and the cinema newsreels. Illustrated newspapers cum magazines would continue to be published in the 20th century, including Pix (1938–72) and the Australasian Post (1946–96). REFs: P. Dowling, ‘Chronicles of Progress: The Illustrated Newspapers of Colonial Australia’ (PhD thesis, 1997) and Index to Imagery in Colonial Australian Illustrated Newspapers (2012). PETER DOWLING

IMPAR J A TE LE V I S I O N see Indigenous broad-

casting; Remote Commercial Television Service IN D IGENOUS BROADCASTING Access to information and communication technologies has always been a struggle for Indigenous communities in Australia, which have survived in an environment that is often racist and discriminatory. Unlike equivalent legislation in Canada and New Zealand, there is no mention of the special place of Indigenous languages and culture in the Australian Broadcasting Services Act 1992. As early as 1938, Torres Strait Islanders experimented with ‘wireless transmitting’ or two-way radio, but it was not until the late 1960s that Indigenous people first became involved with broadcasting in a significant way. While initial moves were reportedly on commercial radio, the advent of the community radio sector in the 1970s opened the way for Indigenous voices to be heard. Since then, the Indigenous community broadcasting sector—particularly radio—has remained the fastest-growing segment of the Australian broadcasting industry. In communication terms, it has developed to a stage where it provides a first level of service for those Indigenous communities in which it is active, as well as providing a cultural bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences. The first known Aboriginal public radio program went to air on 5UV Adelaide in 1972. With expansion of community radio on the new FM band, Indigenous-produced programs were soon broadcast regularly in Hobart, Melbourne and Canberra. The first Indigenous community radio licence to be awarded in Australia was to the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) in Alice Springs in 1985.

Five years later, the Brisbane Indigenous Media Association received the first Indigenous capital city licence. During this period, Indigenous broadcasters produced weekly programs on the ABC’s regional services and on SBS Radio. Indigenous production units within both the ABC and SBS have continued this tradition through a range of radio and television programs presenting Indigenous perspectives in current affairs and magazine formats, including First in Line (1989), Black Out (1989), Speaking Out (1990– ), Awaye (1993– ) and Living Black (2003– ). From its establishment in 1990 to its demise in 2005, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) played an important role in the development of Indigenous broadcasting. ATSIC coordinated funding for a number of Indigenous media associations and production centres, and it is doubtful whether the sector would be as significant as it is today without this support. Despite the considerable achievements of the sector, a Productivity Commission inquiry into broadcasting in 2000 was the first official acknowledgement of its importance and impact. Around 130 licensed community Indigenous radio and television stations—Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS)—serve their audiences in remote parts of the country with a further 23 Indigenous radio stations broadcasting to regional and urban communities. Most of the small RIBS stations re-transmit available satellite radio and television programming—both mainstream and community produced—emerging from a small number of regionally based Remote Indigenous Media Organisations (RIMOs). This extensive and culturally diverse network operates on an annual budget of just under $20  million. In addition to the RIBS stations, there are two Indigenous radio networks: the National Indigenous Radio Service (NIRS) and the National Indigenous News Service (NINS). Another important network is The Aboriginal Program Exchange (TAPE), which distributes Indigenous programs weekly to community broadcasters nationally. Imparja Television, based in Alice Springs, is an Indigenous-owned commercial television station that has operated under a Remote Commercial Television Service licence since 1988. In the early 1990s, Yuendumu and three other remote communities in the Tanami Desert—Kintore, Lajamanu and Willowra—pioneered the use of converging broadcasting and telecommunications technologies by developing the Tanami Network. The scheme, developed under the auspices of Peter Toyne at Yuendumu, was based on Aboriginal control and a need for media and telecommunications services at a reasonable cost. It used video-conferencing for a range of purposes, from personal communication to strengthening cultural networks, art auctions via the internet, tele-health and online education delivery. The Tanami Network expanded into the Outback Digital Network

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indigenous newspapers (ODN), using funding made available by the federal government from the partial sale of Telstra in 1997. Until the internet became more generally accessible, the ODN provided around 60 remote Indigenous communities with video-conferencing, email, fax and telephony services. Continuing innovative uses of information and communication technologies by remote Indigenous communities across the country reflect a demand for better local services, along with control of the means of production. Although some have criticised an ongoing non-Indigenous presence driving many of these initiatives, none could effectively exist without the imprimatur of local Indigenous communities. The crucial element in all of the successful media enterprises is local community control over how communication networks are conceptualised, structured and governed. One such development was Australia’s first Indigenous television network, Indigenous Community Television (ICTV), which began broadcasting in 2001 on a spare Imparja Television satellite channel to provide a service to remote Indigenous communities in central and northern Australia. This innovative service evolved from the first experiments with local video in communities at Yuendumu and Pukutja (Ernabella) in central Australia in the early 1980s. By 2005, ICTV was broadcasting 300 hours annually of new programming, close to 100 per cent of it Indigenous content, produced mostly by RIBS communities using local or regional languages without subtitles. It was run on a budget of around $70,000 a year. The National Indigenous Television (NITV) service, which began in 2007, has experienced numerous shifts, and logistical and other problems, due to changes in government policy and rushed implementation, leading to considerable criticism from stakeholders and audiences. The first national audience study of Indigenous broadcasting in 2007 confirmed the primary role being played by the vast majority of Indigenous media producers around the country. It identified a strong audience for ICTV in remote communities, ironically months before the network was replaced by NITV. Indigenous audiences around Australia identified their local radio and/or television stations as essential services and central organising elements of community life. Locally produced radio and television programs help people to maintain social and cultural networks, and play a strong educative role—particularly for children. They offer an alternative source of news and information by avoiding the stereotyping of mainstream media and provide crucial support for Indigenous music and dance. An important secondary role is fostering cross-cultural dialogue and understanding with non-Indigenous audiences. REFs: S. Forde, K. Foxwell and M. Meadows, Developing Dialogues (2009); H. Molanr and M. Meadows,

‘Bridging the Gaps: Towards a History of Indigenous Media in Australia’, Media History, 8(1) (2002) and Songlines to Satellites (2002). MICHAEL MEADOWS

INDIGE NOUS COMMUNIT Y T E L E V IS ION see Indigenous broadcasting; Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services

IN D IG EN O U S N EW SP AP ER S Australian Indigenous newspapers have provided a mechanism through which to map changes to government policy, societal attitudes and the range of issues affecting Indigenous people. They have also left an indelible record of Indigenous voices and perspectives. More than 36 Indigenous newspapers have been published since 1836. Some have been produced by Aboriginal organisations, while others have been individual initiatives. Many of the writers and producers of Indigenous newspapers are or have been well-known political campaigners for Indigenous rights. The first Aboriginal newspaper, and an early example of Aboriginal writing, is the Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle. The first edition of the Chronicle, dated 10  September 1836, was written at Wybalenna Aboriginal settlement, Flinders Island, Tasmania. The last known edition was dated January 1838. Aboriginal writers Thomas Brune and Walter George Arthur wrote the Chronicle under the direction and editorship of the Protector of Aborigines, George Augustus Robinson. The aim of the journal is set out in its first sentences: ‘the object of this journal is to promote Christianity civilisation and learning to the Aborigines, inhabitants at Flinders Island’. However, its content also serves as a poignant portrayal of daily life on the Flinders Island settlement. Almost 100 years later, the Australian Abo Call: The Voice of the Aborigines was published in Sydney. The Abo Call ran from April to September 1938. Aboriginal campaigner John T. Patten and Sydney polemicist P.R. Stephensen wrote the content, and it was edited by Stephensen. Patten used the Abo Call to promote the activities of the Sydney-based organisation, the Aborigines Progressive Association, and to encourage membership. The Abo Call also presented ‘the case for Aborigines’ to the broader Australian community. It is one of the first examples of Aboriginal writing being used to influence public opinion and policy. It covered topics such as the January 1938 Aboriginal Day of Mourning protest, Aboriginal living conditions on reserves, Aboriginal sporting achievements and Aboriginal Protection Board deductions from wages and family endowment payments. Through the Abo Call, Patten encouraged readers to become politically active. More than 800 government departments, organisations 215

indigenous newspapers and individuals subscribed, and the publication claimed a readership of over 80,000. More Indigenous newspapers were launched during the 1950s and 1960s, including the Westralian Aborigine on the west coast and Smoke Signals (1960– ) and Churinga (1964–70; known as Alchuringa since 1971) on the east coast. Despite lacking Abo Call’s political stance, they lobbied for Aboriginal rights and sought to inform, educate and influence mainstream Australians. During the late 1960s, Bruce McGuinness, president of the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League (VAAL), actively pushed for Aboriginal control of organisations. In 1968 he produced the Koorier (which was the National Koorier from 1968–69 and has been known as Jumbunna since 1971), and used it as a political platform. The Koorier was the first truly confrontational Indigenous newspaper. McGuinness was both a mentor and inspiration to Aboriginal activists such as Gary Foley, Denis Walker and Bob Maza, and he encouraged them to write for the Koorier and to produce their own work. Since McGuinness published both supportive and opposing political opinion in the Koorier, the newspaper demonstrates the variety of political views circulating in the Indigenous public sphere at that time. The Koorier also acted as a training vehicle by educating readers on how to write letters to the editor and get them published in mainstream newspapers. Unfortunately, his radical stance drew criticism from moderate members of the VAAL and attracted government attention. The government withdrew funding from the VAAL, which left no money to publish the Koorier; this forced McGuinness to seek donations from readers. The 1960s through to the 1980s were the heyday for Indigenous newspaper production. Many key Indigenous rights campaigners produced or wrote the publications that appeared during this time. Gary Foley, Denis Walker, Marcia Langton, Bob Maza, Cheryl Buchanan, John Newfong, Bruce McGuinness, Roberta Sykes, Kevin Gilbert and Charles Perkins were all involved with the production of Aboriginal publications. Koori-bina: A Black Australian News Monthly (1977–79) was published by the Black Women’s Action Group in Redfern, Sydney. Writers Roberta Sykes, Marcia Langton and Sue Chilli used Koori-bina to raise awareness of biased media coverage of Indigenous issues in mainstream Australian newspapers, Aboriginal unemployment, health issues affecting Aboriginal people and land rights. Like many Indigenous newspapers, Koori-bina struggled to survive because of a lack of funding. It reappeared as AIM: Aboriginal-Islander-message (1979–82). Identity, published by the Aboriginal Publications Foundation (APF), first in Sydney, then Perth and Canberra between 1971 and 1982, was one of the most successful Indigenous

publications. Funding from the Aboriginal Arts Board was subsidised with subscription fees, and more than 10,000 copies of the first edition were circulated. Its focus changed across its five editors. Both Barrie Ovenden and Jack Davis took an apolitical stance, whereas under professional journalist John Newfong’s editorship it became a political campaign tool. The final editor, Les Malezer, took a more moderate position than Newfong, but the magazine still covered political topics. During Ovenden’s editorship, Identity drew criticism from members of the Aboriginal community, the deputy editor Kevin Gilbert and the APF secretary Charles Perkins because of its lack of Aboriginal involvement. Aboriginal writer Kevin Gilbert later resigned and went on to publish his own, more political newspaper, Alchuringa, a renamed version of Churinga. Identity folded after Malezer returned to Brisbane and a decision was made to cease publication. The land rights movement has been an enduring theme throughout Indigenous newspaper content. While most Indigenous newspapers covered the land rights issue to some degree, from the 1970s onwards newspapers were published with the specific purpose of influencing, educating and informing about the land rights movement. Key land rights publications include: Bunji: Many Tribes—One People (1971–83), Land Rights News (1976–  ), Messagestick (1986– ) and Land Rights Queensland (LRQ, 1994–2002). Land Rights Queensland was first produced by the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action in Brisbane in 1994. LRQ was funded by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to provide Indigenous perspectives on land rights and the native title debate. LRQ provided information to the Indigenous community and generated mainstream media news coverage that included Indigenous viewpoints and voices by holding media conferences to launch each edition. Journalists who attended the conferences were connected to appropriate Indigenous sources who could speak about the land rights movement and specific action being taken. In 1991, the first nationally distributed Indigenous newspaper, the Koori Mail, was launched; in 2002, the National Indigenous Times appeared. During the 2000s, the Howard Coalition government’s policy of mainstreaming funding and the abolition of ATSIC led to a reduction in the number of Indigenous newspapers being published. Since newspaper production was usually not core business for Indigenous organisations, more pressing issues were given a higher priority in terms of allocating funding. In addition to the two national newspapers, one of the only Indigenous publications still in print is the Torres News (1957– ) in the Torres Strait Islands. The desire to influence policy, educate the broader Australian community and inform both

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industrial reporting the Indigenous and mainstream community about the activities of Indigenous organisations and shared concerns is a common thread running through Indigenous newspapers. Simultaneously, the battle to obtain sufficient independent or government funding to continue publishing is a problem faced by many Indigenous publications. Regardless of the challenges, from 1836 onwards Indigenous newspapers have provided a wide range of perspectives on Aboriginal rights and other debates across the Australian political and social landscape. REF: E. Burrows, ‘Writing to be Heard: The Indigenous Print Media’s Role in Establishing and Developing an Indigenous Public Sphere’ (PhD thesis, 2009). ELIZABETH BURROWS

I NDUS TRI A L REPORTING Industry and its relationship with colonial progress became an enduring theme for newspapers throughout the 19th century. Newspapers, and later radio, television and digital products, traditionally have framed industrial reports around disputes over wages and conditions. Reports have applied this template assiduously from the reporting of the first strikes in colonial Sydney. Not surprisingly, unions have applied their template to these reports—one which sees newspapers siding with employers. When the Melbourne Argus wrote critically about trade unions, Charles Jardine Don, the leader of the Masons Society and the Eight Hour Labor League, wrote to defend himself and his union in November 1859, maintaining that the Argus had ‘abandoned all hope of seeing capital and labour on permanently good terms’ and identifying another aspect of industrial disputes: press bias. By the 1890s, workers were better organised, and had their own newspapers and legitimacy afforded by legislation. In a population of just over three million, more than 200,000 workers had joined one of the 1400 trade unions. Many unions wrote about workers from their own perspective in their own labour press. The Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) published two newspapers, the Australian Worker in New South Wales and the Worker in Brisbane. Writer and propagandist Henry Boote edited both papers between 1916 and 1943. Strikes in the 1890s saw lines harden between capital and labour. The four Great Strikes of the 1890s—the Maritime Strike (1890), the Shearers’ Strikes (1891 and 1894) and the Broken Hill Miners Strike (1892)—provided much copy for newspapers. Non-union papers largely took the side of employers, while union papers understandably supported strikers. Cartoons and photographs now began to complement news stories and editorials. One paper, the Critic (1903–31), an independent newspaper in Central Queensland, talked of the ‘Fat Press’, while reinforcing other main-

stays of the labour movement—scab labour, the White Australia policy, industrial progress and the support of conservative political forces for atrocious working conditions. It also reproduced stories from the United States about how employers had broken strikes. By the 20th century, industrial reporting was a regular feature of newspapers. Unions and the ALP continued to pursue better working conditions and pay. When Justice H.B. Higgins, President of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, handed down his basic wage case in 1907, neither disputes nor their news coverage abated. Moviegoers had seen both industrial developments and disputes between 1913 and 1932 on the silent Australasian Gazette newsreel and news with sound with the Cinesound Review and the Fox Movietone News from the early 1930s to 1970. Radio had covered progress and disputes since its inception in 1923, and from 1946 provided parliamentary broadcasts on the ABC. With sound, moving pictures and an improved capacity to reproduce photographs in newspapers, reporting became more dramatic. The Dalfram dispute at Port Kembla in 1938 typified this transformation. Footage and photographs of unionists heckling conservative Prime Minister (Sir) Robert  Menzies travelled around the world. Strike reportage did not always describe the reasons for industrial action. When more than half Melbourne’s police force went on strike in October and November 1923, rioters and looters took to the streets and caused damage and mayhem. Three people died and thousands of volunteer constables struggled to maintain order. Melbourne’s Camperdown Chronicle thundered: ‘The shocking incidents associated with the strike of police in Melbourne form the blackest page in the history of Australia and will be deeply regretted by every Australian except those of the criminal classes.’ The reasons for the strike—pay, conditions and a pension scheme—were lost in the coverage of the riots and damage. As strikes developed, often their origins became blurred and replaced by more sensational reports. A demonstration at the Rothbury mine over pay and conditions that lasted more than 14 months (1929–30) was largely remembered for the death of a young miner who was shot when police fired on the demonstration. Industrial reports were not restricted to populated urban areas or industries with radical pasts. Pay and conditions for Indigenous pastoral workers had largely escaped popular industrial reports. However, in 1946 when workers walked off stations in Western Australia’s Pilbarra over pay and conditions, it had unforeseen consequences. The strike lasted more than three years and, while workers won award rates, it contributed more significantly to issues such as cultural and human rights. It led to an

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internet appeal to the United Nations about the treatment of Australia’s Aborigines. The journalist Douglas Lockwood wrote in the Adelaide News in November 1946: ‘This is probably the most smashing indictment of our treatment of aborigines ever to be made. The matter is now on an international basis, and it would not be surprising if soon there should be unfavorable world publicity about our two-faced democracy.’ The same industrial issues emerged in 1966 when stockmen at Gurindji in the Northern Territory walked off Wave Hill Station. Far too nuanced for many newspapers, this was reported as an industrial dispute, if at all. Yet the land claims were pursued in some newspapers, including the communist Tribune and the Canberra Times. Occasionally, industrial reporting highlighted a dispute by examining an individual. When Clarrie O’Shea of the Australian Tramways and Motor Omnibus Employees’ Association refused court access to union records and also refused to pay court fines in 1969, he became the first unionist imprisoned for contempt. Mass protests followed, one million workers struck in support and one media figure played a significant role. Dudley MacDougall, a former executive of the Australian Financial Review, paid the fines and O’Shea was released. In the 1980s, the industrial and political New Right began using section 45D of the Trade Practices Act 1974 and common law to challenge union power. Reports of the disputes at the Mudginberri abattoir in the Northern Territory and at Dollar Sweets in Melbourne were framed around wages, conditions and the rights of unions and employers. Magazines such as Business Review Weekly, television programs such as Four Corners and the Nine Network’s Sunday, and radio programs such as the ABC’s Background Briefing, less constrained by tight deadlines and circulation imperatives, teased out a different story. Pay and conditions were replaced by a battle for union survival and a hard-line conservative ambition to break union power. Sometimes industrial action challenged reporting. In the 1970s, the NSW branch of the Builders’ Labourers’ Federation imposed ‘Green Bans’ on projects that either compromised the environment and/or Sydney’s built heritage. Newspapers often inaccurately described this as ‘industrial’ action. By the mid-1980s, the Australian media were regularly covering major national wage cases. National papers—the Australian and the Australian Financial Review—had more than one journalist covering industrial relations out of Melbourne, where the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission and the ACTU were based. The Sydney Morning Herald posted a senior specialist journalist to the southern city in 1985. Negotiations between the Hawke Labor government, the ACTU and business groups to develop a Prices and Incomes Accord during the 1980s—much of

it undertaken between Melbourne and Canberra—confirmed the wisdom of this strategy. The Accord went through eight major renegotiations over almost a decade. However, over time, the importance of national wage negotiations and cases waned under the pressure for a more decentralised enterprise bargaining approach and the slow decline of unionisation, especially in the private sector. Specialist ‘industrial relations’ journalists were increasingly replaced by ‘workplace’ writers whose focus was more on human resources than the tension between organised labour and capital. REFs: J. Harris, The Bitter Fight (1970); J. Isaac and S. Macintyre (eds), The New Province for Law and Order (2004). GLENN MITCHELL

INT E RNAT IONA L NE W S see foreign reporting

IN TER N ET In 1969, the internet was officially launched by the US military-funded Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), connecting computer networks at various US universities and research organisations. In Australia, the CSIRO’s predecessor organisation had built Australia’s first computer in 1949. In 1963, CSIRONET was established by Trevor Pearcey to link the organisation’s computers, and by 1976 a total of 50 computers were connected. From the mid-1970s, micro-computers led to the personal computer revolution. Early online services and providers such as CompuServ and America Online (AOL) offered services. Telecom Australia was an influential pioneer, promoting a competing telecommunications standard as alternative to what was eventually chosen by AARNet, and internationally, the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). The Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) movement saw FidoNet (a US-based system) offering textbased computer-to-computer services popular in Australia also. Australian enthusiasts made dial-up connections over international telephone lines to the internet during the 1970s, but the first permanent connection was made possible by the Australian Computer Science network (ACSnet) in the early 1980s. In mid-1989, the University of Melbourne connected to the University of Hawaii, and thus to the internet. The same year, the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) was established. Geoff Huston was AARNet’s first employee as national technical manager, and between April and May 1990, eight universities were connected. Consistent with its international partners, AARNet’s rules restricted access; however, from 1989 a fledging industry of internet service pro-

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internet viders (ISPs) was set up as either non-for-profit organisations or small businesses to connect organisations and individuals outside AARNet’s members, including DIALix in Western Australia, Pegasus operating from Byron Bay, the not-for-profit APANA (Australian Public Access Network Association) established in 1992 and Global Info-Links, the first community scheme, established in Ipswich, Queensland, in 1994. From the mid-1990s, a competitive market in internet backbone, wholesale and retail services grew rapidly. Without much fanfare, in 1995 the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC) controversially transferred AARNet’s management of its network and commercial customer list—essentially much of the Australian internet at that stage—to Telstra. In 1997, Optus was the surprise winner of the AARNet tender for the national education and research network. To put their own affairs on a business footing, in 1998 the universities established AARNet Pty Ltd as a stand-alone company under their control. By the mid-1990s, many smaller ISPs had given way to larger concerns—especially the dominant Telstra and fast-growing second telecommunications carrier Optus. One survivor was iiNet, established in Perth in 1993 by Michael Malone and Michael O’Reilly in the Malone family garage. Malone retired as CEO in 2014, after iiNet celebrated its 20th anniversary. Another new entrant was OzEmail, established in 1994 by Australian Personal Computer magazine founder Sean Howard with partners Trevor Kennedy and Malcolm Turnbull. Investment in the internet business burgeoned in the Australian chapter of what become known as the dot.com boom, with most established mainstream media proprietors trying their hands—not always with success. In this period, existing media concerns invested heavily in internet business, and internet businesses—notably Telstra, underpinned by its fixed and mobile telecommunications revenues—established significant stakes in the press and broadcasting. For the internet’s first three decades, internet services were provided under US and other government aegis, and by research institutions, for education and research purposes, and acceptable use rules proscribed commerce. Once the ban was lifted in 1992, and the internet grew dramatically, the open public internet saw core operations of the internet commercialised. The provision of internet domain names, for instance, moved from one individual custodian, University of Melbourne computer programmer Robert Elz, and become the function of a new company, Melbourne IT, in 2006. Melbourne IT’s stocks soared on the initial public offering in late 1999, but by 2001 had sunk dramatically. New media professions and businesses arose with web design and hosting, as did various software, code and program development niches associated with growing internet functionality.

Australian firms competed internationally for internet services, or provided niche products and services such as Trumpet Winsock for Windows clients (Peter Tattam), HotDog Web Editor (Steve Outtrim) and Hotline Communications (Adam Hinkley’s forerunner of peer-to-peer (P2P) software and BitTorrent). Some businesses were short-lived—for instance, Australian search engines such as Web Wombat, Anzwers and LookSmart (set up in San Francisco by former student politicians Tracey Ellery and Evan Thornley) were eclipsed by the likes of AltaVista and Yahoo!, which in turn were sidelined by Google (now synonymous with internet searching). Australians made important contributions elsewhere, with Google Maps developed in Google’s Sydney office, and the CSIRO pioneering wi-fi. Australians made important contributions elsewhere, with Google Maps developed in Google’s Sydney office. Australian figures also loomed large in the development of internet policy and governance, such as scientist Geoff Huston and Paul Twomey, CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from 2003 to 2009. By the mid-1990s, the internet was being popularised, and policy-makers turned their attention to affordability and equity challenges. Programs were specifically devised to extend coverage to non-metropolitan areas. The gap is now much narrower, but differential patterns of access and use between metropolitan and non-metropolitan locations persist—especially between Indigenous and non-Indigenous users in remote locations. By the end of the 1990s, there was a widespread sense that the internet formed part of Australian society and especially its media system. Through newsgroups, file transfer programs, and email lists, the internet become an important new distribution system, where all manner of groups could circulate material, express views and find audiences. Email displaced letter writing, postal services and the fax. Messaging and chat applications become important forms of interpersonal communication. The rise of websites provided a relatively easy way for individuals and groups to gain new freedom of expression, and then become an essential part of business, government, information and service provision, as well as everyday life routines and relationships. The credit for the first Australian website goes to the Australian National University’s Professor David Green for the Life website on biological diversity. Many culturally significant websites followed, such as the cyberfeminist e-zine Geekgirl, created by Rosie Cross. As blogging achieved recognition in 2003–04, the Australian blogosphere grew in size and influence. The emergence of blogs marks the moment where the internet gained recognition for its potential to supplement and supplant existing news media—and to create a new

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investigative journalism dimension to intimate and private, as well as new forms of public, communication and audiences. The open, collaborative form of Wikis also proved popular, not least with substantial Australian contributions and entries to the default reference work of school students and adults alike, Wikipedia. The role of blogs shifted with the advent of Twitter (sometimes called ‘microblogging’), and various social networking systems and social media (the most widely used over the period including Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn). In the early 2000s, high-capacity, fast broadband largely replaced slower dial-up connections. The best access was available via subscription television hybrid fibre coaxial cable networks in capital cities, installed by Foxtel (a joint venture of Telstra and News Corporation) and Optus. Outside these areas, broadband was provided by satellite (by Austar, acquired by Foxtel in 2012) or by the copper public switched telecommunication network, with ASDL technology supporting vigorous retail competition. Internet speeds still remain slow in many country (and some other) areas today, but generally across Australia, user expectations grew—and ensuing frustrations saw the National Broadband Network (NBN) eventuate as the promised solution. NBN plans changed with the 2013 election of the Abbott Coalition government, so actual broadband speeds and usage allowances will depend on eventual implementation. Despite variable quality, broadband networks, internet technology and service development, and design combined to see the internet increasingly become the default platform for many services across the media and entertainment. Video became a new media-rich phenomenon, courtesy of YouTube, acquired by search giant Google. From 2005, downloading of television programs emerged as a phenomenon—one that, by the early 2010s, drew a response from commercial and national broadcasters with establishment of catch-up television, marketing of programs and availability via digital content models such as Apple’s iTunes. The direct broadcasting of television via the internet (so-called IPTV) did not attract significant audiences, as content was either freely available via downloading programs such as BitTorrent and associated sites, or new business models and internet media providers, with Australian consumers even prepared to obtain Virtual Private Network addresses in the United States to access Netflix, Hulu and others who ‘geoblocked’ their US-based services, and had not yet expanded operations into Australia. Music distribution had its origins in early internet, become widespread with the World Wide Web (with, for instance, the early Next site, set up by Rolling Stone), and pervasive on internet-enabled mobile and portable media in

the 2010s. Online video and computer gaming was a widely shared and significant part of the internet for all demographics, sustaining a small yet significant games industry. The potential of the internet for freedom of speech, as well as new cultural possibilities and social practices, was embraced by a wide and diverse range of groups. However, many concerns were raised, with ensuing public debate and eventually legal and policy responses. Inappropriate and offensive content—whether sexual, inciting racial vilification, trolling, defamation or cyber-bullying—has proven difficult to address. Various federal Communications Ministers, from Senator Richard Alston through Senator Stephen Conroy to Malcolm Turnbull, initiated measures. Alston’s Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999, amending the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, took a complaints-based co-regulation approach, in which the Internet Industry Association of Australia was obliged to take a lead role in developing Codes of Practice. In the Rudd Labor government, Conroy sought to filter offensive content at the source with his internet filtering proposal—dropped after a widespread backlash. Internet freedom emerged as a hot-button issue for Australian consumers—not just in relation to censorship, but also the threats to sharing of content represented by 2010–11 US intellectual property and copyright Bills aiming to tackle piracy. Landmark Australian cases on piracy were taken by record companies against Kazaa (eventually settled in 2006), and by television and film industries against iiNet (culminating in a key 2012 High Court decision dismissing the suit). For many Australian citizens, such issues highlighted the importance of internet governance as a national as well as an international issue. For an increasing number of Australians, the internet has become a mobile experience, via the smartphones, tablet computers, and apps that have become popular since 2007. This was a harbinger of the many technologies that relied upon, and came to change, the internet, including location-based technologies, sensing networks and the much-anticipated Internet of Things, where every device is interconnected. REFs: G. Goggin (ed.), Virtual Nation (2004); G. Korporaal, 20 Years of the Internet in Australia (2009); http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/aarnet/AARNet_ 20YearBook_Full.pdf. GERARD GOGGIN

IN VESTIG ATIVE JO U R N ALISM Investigative journalism in Australia has its antecedents in Britain and the United States. In the second half of the 20th century, it was influenced by a social responsibility model of journalism that gained momentum following the Watergate scandal. While there are earlier

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investigative journalism examples in the Australian press, it was more likely to be labelled as ‘muck-raking’. One reason was that Australia’s colonial newspapers were under government control until 1824. Generally, Australia’s formative editors deferred to the authorities, with noteworthy exceptions such as the editor of Hobart’s Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser, Henry Melville, who was imprisoned after challenging the harsh treatment of prisoners in the 1830s and exposing widespread bribery in Hobart’s public houses. The definition of investigative journalism is contested, yet there is broad agreement that it has a watchdog role, and takes time and effort to reveal public-interest information that might otherwise remain hidden. The US-based Investigative Reporters and Editors advanced the notion that investigative journalism is distinct from daily news gathering because of the time, research and verification involved. Julianne Schultz identifies investigative journalism as independently sourced and verified information that reveals a new truth, while Rodney Tiffen considers that ‘exposure of corruption is the cutting edge of democratic accountability’. David McKnight identifies two 20th century peaks for Australian investigative journalism: immediately after World War II, ‘when the hopes of a post war “new order” were high’; and in the 1970s and early 1980s, responding to the ‘cultural and political’ revolution of the 1960s. Investigative journalism’s first wave—popularly termed ‘muck-raking’ or exposure journalism—was typically directed at single targets like charlatan doctors. During the 1960s, muck-raking tabloids such as Sydney’s Sun and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mirror and Truth led the charge with watchdog reporting. Muck-raking evolved from the American Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Tawdry mass-circulation American mastheads were the target of President Theodore Roosevelt, who coined ‘muckrake’ as a pejorative term. But journalists embraced the expression and in time ‘muck-raking’ came to be associated with seeking out and exposing corruption. By the end of the 19th and into the 20th century, the Australian weekly press was muck-raking about shysters and con artists, and standing up for the powerless with exposés that were progressive and socially reformist, such as the Age’s reporting of factory working conditions in the 1890s that led to industrial law reforms. Examples could also be found in the Bulletin (1880–2008), Sydney’s Truth (1890–1958) and Smith’s Weekly (1919–50). The transition to the second wave of investigative reporting was interrupted by a period of complacency during the Cold War. As in Europe and the United States, the mass media became largely complicit with anti-communism as the organising principle of a broader cultural cold

war. There were exceptions, including labour movement publications such as the Worker. The collaborating relationship between the press and the political establishment started to unravel as social and political movements, including feminism and Vietnam War protests, gained strength. By the 1970s, the daily press was more at ease challenging authority as equals. Melbourne Herald journalist Peter Game exposed the unconventional loans scheme of the Whitlam Labor government. Publications such as the Age, the Melbourne Herald, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian and the National Times produced much of Australia’s investigative journalism at this time. Their investigations tended towards systemic wrongdoing rather than individual grievance. Australian newsrooms were inspired by the persistence and suspicion of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who unearthed the Watergate cover-up. But London’s Sunday Times also influenced Australian investigative journalism. During Graham Perkin’s editorship of the Age (1966– 75), the London paper’s investigations were published locally. Stories included expatriate Phillip Knightley’s exposure of British spy Kim Philby defecting to Russia, and Knightley’s investigations into the birth defect drug Thalidomide. At its height, there were five Australian investigative journalists on the Sunday Times’ Insight team: Knightley, Murray Sayle, Alex Mitchell, Tony Clifton and Bruce Page. Perkin, who had a close relationship with Sunday Times editor Harold Evans, established Australia’s own Insight unit at the Age. Led by Ben Hills, the unit uncovered corruption in Victoria’s housing commission land deals. Investigative journalism identifies wrong, even illegal, practices that breach society’s moral code, but it differs from advocacy journalism, which directs the inquiry towards social change. For example, since the 1960s, the in-depth reporting of Sydney-born journalist John Pilger (1939– ) has prosecuted the West’s imperialist agenda, including the plight of Indigenous Australians following white settlement. In terms of broadcast investigative journalism, the ABC led the way with investigative stories on Four Corners (1961– ) and This Day Tonight (TDT) (1967–79). TDT’s hard-hitting reports developed many extraordinary journalism careers, including those of Gerald Stone, Richard Carleton, Caroline Jones, Mike Willesee, Mike Carlton, Allan Hogan, George Negus, Peter Luck, Andrew Olle, Clive Hale, Peter Manning and Stuart Littlemore. Its 1973 investigation into illegal gambling in New South Wales proved the broadcaster’s financial and editorial commitment to watchdog reporting. In 1985, the ABC made this explicit in its policy statements.

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investigative journalism Walkley Award-winning investigative print stories in the late 1960s and early 1970s included Evan Whitton’s exposure of police corruption and illegal abortion in Melbourne’s Truth (1902–95) and Catherine Martin’s investigations in the West Australian, including the Tronado microwave machine’s bogus cancer treatments and the deadly consequences for miners of exposure to blue asbestos. The National Times (1971–88) supported women in hard news and investigative roles, including Marian Wilkinson, Anne Summers, Wendy Bacon, Deborah Snow and Adele Horin. By the 1980s, John Fairfax & Sons mastheads produced much of Australia’s quality print investigative journalism. The controversial ‘Age Tapes’ was a series that triggered corruption charges against a High Court judge (later acquitted) and the 1986 Stewart Royal Commission of Inquiry into Drug Trafficking. Based on earlier reports by the National Times, Age investigators Bob Bottom, Lindsay Murdoch and David Wilson used the leaked tape transcripts to document links between organised crime in New South Wales, police and government. Influential television investigative reporting in this decade included investigations into police corruption in Queensland, such as Quentin Dempster’s 1986 ABC documentary The Sunshine System and, the following year, Chris Masters’ Four Corners story ‘The Moonlight State’. The Courier-Mail also covered this significant story, which led to the Fitzgerald Inquiry (1987–89), and reporter Phil Dickie won the Gold Walkley for it. Paul Barry’s 1989 Four Corners investigation into Alan Bond’s financial dealings was also significant. Commercial television programs have also contributed important public interest investigative stories, including the Nine Network’s Sunday (1981–2008) and 60 Minutes (1979– ). But many folded due to falling audience numbers and cost-cutting, such as Ten’s Page One (1988–89) and its successor, Public Eye (1989). Even in its last days, Sunday was winning awards, including three 2008 Walkleys for Ross Coulthart and Nick Farrow’s ‘Butcher of Bega’. The Seven Network’s investigative programs have included Witness (1996–98), hosted by Jana Wendt and then Paul Barry, and Real Life (1992); it still produces Sunday Night with Coulthart reporting. Radio is not as often recognised for its investigative journalism. Exceptions include Dr Norman Swan’s 1988 Gold Walkley-winning story on Dr William McBride’s fraudulent medical research for The Health Report (ABC). The ABC’s Background Briefing is unique as a dedicated investigative radio program. Its award-winning investigations have included Mark Aarons’ 1980s series on Australia’s policy of accepting ex-Nazis as refugees, and Sarah Dingle’s 2013 reports on child sexual abuse.

While the 1970s and 1980s produced consequential investigative journalism across broadcast and print media platforms, research has found that, notwithstanding falling print circulations and revenues, and masthead closures, the volume of quality print investigative journalism increased during the 1990s and 2000s. The Courier-Mail and the weekly Sunday Age were among the newspapers contributing Walkley-winning investigative stories in the 1990s— the Mail unveiled author Helen Darville for falsifying her background, and the Sunday Age’s three-month investigation into Australian sex tourism in Asia led to changes in Australian law. One of Australia’s most successful investigative duos was the Age’s Gary Hughes and Gerard Ryle, who won successive Walkley Awards in the late 1990s for their investigative work. Ryle left Australia to become the first non-American director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Similarly, the 2000s proved to be a productive decade for Australian print investigative journalism with the Australian Financial Review renewing print’s lapsed attention during the 1980s on corporate wrongdoing, and investigating the financial collapses of Opes Prime and Storm Financial. General news mastheads tended to favour crime investigations, such as Hedley Thomas’s exposé of the bungled police investigation into terror suspect Dr Muhamed Haneef in the Australian and Nick McKenzie’s investigation into underworld figure Tony Mokbel’s money laundering at the races in the Age. It was also the beginning of book-length inquiries, such as David Marr and Marian Wilkinson’s Dark Victory (2003), which investigated the Howard Coalition government’s political framing of the Norwegian cargo carrier Tampa after it rescued asylum seekers. With a 24-hour media cycle, investigative journalism is now less likely to be part of an ongoing story series; an exception was Kate McClymont and Linton Besser’s 2012 reports in the Sydney Morning Herald exposing the corrupt dealings of NSW politicians Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald that triggered an Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry. The nascent online sphere provides new opportunities for news gathering and data analysis, but its contributions to Australian investigative reporting are more often in collaboration with others. Examples include WikiLeaks’ partnership with Fairfax Media using ‘big data’ such as leaked diplomatic cables to produce investigative stories. Online news outlets such as Crikey and New Matilda have also combined with academia to undertake investigative journalism. Traditional media are increasing audience reach and limiting costs by syndicating investigative stories across their networks and collaborating with other media. The ABC and Fairfax Media have teamed up on several investigative reports, including Nick McKenzie and Richard

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investigative journalism Baker’s 2011 Walkley Award-winning revelations about Australia’s biggest bribery scandal involving Reserve Bank subsidiary currency firms. In 2012, Fairfax Media and News Limited announced thousands of job losses amid falling revenues and print circulations. A much smaller number of journalism roles have been created by online start-ups and established international media targeting Australian online audiences, such as the Daily Mail and the Guardian. Together with significant reporting redundancies and a fast-paced digital news cycle that competes with journalists’ research time, Australian

investigative journalism’s future is unclear. What is certain is that the internet as a research tool for investigative reporters is revolutionary. REFs: A. Carson, ‘Investigative Journalism, the Public Sphere and Australian Democracy: The Watchdog Role of Newspapers in the Digital Age’ (PhD thesis, 2013); D. McKnight, ‘The Investigative Tradition in Australian Journalism 1945–1965’, in A. Curthoys and J. Schultz (eds), Journalism (1999); J. Schultz, Reviving the Fourth Estate (1998); R. Tiffen, Scandals, Media, Politics and Corruption in Contemporary Australia (1999). ANDREA CARSON

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J JA M E S, J OHN S TANL EY (‘THE VAGABOND’) (1843–96) A prominent Melbourne journalist, James became known as ‘The Vagabond’, writing first-hand accounts of down and out life in late 1870s Melbourne. He was born in England in 1843, then made several attempts at journalism in Wales and London. His life for the next few years is mostly a mystery. On his own account, he was imprisoned as a spy in Paris and reported on the Franco-Prussian war. He went to the United States around 1872, where he changed his name to Julian Thomas, then to Australia in 1875. In April 1876, the Melbourne Argus published ‘A Night in the Model Lodging House’ by ‘A Vagabond’. Thomas had found his niche. Further articles by ‘The Vagabond’, reporting on his experiences inside places like the Immigrants’ Home, the Benevolent Home and Pentridge Prison followed. Unlike Marcus Clarke, who had written for the Melbourne press about what he termed ‘Lower Bohemia’, ‘The Vagabond’ wrote both as a participant and an observer. He suggested reforms, writing flamboyantly but with compassion. His articles proved popular, with the mystery of the author’s identity adding to their appeal. A collection in four volumes was published as The Vagabond Papers (1877). Late that year, he went to Sydney to write for the Sydney Morning Herald. He then travelled widely, writing on the Chinese gold diggers in Cooktown, the brutality of the French administration in New Caledonia and his impressions of the New Hebrides and New Guinea. These articles were published as Cannibals and Convicts (1886). He also wrote accounts of his travels in China, Japan and California. Thomas returned to Melbourne and wrote for the Argus. After being the Argus correspondent for the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, he wrote further travel articles on the Pacific for the Age. However, despite his prolific output, Thomas died in poverty in Fitzroy in 1896. ‘The Vagabond’ was an important chronicler of what would today be called underclass life in Melbourne in the 1870s. Michael Cannon edited a selection of Thomas’s best Melbourne journalism as The Vagabond Papers (1969). He

also edited Vagabond Country: Australian Bush and Town Life in the Victorian Age (1981). JOHN ARNOLD

JOHN FA IRFA X & S ONS see Fairfax Media

JO N ES, ALAN B ELFO R D Alan Jones was born in south-east Queensland on 13 April in either 1943, 1944 or 1945 (Jones has made contradictory claims, and it is likely that his real birth-date is earlier than 1943). His early adulthood was spent as a schoolmaster in the elite private secondary systems of Queensland and New South Wales. Success as a school Rugby coach led to Jones managing the Grand Slam-winning Wallabies side of 1984. Jones was the unsuccessful Liberal Party candidate for the NSW seat of Earlwood in 1978, and failed in other attempts to gain Liberal pre-selection. He worked in Canberra as a speechwriter for Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser before returning to Sydney as spokesman for the Employers’ Federation of New South Wales. When John Laws left 2UE for 2GB in late 1984, Jones auditioned for the vacant morning slot, and in March 1985 began broadcasting daily on 2UE at an annual salary of $130,000. It was the beginning of a rapid career trajectory that saw him become the dominant talkback radio voice in the nation’s largest market, Sydney. As his audience grew, he championed causes at the extremes of conservative politics, notably on South Africa and his support for the ‘Joh for Canberra’ campaign. From March 1988, Jones moved to the more politically influential and lucrative breakfast slot (5.30–9 a.m.), and soon became the highest-rating announcer on Sydney AM radio. But the year ended badly: he was arrested in a London public toilet and charged with ‘outraging public decency’ and ‘committing an indecent act’. Both charges were later dropped. The ABC program Media Watch was a persistent critic, exposing Jones for plagiarism in a newspaper column in 1990 and again in 1999 for his central role in the ‘cash for comment’ scandal. Despite these setbacks, Jones held his

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journalism education audience, and in 2002 switched to 2GB for a $4–5  million sign-on fee, $3–5 million annual salary and a share of the company. From the late 1980s, Jones had enjoyed a friendship with James Packer that led to his daily 2UE radio editorial also gaining a national television audience when repeated on Nine Network’s Today program. But an attempt to launch Jones as a nightly television current affairs personality (Alan Jones Live, Ten Network, 1994) showed him to be uncomfortable in the medium and the program was cancelled after 13 weeks of poor ratings. His closeness with the Packer family re-emerged when Jones acted as master of ceremonies at the 2006 memorial service for Kerry Packer. ABC Books commissioned a biography of Jones by senior Four Corners reporter/producer Chris Masters in 2003, but abandoned the project after reported legal threats from Jones. Jonestown was eventually published by Allen & Unwin in 2006. In October 2012, the Australian Communications and Media Authority reached an agreement with 2GB that Jones and his production staff would undergo training in ‘factual accuracy’ and the presentation of ‘significant viewpoints’ after findings against the broadcaster over false assertions he had made, particularly on climate change. DAVID SALTER

J ONE S , CA ROLINE M ARY NEWM AN Caroline Jones is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who has had a 50-year association with the ABC. She was raised in the NSW town of Murrurundi. Her grandfather, Ashley Needham Pountney (1868–1938), was editor of some of the first newspapers in northern New South Wales. Although she studied a number of subjects at university, she did not complete a degree, and says she was ‘conscious of my lack of education’. But she was noted for her drive and exhaustive preparation. In the 1960s, she gained a part-time traineeship at the ABC in Canberra. In 1968, she was invited to join the ABC’s This Day Tonight as the team’s first female reporter. In 1972, she joined Four Corners as a reporter/presenter and was the first woman in Australia to anchor a current affairs television show. The following year, she won a Logie Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television Journalism. Of this period, she says: ‘I like working with men. I became one of the boys quite easily, playing snooker, drinking middies and smoking thin black Danish cigars.’ From 1977 to 1981, concurrently with her Four Corners commitment (1972–81), she anchored the morning program for 2BL (now 702 ABC Sydney). She was invited to join the original 60 Minutes reporting team in 1979 but declined.

From 1987 to 1994, Jones presented the ground-breaking The Search for Meaning on ABC Radio National. The program reflected a significant shift in her own interests, away from the conventional ‘adversarial’ interview techniques of hard-hitting television current affairs to the approach characterised as ‘confessional’, which she pioneered in Australia. On The Search for Meaning, hundreds of Australians told intimate stories of their lives and their spiritual or personal development through those experiences. The Search for Meaning was a catalyst for the development of ABC Television’s Australian Story, which debuted in May 1996. Since then, Jones has been the regular presenter and a specialist contributor to Australian Story. She is the ‘public face’ of the popular program. Jones is author of several books, including An Authentic Life: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Everyday Life (1998) and Through a Glass Darkly: A Journey of Love and Grief with My Father (2009). In 1988–89, Jones worked with the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association on the development of current affairs television programs. In 1988 she was appointed AO, in 1997 she was voted one of Australia’s National Living Treasures and in 2007 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Sunshine Coast. In 2013—the year she was awarded the Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism—Jones became the patron of the newly formed Women in Media, set up by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the Walkley Foundation. DEBORAH FLEMING

JO U R N ALISM ED U C ATIO N The University of Western Australia offered the first journalism education classes in Australia in 1919. At that time, journalism was an occupation of low repute, uneven talents and ill-defined prospects. Today, journalism is a respected and powerful profession, and many young Australians see journalism education as the gateway to an attractive career—despite recent press industry contraction and job cuts. Each year, more than 4500 students enrol in the undergraduate and postgraduate journalism degree programs offered at 30 universities and three private colleges. While professional skills training is now a core curriculum offering, journalism educators remain committed to the initial mission of a broad liberal education for journalists, and adopt a variety of pedagogical approaches to instil in graduates independent perspectives on society and their chosen profession. This combination of critical vision and know-how, although not always highly prized by employers, means that tertiary-educated journalists are well

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journalism education placed to add value to journalism by improving news quality, ethical practice and thus public trust in news media. The Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) (later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance), a pioneering white-collar trade union established in 1910, was the first and strongest advocate of tertiary education as a means to improve the status of journalists. An earlier bid by the short-lived Australian Institute of Journalists, formed in 1892, sought to regulate entry to journalism via the testing and registration of qualified reporters but failed because newspaper proprietors ignored it. Clem Lloyd, author of Profession: Journalist (1985), suggests some proprietors were more accepting of the AJA’s strategy of journalism diplomas from established universities—especially from 1921, once programs were introduced at the universities of Queensland, Melbourne, Western Australia, and Sydney. Even so, working journalists often saw little practical benefit in such courses, and a 1938 assessment of academic performance found only 25 journalism diplomas had been awarded in Australia. The University of Queensland (UQ) became the leading national provider of US-style professional education after it redesigned its diploma in 1935 to include journalism training, cadet enrolments and guest lectures from working journalists. It introduced the first journalism major in a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1971, and appointed Professor John Henningham to the first chair of journalism in an Australian university in 1989. During the inter-war years, the ratio of women to men in university courses was higher than in newspaper offices; it is likely that women viewed tertiary education as a means of entry into the male-dominated newspaper industry, since they were largely barred from the conventional training ground of cadetships.  Although enrolling in or graduating from the course did not ensure a journalistic job, historian Paula Hamilton concluded that Australian women journalists were generally better educated than their male colleagues. In 1975, what became the Journalism Education Association of Australia (JEAA) was formed. In 1987, the Hawke Labor government introduced higher education policy reforms that dramatically increased tertiary enrolments, and ‘vocationally relevant’ curricula. By 2001, media and communication studies had become a major area of study. Journalism was one of the field’s most attractive specialisations, partly due to unrealistic perceptions of the celebrity status and high salaries to be found in journalism. Journalism degree nomenclatures, structures and contents vary widely across the university sector. Undergraduate journalism students now typically study units covering the history, sociology, cultures or politics of journalism, as well as news writing, editing and media law, and various

disciplines ranging from politics and economics to justice studies. Fostering ethical practice is a shared ambition across all journalism programs. Pedagogy varies widely, from newsroom-style teaching and mentoring to educational models that focus on problem-solving, reflective practice or critical investigative and analytical skills. The US-style professional education model has declined in prominence and interest in formal accreditation of journalism programs has also waned. For many editors, journalism education is seen as theory-laden and out of touch with industry realities, even when lecturers are former journalists. The news industry accepts journalism degrees as a matter of convenience rather than conviction: they represent a convenient way of filtering job applicants and inducting journalism graduates costs less than the old three-year cadet training system. Moreover, Australian journalists’ salaries and promotions are based on work performance and seniority, not educational qualifications, and the newsroom is still viewed by some as the best place to learn journalism. Conversely, some media scholars criticise journalism education’s curricula bias towards professional skills. In response, journalism educators point to the many pathways between education and the profession. In this view, public trust in journalism is linked to media pluralism and news diversity. While the most ambitious journalism graduates still compete for jobs in the three major newspaper companies (News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media and Seven West Media) and other ‘Big Media’, a 2012 study of job expectations found a majority of journalism students prefer to work in entertainment-focused journalism. Journalistic work is evolving and diversifying, with particularly strong growth in small to medium-sized magazines and other media outlets in the digital domain. Digital journalism has opened up a new debate about the strengths and weaknesses of Australian journalism education. The main concern is whether universities are producing enough of the right kind of graduates to address the current shortage of digital media skills in the major newsrooms and other media outlets. A 2009 study found young journalists in online newsrooms struggle to master new technologies and meet deadlines. The implication is that universities are failing to keep pace with technological innovations in industry, or to suitably redesign curricula to provide journalism graduates not only with the right ‘mindset’ but also with cutting-edge skills that will enable them to adapt the craft to the demands of online and mobile news delivery. Yet journalism research indicates that there is another side to the story. In fact, media companies have failed to invest in innovative journalism practice, preferring instead to limit in-house training to content-management system software, and to

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journalists in fiction and on film recruit digital-savvy young people to produce online news. Newsroom staff are often left to learn digital media tools and techniques outside working hours, with union-organised digital media training or university-run short courses in digital journalism the most accessible options. ‘Standards’ is the catchphrase that will shape journalism education in the coming years as government regulation now stipulates higher education providers must ensure that all graduates achieve measurable learning outcomes. The JEAA hosts a trans-disciplinary network of scholars—created by the late Associate Professor Anne Dunn at the University of Sydney— that is currently developing agreed minimum standards for undergraduate degree programs in journalism and cognate disciplines. The task is complex: diverse university settings and pedagogical approaches make it hard for journalism educators to reach consensus on the optimal curriculum or graduate attributes; disparities in students’ prior learning, coupled with widespread misperceptions of degree offerings, make it hard for students to always see the relevance of standardised learning outcomes; and ongoing industry volatility makes it hard for graduates to identify the most likely labour market for their qualifications. In this context, collaborative industry–university links—internship programs, sessional teaching by industry experts and new digital-driven degrees in ‘future journalism’—have been identified as the key to developing stronger graduate outcomes. Thus there is tacit recognition by all parties that journalism education plays an important role in providing journalism students—as key stakeholders in the future of journalism—with the knowledge and skills to reinvent the craft for the next generation. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Diploma to Degree: 75 Years of Tertiary Journalism Studies’, Australian Studies in Journalism, 5 (1996); P. O’Donnell, ‘Journalism Students and Intergenerational Change in Journalism’, Australian Journalism Review, 28(1) (2006); P. Putnis et al., Communication and Media Studies in Australian Universities (2002). PENNY O’DONNELL

J OURNA LI S TS IN FICTION AND ON FILM Historically, the journalist is a key figure in the narratives that populate popular culture. According to Richard M. Ness, up to 1996 more than 2000 feature films had been made in English about journalism. These include Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), All The President’s Men (Alan J. Pakula, 1976) and The Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander MacKendrick, 1957). Novels and stage plays such as The Front Page—many of them adapted for the screen—frequently have engaged with the figure of the journalist. Brian McNair’s research has identified more than 70 films made in English since 1997 which deal centrally

with the topic of journalism, including romantic comedies such as The Runaway Bride (Gary Marshall, 1999), dramas such as Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005) and bio-pics such as Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005). There are several explanations for this level of interest. First, the journalist is a not only a producer of news and other content, but is crucial for maintaining healthy and accountable democratic processes. Journalism is famously the fourth estate, and journalists are the watchdogs. Many filmic and literary stories of journalism—Citizen Kane, for example—address the theme of the news media’s relationship to power. Sometimes they celebrate the journalist, as in All The President’s Men, about Watergate. Elsewhere, as in Citizen Kane, a fictionalised account of William Randolph Hearst, writers are critical of the contribution of journalists to democracy. There is another reason why there have been so many films, novels and plays written and made about journalism: journalistic narratives simply make compelling stories. The journalist confronts power, witnesses conflict and investigates crime. Journalists move on the inside of the power structures of a society, licensed to go where others dare not. Stories about journalists are inherently dramatic, and often they are also true, at least in part. Australian writers have shared an interest in the subject of journalism with their international counterparts. In fiction, W.S. Howard’s You’re Telling Me! (1934) centred on a party involving a group of thinly disguised Smith’s Weekly journalists. Kenneth Mackenzie’s The Refuge (1954) tells the story of a Sydney journalist and a young woman refugee from Europe. George Johnston’s My Brother Jack (1964, made into a television mini-series in 2001) and Clean Straw for Nothing (1969) form the first two parts of a trilogy about journalist and war correspondent David Meredith. Murray Sayle’s A Crooked Sixpence (1961) tells the tale of a young Australian reporter, fresh off the boat, brimming with enthusiasm and ambition, who secures casual shifts on a mass-circulation Fleet Street Sunday scandal-sheet. More recent novels include a series of six murder mysteries (1987–95) by Jennifer Rowe about Verity Birdwood, a ‘scrappy TV researcher’. Several take gender as a theme. Maggie Alderson’s Pants on Fire (2000) is about a British journalist who takes a job on a women’s magazine in Sydney, while the main character of Sonya Voumard’s Political Animals (2008) is ambitious newspaper journalist Ally Chesterton, who works in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. Boned (2008), by ‘Anonymous’, inspired by an alleged remark by Nine Network executive Eddie McGuire, is a tell-all novel about commercial television and current affairs centred on a female protagonist.

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journalists’ club E-books include Attack at the Dolphin (2013) by Bridget Wilson and the crime novel Late Final Extra (2013) by ‘Jen Gregory’ (Greg Lenthen and Jenny Tabakoff). Many of these works are semi-autobiographical. In television drama, notable representations of journalists include The Paper Man (1990), which describes the rise to power of media mogul Philip Cromwell, who is clearly based on Rupert Murdoch. A young Clyde and Kerry Packer are represented as the Slater brothers. The Oracle (1979) was a 12-part ABC drama series about the life and work of a Sydney talkback radio announcer, possibly inspired by John Laws. Four Southern Star produced or co-produced mini-series have recently focused on the Packer empire: Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (ABC, 2011), Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War (Nine, 2012), Paper Giants: Magazine Wars (ABC, 2013) and Power Games: The Packer–Murdoch War (Nine, 2013). Murdoch is the subject of the 2013 play, Rupert, by David Williamson, who wrote an earlier play, Influence (2005), about a talkback radio ‘shock jock’. A satirical approach to television journalism was taken by Working Dog Productions’ comedy series Frontline (1994, 1995 and 1997). In cinema, two films stand out for their portrayal of Australian journalists. Newsfront (Philip Noyce, 1978) tells the story of the early newsreel producers in a rapidly changing Australian society. Balibo (Robert Connolly, 2009) told the story of the Balibo Five and the efforts to achieve official recognition of the crime. The film explores the challenges faced by foreign correspondents in conflict zones. Australian images of journalists range from harrowing and deeply serious (as in Balibo) to inspirational and instructive (the first Paper Giants). Many of the works are intended purely for entertainment, while others engage with the big issues that surround the performance of journalism in our era. Taken together, they are an evolving resource on the role and place of the journalist in Australian society. In recognition of the importance of this representation, in 2010, the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne hosted a Journalism on Screen Film Festival. REFs: B. McNair, Journalists in Film (2010); R.M. Ness, From Headline Hunter to Superman (1997); ‘The Image of the Journalist in Popular Culture’, http://ijpc.org. BRIAN McNAIR

JO U R NAL I S TS’ CL UB Established in Sydney in 1939 to promote literary and artistic pursuits and fellowship among journalists, the Journalists’ Club’s 58 years were equally noteworthy and controversial. Journalist Ray Chesterton wrote of the club on its closure in 1997: ‘It had more tales than the Arabian Nights, more adventures than Superman and

more colourful characters than a dozen royal commissions.’ The Journalists’ Club emerged following the demise of its predecessor, the Press Club (est. 1911), in 1939. Ironically, it was the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) that contributed to the Press Club’s downfall. In retaliation for the loss of board control to non-journalist members, several journalists—including Fatty Finn comic strip cartoonist Syd Nicholls—testified to the Licensing Court about illegal trading and gambling, leading to the licence withdrawal. Wanting to distance themselves from the earlier venture, AJA members agreed to form a new club, the Journalists’ Club. The club held an inaugural dinner, attended by newly elected Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies, and received licence approval on 20 September 1939. In the interim, the Journalists’ Club leased the third floor of the Teachers’ Federation building in Phillip Street. The club opened on 28 June 1940. In 1958, the club bought a warehouse in Chalmers Street, Surry Hills, near Central Railway Station. Although independent from the AJA, the club was closely linked through its common membership. During newspaper strikes in 1944, 1955 and 1967, the club’s premises were used as editorial centres to produce strike newspapers. Club membership was not limited to journalists: from an initial 42 members in 1939, numbers reached 630 two years later, and peaked at 4628 in 1980. The popularity of the club was not surprising, given its lively and bohemian atmosphere, literary and artistic membership, and frequent visits and addresses by noted luminaries, including Australian prime ministers and British and American actors. Members included the journalist and poet Kenneth Slessor (president, 1957–65) and cadet journalist turned Hollywood actor Peter Finch. In 1970, police barriers were erected when Pope Paul VI visited the club, in response to an invitation from the appropriately named president, Don Angel. The Pope later commented on Australian journalists’ ‘nobility of spirit’. Less gracious was the club’s attitude towards women. In 1939, 36 women members of the AJA unsuccessfully presented a petition seeking associate membership; however, despite frequent lobbying, women had to make do with honorary membership for a further 33 years. The issue came to a head in 1971 when a number of women journalists formed the Media Women’s Action Group. Members staged a picket and a sit-in, attracting widespread publicity. Germaine Greer joined the campaign after declining an invitation to speak at a club that she could not join. The AJA brought in legal opinion from Neville Wran QC (later NSW Premier), advising that the club’s constitution did not prevent female membership as its references to members

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journalists’ club were in terms of ‘person’ rather than gender. Approval for women membership finally came in September 1972. Throughout its history, the club remained true to its intention to promote literature and art. In 1956, it received 121 entries for an inaugural award for an Australian stage play. The winning play, The Shifting Heart by Richard Beynon, is still performed today. Other awards were presented for poetry, short stories, television plays and painting. The club also hosted art exhibitions. Among its own art collection was the 1958 Archibald Prize winner, a portrait of journalist Ray Walker by William E. Pidgeon. In 1996, this was one of two portraits, the other of Daily Mirror news editor Bill Perry, stolen from

the club’s dining room, only to be mysteriously returned a few days later. The club made news headlines again in June 1997 when armed intruders forced the night manager and a security guard to the floor before escaping with the night’s takings. The robbery was a fittingly dramatic finale, as four days later the Journalists’ Club closed, amalgamating with the Sydney Sports Club. The Journalists’ Bar at the Sports Club closed in 2010. REFs: D. Angel, The Journalists’ Club Sydney (1985); S. Moylan, ‘The Gentlemen’s Club’, Hindsight, ABC Radio National (2012). MARGARET VAN HEEKEREN

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K K . G . M URRAY The K.G. Murray publishing empire began its life in 1936 when advertising man Kenneth Gordon Murray (1909–2001)—then producing two trade magazines from an office in Castlereagh Street, Sydney—decided to produce a monthly Australian men’s magazine, Man, modelled on the American Esquire. Murray had no literary pretensions, but he sensed a gap in the marketplace and took a considerable risk by backing his instinct. Man was a remarkable success, considering its cover price of 2 shillings and its relatively high production values. Investing heavily in quality proved a good strategy for Murray at a time when the Australian magazine market was being flooded with foreign products against which many local publications struggled to compete. Murray was a hands-on publisher and he constantly adjusted his product during its first years, seeking the best balance of cartoons, photography, stories and serious offerings. His hunger for success paid off, and by the end of 1938 Murray claimed Man was selling more than 60,000 copies a month. Man’s success gave Murray the foundation for a fully fledged magazine publishing business that was unique in Australia at the time. Man was quickly followed by Man Junior (1937–73), a digest-sized version of Man; Cavalcade (1941–57), a general-interest magazine; the Insider (1939–41), a serious news review; and Digest of Digests (1940–58), an Australian version of Reader’s Digest. World War II forced the temporary suspension of Man Junior and Cavalcade, although Murray also produced a number of one-shot publications—mostly cartoon compilations—as conditions permitted. Murray also produced some war-related publications for the Australian government. Foremost among these was Army (1942–46), proceeds from the sales of which went to the Defence Amenities Fund. South West Pacific (1942–53) was a slightly altered version of Army, printed on better paper, which was designed to promote Australia’s interests overseas—especially in the United States. It was circulated to influential Americans as part of a bid to promote the importance of continued

US spending in the South-West Pacific theatre of war, and also to demonstrate how valiantly Australia was striving to hold up its end of the fight. Murray also published Action (1942–44), the digest-sized journal of the National Emergency Services. When the war ended, so did Army. South West Pacific continued for some time as a publication of the Department of Information. Man Junior and Cavalcade resumed publication, with the Insider incorporated into Cavalcade. Adam (1946–78) was launched as a pulp magazine of action, sport and adventure stories. Murray started the business as a sole trader in 1936, later forming a partnership and then, in 1947 and 1948, establishing a string of proprietary companies centred around K.G. Murray Publishing Company Pty Ltd and the printing business, Kenmure Press Pty Ltd. In 1952, Publishers Holdings Limited was formed to acquire all the shares in the various pre-existing companies, and by 1954 the group was producing 18 regular monthly magazines, three regular annuals, six monthly comic titles and a variety of ‘one-shot’ publications. Titles included Man, Man Junior, Pocket Man, Cavalcade, Digest of Digests, Photoplay (1947–63), True Story (1947–77), True Romance (c. 1947–78), Adam, Gals and Gags (1953–78) and Australian House and Garden (1948– ). The total monthly circulation of all Murray titles in 1954 was more than two million copies. By the early 1970s, when Publishers Holdings Limited became the subject of a takeover bidding war between the Packer family’s Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) and the UK-based Thomson Publications, the organisation had added more titles to its stable, including Seacraft (1946–79, now Modern Boating), Wheels (1953– ), Australian Bride (1954–79), Australian Outdoors (1955–83, formerly Outdoors and Fishing), Sports Car World (1957–88), True Experience (1957–77), Ski Australia (1961– ) and Hot Rodding Review (1964–77). The Murray family sold the bulk of its shares to ACP, and Thomson withdrew its bid, leaving ACP clear to add the Publishers Holdings titles to its own portfolio of magazines. Within a few years, the core titles that had built the Murray empire were discontinued and

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kennedy, graham (1934–2005) that remarkable empire was itself no more than a rapidly fading memory. REFs: F.S. Greenop, History of Magazine Publishing in Australia (1947); H. Young, Sweet and Sour (2002). GREG RAY

K A LG O O R LI E M I N ER see Hocking family

K E LLY, PAUL (1947– ) For more than 20 years, Paul Kelly has been one of the most formidable and respected analysts of politics, foreign policy and domestic policy in the Australian media. He completed a BA at the University of Sydney before joining the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for the Australian in 1971. By 1975, he had risen to chief political correspondent, then moved to John Fairfax & Sons, where he worked first for the National Times and later for the Sydney Morning Herald as chief political correspondent. In 1985, he returned to the Australian as its national affairs editor, and in 1991 was made editor-in-chief, a post he held until 1996 when he became editor-at-large (or international editor). For many years, he has been a regular radio and television commentator on Australian politics. As a crusading editor-in-chief, Kelly introduced new features designed to strengthen the intellectual credentials of the Australian, and to marshal a national readership behind a program of economic and social reforms that were broadly in line with the policy directions of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments. During the Howard years (1996–2007), he continued to champion the values of individual freedom and national economic prosperity while developing a more measured style of analytical commentary on international and domestic policy issues. Kelly is one of the few editors of an Australian metropolitan daily to have established a parallel reputation for serious scholarship. Along with several shorter publications and a popular history of Australia’s last hundred years, he has published five heavily researched and highly regarded books on the inner workings of successive Australian governments: The Unmaking of Gough (1976), The Hawke Ascendancy (1984), The End of Certainty (1992), Howard’s Decade (2006) and The March of Patriots (2009). His book on the Rudd–Gillard Labor governments,  Triumph and Demise, appeared in 2014. Despite his own stature, Kelly is uncomfortable with the label ‘intellectual’, seeing it as alien to the traditions of Australian egalitarianism and journalistic realism. This view was demonstrated in 2011, in a vigorous public debate with Professor Robert Manne over journalistic ethics. Unlike some of the other great editor-intellectuals of the past (such as

Cyril Pearl, J.D. Pringle and Graham Perkin), Kelly has enjoyed harmonious relations with his long-time proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, and believes that ‘the editor does not own the newspaper. He runs the paper in trust on behalf of the proprietor’. Kelly’s work has been recognised by several awards, including the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award (1990) and a Walkley Award for Journalism Leadership (2001). REF: P. Buckridge, ‘Editors as Intellectuals: Three Case Studies’, in A. Curthoys and J. Schultz (eds), Journalism (1999). PATRICK BUCKRIDGE

KEN N ED Y, G R AH AM (1934–2005) Entertainer Graham Kennedy, who died in Bowral, New South Wales, and was posthumously appointed AO, is remembered as ‘Mr Melbourne’ by the generations who grew up with him in that city. The rest of Australia called him the ‘King’. For 30 years, he was Australia’s biggest show business star. He reigned over local television as a talk-show host, game-show presenter, satirist and commentator, and as a fine actor when he moved into film. Reared in Melbourne’s inner-city Balaclava, he joined radio after leaving school in the early 1950s, becoming a turntable operator stooge to 3UZ’s Clifford Nicholls ‘Nicky’ Whitta. Successfully, they clowned together, tilting at Melbourne’s sacred cows. They provided a controlled anarchy in a 1950s culture of conformity, but something warned Kennedy about television, the coming of which Australians regarded with awe. He prepared himself by having his teeth fixed. The oyster-eyed Kennedy was hired by Melbourne’s fledgling GTV9 in 1957 with imitations of the American Tonight Show of Steve Allen in mind. But that initial source of inspiration would never curb the local kid’s style. The only similarity was that Kennedy sat at a desk for most of the time—which he did, on and off, for the next 30 or so years, hosting In Melbourne Tonight (IMT), The Graham Kennedy Show (with sidekick Bert Newton), Blankety Blanks and Graham Kennedy’s Coast to Coast, where he created a hybrid form of often-confronting television with his raucous, sometimes vicious, blending of vaudeville and current affairs, and the way he parodied and often belittled the commercials on the show. After he tired of IMT in 1969, Kennedy ventured into acting in films, with appearances including Don’s Party (1976), The Odd Angry Shot (1979), The Club (1980) and Travelling North (1986). He returned to television with The Graham Kennedy Show in 1972. Following his famous crow call (‘faaak’) in 1975, he was forced to pre-record his show and he soon quit GTV9.

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kennedy, trevor (1942– ) It was Kennedy who suggested the name ‘Logie’ for the annual television awards and he was the recipient of several Gold and Silver Logie Awards himself. In person, he was quiet, scholarly, reticent and self-deprecating. He once said: ‘I don’t classify myself as a comedian, though sometimes I’m funny. I can’t sing and I can’t dance. But I can talk. A famous person once said about me that I didn’t do anything on TV but I did it damned well.’ REF: G. Blundell, King (2003). GRAEME BLUNDELL

K E N N E DY, TREVOR (1942– ) Trevor Kennedy began in journalism as a business reporter on the Australian Financial Review with stints as London correspondent and as the deputy to Canberra bureau chief Max Walsh. When John Fairfax & Sons launched the National Times in 1972, Kennedy was appointed its first editor at the age of 28. Sir Frank Packer hired him the following year to rejuvenate the Bulletin as its managing editor, beginning an 18-year association with the Packer family’s Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) and with Kerry Packer, who took over after his father’s death in 1974. As editor-in-chief from 1981 to 1986 and then as CEO, Kennedy was Packer’s principal adviser. He once told Nine Network editor Gerald Stone that managing ACP was like ‘running two businesses’—one of which produced magazines and television programs while the other serviced Kerry’s every whim. But in 1991 Kennedy and Packer fell out over the doomed bid to purchase a stake in Fairfax newspapers in league with the Canadian press baron, Conrad Black. Under the bid, Kennedy was designated as the prospective chief of John Fairfax Holdings but resigned from the consortium, revealing the extent of the tensions within the Tourang consortium. Packer had benefited from Kennedy’s close associations with the powerful NSW right faction of the Labor Party. But Kennedy was also close to the future Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull, with whom he successfully invested in the internet company, OzEmail. Kennedy was a director of Reg Grundy’s media business, RG Capital Radio, until he resigned from that board—and six others— during a 2003 investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission into the printing business, Offset Alpine. Kennedy’s home was raided following revelations by the Sydney stockbroker Rene Rivkin that he and Kennedy, and former Labor senator Graham Richardson, held secret shares in Offset Alpine. Both Kennedy and Richardson denied this. After seven years, the ASIC probe was closed and no charges were laid. REF: Australian, 29 May 2010. ANDREW DODD

KIN G , C ATH ER IN E H ELEN (1904–2000) Catherine King was one of the major radio figures in Western Australia in the post-war years, presenting the Women’s Session for the ABC from 1944 to 1976. She was the daughter of noted intellectual Professor Walter Murdoch, and both he and her husband, the academic Alec King, were on the ABC committee charged in 1933 with developing the organisation’s political and educational policy. This gave her an insight into the broadcasting system and its educational potential. King was a long-time member of the Western Australian Kindergarten Union, and during the war years she came up with the idea of a daily Kindergarten of the Air program, produced with presenter Margaret Graham; it went to air in 1942. The program—which included studio participation by children—was the first of its kind in Australia, and the idea was soon taken up by other states. It became a huge success. Although programming had been directed at the female audience since the birth of radio in Western Australia, commitment wavered over the years and by the 1930s the content was limited to mainly domestic areas. ABC cutbacks led to the disappearance of local voices from the women’s broadcasts in 1940 and the Women’s Session disappeared altogether in 1943. Pressure from women’s groups led to its reinstatement in 1944, from 10.45 a.m. until 11.30 a.m. weekdays, and Catherine King was brought in as the presenter. She broadened its scope beyond the purely domestic and gave her statewide audience a stimulating mix of music, interviews and discussion. Her presentation style was natural and friendly. She was also a brave broadcaster, not afraid to challenge the rather staid contemporary standards of the day. King was appointed MBE in 1966. REF: J. Lewis, On Air (1979). GAIL PHILLIPS

KIN G , N EN E (1943– ) Nene King was the most influential women’s magazine editor of the late 1980s and most of the 1990s. After a short stint as a writer on both the Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day, she became New Idea’s chief reporter in 1979 and then its deputy editor in 1982, at a time when the Southdown Press weekly was being edited by the redoubtable Dulcie Boling. Far ahead of Woman’s Day in weekly sales, it was challenging the Weekly’s leadership position. However, in 1986 simmering bad blood between Boling and King came to a head and King dramatically resigned from her post, insulted that her desire to be editor of TV Week (also

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under Boling’s command) had not been taken seriously. Moving to Sydney, King became deputy editor of Woman’s Day in mid-1987 and then, after the magazine was acquired by Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) along with the rest of Fairfax Magazines, she was appointed editor in January 1988. At the time of her ascension, Woman’s Day was selling fewer than 700,000 copies per week and New Idea was selling in excess of 950,000. This gap began to narrow under King’s dynamic leadership. Over time, she recruited a significant number of her former New Idea colleagues and, like her, they flourished in the riotously freewheeling collegial atmosphere she created, which contrasted markedly with the sedate culture at Southdown Press. Fearlessly buying top stories for top dollars and supporting her magazine with an innovative television advertising campaign, she achieved supremacy in 1992, when Woman’s Day was selling over a million copies per week. At its zenith, it sold more than 1.1 million copies. The mini-series Paper Giants: Magazine Wars (2013) focused on the contest between King and Boling to make their publication the number one seller in Australia. Ad News’ Media Executive of the Year in 1991, King became editor-in-chief of both Woman’s Day and the Australian Women’s Weekly the following year. In time, she also became a director of the ownership company, Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd. These were the golden years of magazine publishing, for Nene King and for the Australian industry itself. It was a time when new magazines were being launched with flair and when inspired editors like her could excite the reading public’s imagination. But the launch in the 1990s of four major weekly titles—That’s Life! and Take Five, and Who Weekly and New Weekly (both later renamed)—together with a new wave of well-targeted monthly women’s magazines would in time make million-copy circulations a thing of the past. Nene King resigned from ACP and left the magazine industry in March 1999. REFs: P. FitzSimons, Nene (2002); personal knowledge. RICHARD WALSH

KOORI MAI L The first national Indigenous newspaper in Australia, the Koori Mail (KM) was published in northern New South Wales on 23 May 1991 with an initial print run of 10,000 copies. Founder Owen Carriage was inspired to produce the KM after listening to Aboriginal campaigners

such as Marcia Langton and Gary Foley during the 1970s talk about the need for an Indigenous newspaper that could disseminate their messages nationally. He wanted the KM to be ‘unbiased and non-political’, and it has established a reputation as an Indigenous community newspaper that is the ‘voice’ of Indigenous Australia. The KM struggled financially, and Carriage built up a large debt with the nearby Northern Star, which provided production and editorial support. Lismore’s Northern Star briefly took ownership of the KM in late 1991, before the Bygal Weahunir Holding Company (an amalgamation of five Indigenous organisations from northern New South Wales) successfully obtained an ATSIC loan to buy the newspaper. When Carriage launched the KM, it was produced by volunteers with assistance from freelance journalists. Northern Star employee Janine Wilson became the first editor after the Northern Star’s management in Lismore began providing printing and editorial assistance. Wilson remained in this role until late 1992, when she was replaced by Dona Graham as the second non-Indigenous editor. Todd Condie, who began work as a cadet with the KM in 1992, became the first Indigenous editor in 1998 and stayed with the paper until 2003. KM sub-editor Barry Cheadle took over the editorship until 2006, when Kirstie Parker became the second Indigenous editor of the newspaper. The KM is distributed nationally each fortnight and, as well as a small, permanent staff, has a network of Indigenous and non-Indigenous stringers across Australia. With a readership of around 100,000, the newspaper seeks to build community esteem by publishing role-model stories and promoting positive stories about Indigenous people, organisations and communities. It also covers issues and events that affect Indigenous Australians, such as health, education, land rights, sport and politics. The newspaper provides links between communities, Indigenous organisations and government, and is a useful tool for promoting initiatives being undertaken by Indigenous organisations. The KM links Indigenous communities, but its soft focus limits its impact on government policy and mainstream media agendas. REFs: E. Burrows, ‘Writing to Be Heard: The Indigenous Print Media’s Role in Establishing and Developing an Indigenous Public Sphere’ (PhD thesis, 2009); http://www.koorimail.com. ELIZABETH BURROWS

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L L A B OUR BROADCASTING In 1925, Albert Willis, the president of the NSW ALP and chairman of the Labor Daily, predicted: ‘Eventually, H.G. Wells’ prophecy of news and propaganda being freely poured out at the people from great speaking machines must be realised … LABOR MUST GET IN FIRST.’ Visiting the United States in 1923–24, Emil Voigt, who headed the research bureau and wireless committee of the NSW Trades and Labour Council (TLC), had been impressed by Calvin Coolidge’s ability to address two million people at once during the presidential campaign. The TLC opened 2KY, housed in the Trades Hall attic, in October 1925. The station presented lunchtime talks on politics and economics, with trade union offices and some factories installing radio sets for workers. It was always available, without charge, for broadcasts by state and federal Labor. Although Labor plans for a NSW wireless service with six relay stations did not eventuate, the involvement of Sydney political interests in broadcasting seems to have inspired activity south of the border. In 1931, the Industrial Printing & Publicity Co. Ltd, which was owned by the Victorian ALP and the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, launched 3KZ. The station was managed by the 3KZ Broadcasting Company of Victoria Ltd, which provided for a Labour Hour program on Sunday nights, 30 minutes for the labour movement on weeknights and a daytime labour session for women. It soon became apparent that responsibility for political broadcasts could be complicated by leasing arrangements. In 1931–32, the 3KZ Broadcasting Company was dismayed by complaints about a talk advocating the value of strikes and a Labour Hour talk by a ‘young lady’ said to verge on ‘sedition’. The company vowed to monitor talks more carefully. There were examples of both internal and external censorship. The most spectacular case of the latter was in December 1938, when the Postmaster-General in the Lyons Coalition government briefly revoked 2KY’s licence after objecting to the remarks of one of its news commentators. Meanwhile, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) bought airtime on commercial stations.

For instance, during a 1938 miners’ strike in Cessnock, the party helped to fund 15-minute broadcasts on 2HR Newcastle to explain the miners’ case. Throughout the 1940s, the CPA also provided ‘talent’ for The Heckle Hour on 3DB Melbourne. Due to the Nazi–Soviet pact, 2KY skated on thin ice. In 1940, the federal government prevented the station’s broadcast of Rupert Lockwood’s play, No Conscription. During the two-and-a-half years the party was banned, 2KY allowed the CPA a voice—partly through various front organisations. But in 1948, in an era of mounting anti-communism and as the TLC moved to the right, at least one ‘red’ news commentator appears to have been dismissed from 2KY. During World War II, labour broadcasting had spread interstate. In 1941, the Australian Workers’ Union obtained a licence for a new station, 6KY Perth. Labour interests seized the opportunity to invest in three religious broadcasting stations controlled by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose licences were revoked in 1941 due to security concerns. Eighty per cent of the shares in 5KA Adelaide and 5AU Port Augusta were bought by the Central Methodist Mission in 1943, with the balance held by the ALP. The TLC and the ALP bought 2HD Newcastle, resuming transmission in 1945. Although the metropolitan commercial radio market remained remarkably static after the war, the ALP was awarded a licence for 4KQ in Brisbane in 1947. (The first station in Queensland, 4QG, was established by the Theodore Labor government in July 1925; 4QG became part of the ABC in 1932.) In around 1950, someone prepared, apparently for the Labor Minister for Information, Arthur Calwell, a depressing assessment of labour stations: 2KY, 4KQ and 6KY were listened to by just 1–2  per cent of the available audience; 3KZ and 5KA were only nominally in labour hands and had ‘sacrificed propaganda value to money and success’. 2HD alone had achieved outstanding success without its labour backers losing control of the lease, and this was partly due to the highly unionised population of Newcastle. Most of the author’s proposals for improvement were not implemented because of the labour movement’s decentralised nature,

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labour press with ALP state branches and left- and rightwing unions. Labour stations tended to stick with what they knew. 3KZ’s Labour Hour remained reasonably popular, and gave a voice to women activists such as Gwen Noad. By the early 1950s, the Victorian ALP’s assistant secretary, Frank McManus, had been recruited to present a nightly commentary on 3KZ. His anti-communist activities helped to get him sacked from the station, and he went on to help found the breakaway Democratic Labor Party (DLP). Always keen on sport, 2KY moved increasingly into covering horse and greyhound racing from the late 1940s. Sydney’s lowest-rating commercial station moved to new studios, introduced modern equipment and overhauled its music format in 1978; it removed Italian-language broadcasting from its line-up in 1980. Hosts included John Singleton, Ron Casey and a future premier and federal Cabinet minister, Bob Carr. In 2001, the station was sold to the NSW TAB. In 1973, STW9 purchased Perth’s loss-making 6KY. However, in the late 1970s, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal refused to consent to 2HD’s sale to the owners of NBN3. Labor was prepared to offload the radio station for $1.4 million as it ran a poor third to its rivals, even though the sale was vehemently opposed by sections of the labour movement. The transaction would have created the highest degree of electronic media ownership within one city in the history of Australian broadcasting. In 1999, the station was sold to Bill Caralis’s Super Radio Network. Mounting debts saw the ALP sell 48.5 per cent of 4KQ to Kevin Jacobsen Enterprises in 1980. The station, which was at the heart of a bitter factional dispute in Queensland in the early 1980s, was sold to Wesgo for some $16.5 million in 1986. The same year, Wesgo entered into a shareholding relationship with 3KZ, strengthening its east coast network of radio interests. By the dawn of the 21st century, the Australian labour movement had abandoned its radio stations, selling them off to growing media chains. Labour dreams had become capitalist assets. REF: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

L ABOUR PRESS The evolution of industrial modernity in late 19th-century Australia stimulated the establishment of the Australian labour press. The mobilisation of the new unionism in the mass-employment industries that developed in the Australian colonies from the 1880s provided a readership of sufficient scale to facilitate the launch of trade union-based journals, including the New South Wales Railway and Tramway

Review (1888–92), sponsored by the fledgling NSW Amalgamated Railway and Tramway Association, and the Hummer (1891–92), the voice of the Wagga Wagga pastoral workers. New cost-effective technologies of typesetting and printing, and the availability of cheap newsprint, stimulated opportunities for new titles. The economic grievances triggered by industrialisation provoked the movement’s political mobilisation and fuelled an assertive and idealistic labour press. The voice of the working class emerged in the public sphere in unprecedented scale and variety: articles, letters and poetry poured forth from hands formerly discouraged from self-expression. Editor of Queensland’s the Worker (1890–1974), William Lane, proved the outstanding propagandist of the early labour narrative: socialism as the unity of mates, organised to advance the interests and identity of a white working class. The labour press replicated the predominantly male culture of the union movement and the nascent Labor Party, although working-class women carved an editorial space for themselves, including Rose Summerfield, using the labour press as a tool for organising laundresses in the 1890s. The heterodox nature of Australian labour, from its radicals to its pragmatists, was reflected in the lively debates of its press; the commercialised nature of the Australian public sphere also infiltrated the labour press from its origins. The Shearers’ and General Laborers’ Record (1891–93) and the Australian Workman (1890–97) respectively provided a voice for pastoral workers and the unions organising as affiliates of the NSW Trades and Labour Council (TLC); these publications were also intended to be viable commercial enterprises generating profit from sales and advertising. The economic depression of the 1890s saw many labour publications either permanently or temporarily fold. The labour press revival from the turn of the century was typified by the professionalism of Hector Lamond, editor and later business manager of Sydney’s the Worker (1892–1913). Published by the Australian Workers’ Union (AWU), the Worker developed a sharp pragmatic style of journalism, expanding its range and audience with Norman Lilley’s regular page on Australian and international literature, and (Dame) Mary Gilmore’s Women’s Page (1908–31). The Worker pioneered new labour press standards of design and black and white art, particularly in the stylish illustrations provided by Claude Marquet, deflating the bloated pretensions of ‘fat man’ capital. Yet wide planes of display advertising often confined the articles into narrow funnels: the journal had to pay its way. The Worker was distributed across New South Wales and beyond the labour movement, ambitiously expanding its title to become the Australian Worker (1913–93). ‘The Worker was a power then,’ Gilmore recalled, and Brisbane’s the Worker and Kalgoorlie’s Westralian

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labour press Worker (1900–51) extended labour movement power on a national scale, enhanced in Victoria by Tocsin (1897–1906) and the Labor Call (1906–53), and the Weekly Herald in South Australia (1894–1910). The reach of the labour movement’s message played a vital role in the movement’s mobilisation in federal politics following Federation, and in the election of the second Fisher Labor government in 1910—the first genuinely national political force controlling both houses of parliament. The growth of the labour press was constrained by the prohibitive cost of producing daily newspapers, including the cost of cable news subscription. Access to news transmitted via the global cable network was vital for any significant expansion of the labour press, and its ability to articulate the movement’s response to an era marked by the unprecedented development of industrial capitalism. From 1910, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher urged the creation of a network of labour dailies around the Commonwealth to counter a mainstream press that supported conservative politics. In South Australia, the Daily Herald (1910–24) replaced the weekly edition. Fisher’s predecessor as Labor leader, John Christian Watson, retired from politics in 1910 and became the managing director of Labor Papers Ltd, dedicated to the launch of the World, a labour daily sponsored by the AWU and other unions. Sufficient capital was raised to fund the construction of Macdonell House, a purpose-built Sydney headquarters. The Fisher government supported the establishment of the Independent Cable Association, of which Watson was a shareholder, as a rival to the cable cartel dominated by the established press empires. State-of-the-art printing presses were imported from the United States but the imminent publication of the World was forestalled by the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. Prime Minister William Hughes’ attempts to impose conscription for overseas military service via plebiscites in 1916 and 1917 spilt the labour movement. The mainstream press united in editorial support of Hughes; the labour press provided the dissenting voice. The Australian Worker’s editor, Henry Boote, defied prosecution under the War Precautions Act 1914, excoriating Hughes as a ‘miniature Nero’, while cartoonist Claude Marquet portrayed Hughes nailing shut ‘The Case for Labor’—the lid of a coffin. The plebiscites were lost but the labour movement drifted in division, as the Bolshevik revolution in Russia stimulated the formation of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). From 1923 the CPA’s Workers Weekly (Tribune from 1939) urged a radical path for the labour movement, and repudiation of key tenets—industrial arbitration and the White Australia policy. Common Cause (1920– ), the journal of the Miners Federation, emerged as another radical voice on organised labour’s Left. So did the Railroad, the journal of the Australian Railways

Union in NSW, edited by Lloyd Ross, which pioneered innovative techniques in the 1930s for exploiting the union journal as a weapon in support of industrial campaigns—rights for women employed in Railway Refreshment Rooms, and ‘The Red Roll’ highlighting unsafe conditions for fettlers maintaining rail lines. While union in-fighting in the post-war years had further delayed publication of the World, the Labor Daily was published in New South Wales from 1922. Supported by the NSW TLC and the political machine of NSW Labor Premier Jack Lang, the Labor Daily provided an alternative to the mainstream press during the years of the Great Depression, but suffered from the bitter factionalism of NSW Labor, impacting on both profitability and appeal. The Labor Daily slipped away in 1938, along with Lang’s overbearing influence. The World was finally launched as the Depression intensified in 1931; the paper folded in November 1932. Subsequently, the World’s production resources were sold to (Sir) Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press Ltd and Macdonell House became the home of the Australian Women’s Weekly. The prosperity of post-World War II Australia, the growing maturity of radio broadcasting and the emergence of television from 1956 all seemed to inhibit the reach of the labour press beyond the limits of the movement, and as a dynamic voice of its members. Union journals were often colonised by cribbed boxes of ‘tombstone’ display advertising, and padded out with perfunctory reports of arbitration proceedings and slabs of industrial award data. The 1950s split over Labor’s industrial group campaigns against communist-controlled unions stimulated some divisive political energy in the labour press: in 1954, the Australian Worker’s front page ‘unmasked’ B.A. Santamaria (‘Santa-Stiletto’) orchestrating a Catholic Social Studies Movement takeover of Labor. The split provided the last great cataclysm of Labor’s fractious industrial culture. The conditions that had stimulated the growth of the movement and its press seemed increasingly marginalised in the evolving consumerism of the 1960s. From the 1970s, an accelerating fall in manufacturing sector employment eroded union membership. In 1987, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) responded to membership decline with Future Strategies for the Trade Union Movement, recommending amalgamations to pool resources and industrial strength. The loss of distinctive union identity that at times accompanied amalgamation was symbolised in the extinction of long-established journals. Labor News, launched by the Federated Ironworkers’ Association in 1943, disappeared within the Australian Worker in 1993. The Metal Worker (1980–2000) survived the amalgamation of manufacturing industry unions and Hard Hat, published by the construction industry union, emerged in 2003 to join it as a pugnacious voice of the industrial

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left. Other radical voices fell silent: the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall also collapsed Tribune, which ceased publication in 1991. A new wave of global capitalism, triggered by the end of communism and stimulated by new technology, also enabled innovative forms of the labour press to emerge. Personal computers and software in the mid-1980s provided fresh platforms for cost-effective page design, and promoted a greater diversity of printed labour movement communications. From 1991, the internet provided another platform for communication, via websites, email and social media. These technological developments stimulated commercial relationships between the labour movement and service providers; a new generation of consultancies emerged to provide communication services for unions and the ALP. The ‘labour press’ is now constituted by this heterogenous vibrancy, contesting and accommodating the commercialised culture within which it functions. REFs: F. Bongiorno, ‘Constituting Labour: The Radical Press in Victoria, 1885–1914’, in A. Curthoys and J. Schultz (eds), Journalism (1999); M. Hearn, ‘The Benefits of Industrial Organisation? The Second Fisher Government and Fin de siècle Modernity in Australia’, Labour History, 102 (2012); R.B. Walker, Yesterday’s News (1980). MARK HEARN

L AND The Land was born out of a bitter dispute between the owners of the Farmer and Settler and one of Australia’s pioneers of organised rural lobbying, Thomas Irving Campbell (1861–1942), which ended up in the NSW District Court in late 1909. ‘T.I.’ Campbell was a hard-nosed warrior in the struggle to unite small battling farmers (‘Cockeys’) against the power of the emerging union movement and the big pastoralists, who were clinging to their vast ‘runs’ of mainly unimproved land. He was elected secretary of the NSW Farmers and Settlers’ Association (FSA) in 1897, and in 1906 helped launch the Farmer and Settler as its official organ. Campbell was listed as editor on the newspaper’s imprint but during the court battle of 1909, when he was sued for alleged breach of contract, the lawyers for the independently owned Farmer and Settler Publishing Company claimed he hadn’t fulfilled an agreement to provide the new paper with a regular supply of editorial copy about FSA activities and views while also using his influence to attract advertising. The judge dismissed the case, which fractured the relationship between the FSA and the owners of the Farmer and Settler. Delegates to the FSA’s 1910 annual conference directed the executive to establish its own official newspaper. The first Land rolled off the presses on 27 January 1911, at twopence a copy.

The Land’s founders set out to create a newspaper with the clout and influence to ensure the voice of farmers could not be drowned out by city-based politicians, media, lobbyists and business leaders seeking to place their own interests above agriculture and country people. The Land survived a rocky start during a long drought, and came close to financial ruin during the Great Depression, and again in 1970, when a new printing venture in western Sydney flopped badly. However, sales soared in good times, with circulation peaking at 68,728 during the wool boom of the 1980s, and the Land ended its first century as the pre-eminent farm weekly newspaper in New South Wales. The Land was pulled from the brink in the early 1930s by legendary managing editor, (Sir) Harry Vincent Budd (1900–79), who was still in charge when the Lidcombe printing business almost ruined the company. He stepped aside and his replacement, John Lindsay Parker (1932– ), transformed the Land from a one-newspaper company into a regional and rural publishing giant called Rural Press Limited. It took the Land 64 years to conquer all its rural newspaper rivals in New South Wales, a battle which ended when NSW Country Life was swallowed up in 1975. The takeover of Country Life sparked an astonishing growth spurt, driven largely by acquisitions. To better reflect this growth and diversity, The Land Newspaper Ltd was renamed Rural Press Limited in 1981. That empire, like the Land, is now part of Fairfax Media (John Fairfax and Sons had bought a 25 per cent stake in the Land in 1970 to prevent its collapse) after a merger of the two companies in May 2007. Rural Press had a market capitalisation of $2.6 billion at the time of the merger. REF: V. Graham, The Story of The Land 1911–2011 (2011). VERNON GRAHAM

LAN D R IG H TS N EW S Land Rights News (LRN) is Australia’s longest-running Aboriginal newspaper. In 1976, the Northern Territory Lands Councils and the Central Land Council launched their own versions of LRN. In 1985, the two councils began jointly publishing Land Rights News: One Mob, One Voice, One Land. In 2011, they returned to producing independent versions of Land Rights News to provide their communities with more regionally focused content. LRN targets an Indigenous audience, but aims to educate and inform non-Indigenous Australians and to ensure Indigenous perspectives on land rights and issues affecting Indigenous Australians are heard. Former Northern Land Council assistant director Roseanne Brennan described LRN as providing ‘good news stories’ that communicate positive messages to non-

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lane, william (1861–1917) Aboriginal Australians and as an ‘authoritative voice within the national Aboriginal community’. LRN provides information to Indigenous communities, businesses, pastoralists and government agencies about land rights claims, negotiations and legislation. Articles in LRN also cover topics such as land management, control of feral animals, health, education and training. While LRN focuses on Northern Territory news, its coverage of land rights and native title claims, strategies used and outcomes achieved makes it a valuable source of information and support for other Indigenous communities. Funding for LRN comes from the Lands Council budgets, and the publication has struggled to attract advertising revenue. Until 1989, when a subscription fee was introduced, free copies were distributed to communities and a range of organisations. The free subscriptions were limited to Indigenous communities after 1989. LRN was awarded the 1988 Print Newspaper Award from the Australian Human Rights Commission and received a Special Citation in the 1988 United Nations Media Peace Awards. REF: E. Burrows, ‘Writing to Be Heard: The Indigenous Print Media’s Role in Establishing and Developing an Indigenous Public Sphere’ (PhD thesis, 2009). ELIZABETH BURROWS

L A N E , W I LL I A M (1861–1917) The ideological founder of the 1890s Australian socialist experiment in Paraguay, William Lane was a newspaperman most of his life. He was born in England and moved to Canada at the age of 16. He began as a ‘printer’s devil’, and by 20 was a reporter on a Detroit newspaper, married to a fellow staff member, Anne Macquire. The eight years Lane spent in North America—1877 to 1885—were crucial formative ones, in which he found his journalism vocation. He witnessed the suppression of a wave of general strikes and the growth of hundreds of communal ventures, so shaping his thinking as a socialist and a communitarian. When the Lane family sailed for Australia in 1885, he nurtured a vision of a cooperative society. In Brisbane, he helped to found, and wrote for, the Boomerang (1887–92). Lane’s racist editorials warned that Australia’s glorious future could be blighted by descending Asian hordes. In 1890, he convinced the Australian Labour Federation to finance the Queensland Worker, aimed at trade unionists. It was a platform to reach his ideal recruits: the bushmen of the frontier. Union subscriptions soon delivered a readership of 20,000. Unionists’ wives read the pioneering ‘women’s column’, written by Lane under the pseudonym ‘Lucinda Sharpe’, although Anne contributed. Lane’s editorials were at their most fiery during the Queensland Shearers’ Strike of 1891. He visited the men in the strikers’ camps and

wrote that if the ballot was refused them, ‘then we shall have full justification for any action we may adopt, even if that action is revolution’. He commissioned a poem from Henry Lawson, who warned: ‘They needn’t say the fault was ours/ If blood should stain the wattle’. The main shearers’ camp at Barcaldine became the focus for the struggle, and southern newspapers sent ‘war correspondents’. When the strike ultimately failed in May, with 14 strike leaders put on trial, Lane wrote in the Worker ‘how useless it is to ever think of working together, capitalist and labourer, for the settlement of our social troubles’. Early in 1892, he left the Worker to become a full-time organiser for the colony of ‘mates’ he envisioned in South America, and set up a recruiting journal, New Australia (1892–94). On 16 July 1893, Lane and 199 intending communards sailed for Paraguay. However, disputes soon erupted over alcohol and inter-racial fraternising. After the first colony broke up in early 1894, Lane led 63 faithful followers to an even more remote location they called Colonia Cosme, and established another recruiting journal, the Cosme Monthly (1894–1904). On 2 August 1899, a bitter and disillusioned William Lane left Paraguay with his wife and children. He moved to Auckland and became a journalist on the conservative New Zealand Herald. He was appointed editor and in his editorials fostered racial hatred and the British imperialist cause. Lane died on 26 August 1917. REF: A. Whitehead, Paradise Mislaid (1997). ANNE WHITEHEAD

LAN YO N FAM ILY The Lanyons are an unlikely newspaper dynasty. James Lanyon, a post office employee at Woomelang in Victoria, joined the Sunraysia Daily as publisher in time for its launch on 16 October 1920. His son, Charles Dudley (1902– 88), a post office employee in the nearby town of Birchip, joined the paper two months later. It is uncertain how long the father stayed with the newspaper, but the son spent his lifetime there, becoming company secretary in 1924, manager in 1940 and proprietor in 1953. The Sunraysia Daily was fortunate to survive two years: a receiver was appointed on 14 May 1923, with instructions to close the newspaper if necessary. Various attempts were made to form a syndicate to buy the company, but no progress was made until 13 February 1924, when New Sunraysia Daily Pty Ltd—with three Country Party politicians having equal one-third shares—acquired it. The company appointed Lanyon secretary and George Silverton Baxter manager. One of the politicians, Robert Charles Dunlop Elliott (1884–1950), a banker and construction contractor, and later a senator, was

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lawson, louisa (1848–1920) appointed chairman in April 1927, and emerged as sole proprietor in 1935. He spearheaded an acquisition program, buying small, struggling newspapers. In the 1930s, these included papers at Ouyen, Woomelang, Murrayville, Castlemaine, Shepparton and Swan Hill (all in Victoria) and Wentworth, New South Wales. In the 1940s, with Lanyon as chief executive, the company acquired the Albury Banner, Yarrawonga Chronicle, Cobram Courier, Maryborough Advertiser, Cohuna Farmers’ Weekly and a 50 per cent interest in the Wangaratta Chronicle-Despatch. Soon after Elliott’s death in 1950, Lanyon acquired a controlling interest in the company, by now the Elliott Provincial Newspaper Group Pty Ltd, which had 175 permanent employees. Lanyon’s philosophy was that the paper was for the local community. In the mid-1960s, with the encouragement of the Herald and Weekly Times, the group bought some Melbourne suburban newspapers, but sold them to the Leader group when it was owned by the Mott family. The Elliott group bought the Kyneton Guardian in April 1965 and the Benalla Standard in March 1966, but sold the Standard 15 months later. Lanyon relinquished day-to-day control to his son in 1970, but continued as chairman of directors until his death. William Russell (Bill) Lanyon (1937–2013) gained experience in all phases of the business, and qualified as an accountant before becoming company secretary in 1960, manager of the group in 1970 and executive chairman in 1988. In July 2008, his eldest son, Ross, became managing director, while Bill continued as chairman until his death. Ross’s brother, Jamie, is the assistant manager of the Sunraysia Daily. Two cousins were in the business, too: Bruce Ellen, as general manager of the Latrobe Valley Express; and Tim Ellen, as manager of the events signage company Visibility. The Elliott group has four shareholders: Bill; his brother, Donald James; their sister, Dorothy Ellen; and the Taylor Trust, which holds shares on behalf of the connected families. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, The Bold Type (2010); R. Kirkpatrick, interview with W.R. Lanyon, 3 October 2002. ROD KIRKPATRICK

L AW S, ( RI CHARD) JOHN SINCLAIR (1935– ) John Laws is the most enduring talkback announcer on Australian commercial radio. He began at 3BO Bendigo before in 1953 before becoming a disc jockey at 2UE Sydney, in 1957. Laws joined 2SM Sydney in 1959 before broadcasting a nationally syndicated program from 2KO Newcastle. He moved to Sydney’s 2GB in 1962 and back to 2UE in 1964. Laws welcomed listeners to his drive-time pop music program on 2UE with ‘Hello world, this is Long John’. When talkback radio began in 1967, Laws took

listener calls on Party Line, discovering that when he insulted callers, ratings soared. Laws’ political influence grew in the 1970s. At 2UW Sydney (1969–79), politicians started to seek him out. He engaged Prime Minister Ben Chifley’s former press secretary, Don Rodgers, to write political material for his program, and befriended politicians including Malcolm Fraser, Paul Keating, Gough Whitlam and Neville Wran. His 2UW program ranged from jingles and humour to urgent suicide-on-air dramas, and he became increasingly outspoken on social issues. In 1974 he was awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting and charity. With a resonant voice, the ‘Golden Tonsils’ was by 1976 at the top of the ratings and the best-paid radio announcer in Australia. Laws appeared in other media, releasing several music singles and poetry albums; featuring in a comedy film, The Nickel Queen (1971); hosting four national television series; writing a column for the Sunday Telegraph; and penning several books. The main character in an ABC series, The Oracle (1979), was clearly based on Laws. Laws was part-owner of 2Day FM, and by the 1980s his own company was producing his program and advertisements. In 1999, his undisclosed sponsorship with the Australian Bankers’ Association triggered an industry-wide regulatory inquiry into ‘cash for comment’. Laws famously claimed that he was an ‘entertainer’ and not a journalist, but the Australian Broadcasting Authority found he had breached the Commercial Radio Codes of Practice. In 2004, he was again found in breach after a similar deal with Telstra. On his 2UE morning program from 1988 until his retirement in 2007, Laws mixed listener talkback with interviews, country music and advertising. In 2003, 2UE presented Laws with a gold-plated microphone to commemorate 50 years on air. He was inducted into the Commercial Radio Hall of Fame in 2003. He returned to morning radio on 2SM, now the hub of the Super Radio Network, in 2011. REF: T. Hall, John Laws (1985); J. Lyons, Laws (1991). LIZ GOULD

LAW SO N , LO U ISA (1848–1920) Louisa Lawson was a pioneer woman journalist and an indefatigable fighter for women’s causes. She was also a poet and short story writer (and mother of Henry), but her fame rests upon the Dawn, a monthly national women’s journal that she edited virtually single-handedly from 1888 until 1905, when her ill-health forced its closure. Lawson started the Dawn some five years after she left a life of rural poverty to move to Sydney, supporting her dependant children by washing, sewing and taking in lodgers. This editorial longevity remains her

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leader community newspapers single most remarkable achievement, given that she was poor and barely educated, and had no previous journalism experience. Lawson was responsible for virtually all the Dawn’s editorials, as well as creative pieces, poems and numerous other items. Particularly in its first decade, the magazine (originally titled A Journal for Australian Women, then A Journal for the Household) enjoyed an extensive female readership in urban and rural Australia. Lawson attributed its popularity to the alternative it offered to the period’s frivolous and superficial way of presenting women’s issues. Certainly it was not afraid to be a ‘phonograph to wind out audibly the whispers, pleadings and demands of the sisterhood’ (first editorial, May 1888), and it dealt with many controversial issues of the day, including women’s education and right to work, domestic violence, divorce and women’s rights within marriage. But Lawson’s greatest cause was women’s suffrage, which she espoused with single-minded and passionate fervour until the NSW government awarded women the vote in 1903. But Lawson was also an astute businesswoman, and the Dawn was—unusually for its time—a self-supporting commercial success. Between half and one-third of each edition was devoted to advertising, so the magazine—which also provided a mail-order service—functioned as a shopping catalogue for country subscribers. Lawson also offered inducements to increase the number of subscribers, including 2 acres of farmland near Mudgee, New South Wales—presumably her own property, left to her when her estranged husband died in 1888. Moreover, the Dawn offered entertainment as well as enlightenment, providing fashion hints, a ‘Children’s Corner’ with jokes and stories, and household tips. This strategy of allurement and edification, coupled with Lawson’s prodigious energy, ensured the Dawn’s stand-alone success among Australian women’s magazines of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. REF: S. Pearce, The Shameless Scribbler (1992). SHARYN PEARCE

L E A D ER COMMUNI TY NEWSPAPERS This chain of 33 weekly free tabloid newspapers is distributed across metropolitan Melbourne. Its reach extends south-east to the Mornington Peninsula and west to Bacchus Marsh, ensuring that it has a larger distribution footprint than its two rivals, Fairfax Community Newspapers and the Star News Group. Leader is part of News Corp Australia, and is regarded as one of the largest newspaper networks in the southern hemisphere, reaching an estimated 1.35 million readers a week. The Leader network was founded in Northcote, an inner northern suburb of Melbourne. A pair of brothers, A.H. and W. Richardson, launched the Northcote Leader and District

Record in 1888, but operated the publication in the leafy suburb of Brighton. The emergence of a rival, the Northcote Examiner, forced the brothers to establish an office in Northcote, which increased the local news content and soon ensured that the paper—and its sister publication, the Preston Leader—were appealing commercial properties. In 1890, another pair of brothers, twins John and Robert Whalley, from Creswick in rural Victoria, bought the papers, which they retained until 1924, working assiduously to build local content and extending readership as far north as Whittlesea. Both brothers were active in the local community and John edited the Northcote Leader for 30 years. John Whalley’s tenure ended in 1924 when the brothers sold the papers to Decimus Mott, who created the Leader company four years later. His son, George Horace, inherited the Mott family group in 1946. Mott’s alliances with other titles meant that during the 1960s more than a third of Melbourne’s population was reading papers owned or connected to Leader. Walter Mott Jr would later reason: ‘Photos and names of people and what they were doing was the most important part of a suburban newspaper.’ But the market was diversifying as other newspaper owners saw the value of the advertising markets—especially in real estate—that underpinned the success of the suburban chains. By the early 1970s, there were seven suburban owners in Victoria, with Leader controlling 17 papers. But suburban newspaper publishing was changing, and was now inextricably linked to the fortunes of the metropolitan media empires. In 1977, David Syme & Co. Ltd—which published the Age and a small network of suburban newspapers—attempted to buy Leader’s main rival, the Standard Group, which circulated in the city’s eastern and bayside suburbs. This triggered an aggressive response from the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), which trumped the Syme bid and absorbed the Standard Group. In this febrile environment, the Motts embarked on a defensive merger with another suburban publisher, Progress Press. David Syme then turned its attention to Cumberland Newspapers, run by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, and bought the group’s four Victorian publications (and typesetting operations in Dandenong) for $2.5 million. The end result was a significant rationalisation of the Melbourne suburban market, down to three main players: Leader, the HWT and David Syme. In 1986, the HWT bought the Leader group, making it the most significant player in the suburban newspaper market. This meant that when Murdoch bought the HWT the following year, he took on all the Leader titles. Since then, Leader has maintained its primacy in the market, extending further in to the western suburbs with the absorption of the Western Times in 2006 and establishing several new titles in Melbourne’s growing outer south-eastern suburbs. In 2001, the company embarked

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legal publishing on a re-branding campaign that ensured every paper became branded ‘Leader’. This eroded the distinct identities of its various publications, but guaranteed a consistency of look and approach across the titles, providing a single, strong platform for advertisers to promote their businesses across the network. Although total readership figures declined after 2001, the established community newspaper groups continued to build readers through their website presence, enhancing their involvement with specific communities under specific mastheads. REFs: Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter, no. 13, July 2001; http://heritage.darebinlibraries. vic.gov.au. NICK RICHARDSON

L EGAL PUBL I S HING Legal publishing began with the arrival of the convict George Hughes in the colony of New South Wales. In 1788, the First Fleet had carried a printing press but not a printer, so it was not until 16 November 1796 that the first legal publication was printed: Instructions for the Constables in Country Districts. Newspapers, however, quickly became the outlet for publication of the government directives that were the colony’s law in the years preceding democracy. The first of these was the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, and the income from the government directives it published ensured its economic survival. This was also the case for the Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Register (1816), the Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (1833) and the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (1836). This nexus between the newspapers and official information was short-lived, and by 1840 each colony had its own Government Gazette. Statute law publishing began shortly after the establishment of the first legislature, in New South Wales, in 1824. Initially enactments were published in pamphlet form, but in 1827 the government published three volumes of the statutes and ordinances passed in 1824–27, beginning regular official publication of legislation in volume form. Van Diemen’s Land followed— but sporadically. The statutes were not consolidated, and the need for accessible and updated legislation provided opportunities for private publications. The most notable was Thomas Callaghan’s ‘Statutes’, systematic, subject-based, well-edited and indexed volumes of the operative NSW legislation between 1824 and 1852. It was followed by consolidations of statutes in all colonies in the 19th century, usually privately published. Newspapers remained the acceptable and often the only publishers of law reports in all colonies for much of the 19th century. Only eight volumes of law reports were published

before 1856, the first of which was William A’Beckett’s Reserved and Equity Judgments of the Supreme Court of New South Wales (1845). Systematic publication of separate volumes of law reports began in the larger colonies in the 1860s and 1870s, with occasional faltering. The increasing volume of statute and case law spawned a mass of commentary, most often in the form of pamphlets. However, legal texts began to be published, beginning in the 1830s, probably 1835, with either the Attorney’s Clerks Guide, traditionally the first publication, or J.H. Plunkett’s Australian Magistrate. Most private publishers were law stationers for whom publishing was a natural extension of the services they provided to the legal profession. Often, necessary government subsidy was provided. J.B. Sheridan and J.W. Bakewell’s Magistrate’s Guide, for example, at almost 900 pages, was published in 1879 by the South Australian Government Printer. Legal publishing was thus lively, scattered and disordered when Charles F. Maxwell opened a legal bookshop in Melbourne in 1868. His object was to sell the publications of his family’s company, the London legal publisher Sweet & Maxwell, but he quickly added publishing to his activities. Separate books on criminal law and evidence appeared in 1871, and the first edition of T.P. Webb’s Compendium of the Imperial Law in 1874. In 1879 he began the Australian Law Times, the first legal publication to attempt an Australia-wide perspective. It was a fortnightly journal of legal news and case reports, which was combined with the Australian Law Journal in 1929. Maxwell’s publishing house survived his death in 1889, emerging as the Law Book Company of Australasia Pty Ltd in 1903. It became the publisher of most series of authorised law reports, led by the Commonwealth Law Reports, begun in 1903, and of consolidations of such reports—for example the Queensland Criminal Reports: 1860–1907, published in 1913. These publications, together with the texts of its English parent company, provided an unrivalled financial platform from which it could launch an expanding list of journals, textbooks and encyclopaediae, most notably the Australian Digest in 1934. A second English law publisher entered Australia when Butterworths opened a shop in Sydney in 1911 to market and sell its titles. Like Charles Maxwell a generation earlier, it soon began local publishing, and by 1945 its Australian list comprised 21 books and nine periodicals. These two companies formed a duopoly for most of the 20th century, and it was widely thought that their position was unchallengeable. This cosy, established world was transformed in 1969, when the Law Book Company sold its Greenwood Challoner tax service to the wellknown American legal publisher CCH. The

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letters to the editor timing of CCH’s entry into Australia was fortuitous: the 1970s saw an exponential increase in the amount of legislation passed by Australian parliaments and a similar growth in the number of legal practitioners. These provided both content and market for the looseleaf services in which CCH specialised. The tax service was redeveloped and updated with unheard of speed and frequency; legal publishing was revolutionised. Butterworths followed energetically, the Law Book Company, financially sustained by its dominance of the Law Reports, more slowly. For all three publishers, serial publications became, and have remained, dominant. The looseleaf era was short-lived, as technology brought change and the publishers realised the potential of electronic publications. Coverage of the major areas of legal practice, and focus on the provision of even faster digital access to the primary materials of statutes and cases, as well as commentary, gave lawyers unprecedented access to research information. While the costs were high and the competition between the companies fierce, the rewards were huge: few lawyers could practise without them. Book publishing became a backwater, the income too small in the absence of a high-priced market among commercial lawyers or a large one among students. Book publication has, however, been sustained and expanded by The Federation Press. Its financial structure has enabled it to publish where the major companies find it uneconomic. Established in 1987, it is the first Australian-owned legal publisher to survive and prosper since Charles F. Maxwell began a modern legal publishing ‘industry’ in 1869. REF: Castles’ Annotated Bibliography of Printed Materials on Australian Law 1788–1900 (1994). CHRIS HOLT

L E T T ERS T O T HE EDITOR It was a letter to the editor that sent Australia to war in Sudan in 1885. It was in letters to editors that the bushranger Ned Kelly, the bank robber Darcy Dugan and the last person to be hanged in Australia, Ronald Ryan, put to the public their sides of their respective stories. The last letter the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt ever wrote was to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, on 4 April 1848. And, less famous but more life-affirming—and a textbook example of the power and importance of the press—a letter to the editor in 1863 freed a vet, Mr Melville of Maitland, from unjust incarceration in an asylum. Letters to the editor have always filled vital roles in newspapers as sources of news, inspiration, humour and, most importantly, readers’ voices. They arrive in all forms, from toilet paper (Ryan to Melbourne’s Truth in 1967) to a scrap of newspaper (Melville to the Sydney Empire); from embossed letterheads to the back of an unpaid bill. (In the 21st century, with the imme-

diacy of email overtaking ‘snail mail’, whether Ryan’s choice of stationery would ever make it to a letters editor’s desk is a chilling thought.) They can inspire: in February 1885, Sir Edward Strickland’s letter in the Sydney Morning Herald urging support for Britain in its war in Sudan rallied the good folk of New South Wales, and by the end of March, a contingent had reached Suakin. They can put a case: Dugan’s letter to Sydney’s Daily Mirror in December 1949 declared that far from being a ‘desperado’, he had never possessed a gun and had never assaulted anyone. They can be a last chance: Melville had been declared insane and blocked in all efforts to clear his name. It was not until his smuggled-out letter was published that he was freed. In the early years of the colony, letter-writers never had it so good—until a ship arrived from England with ‘fresh’ news (up to three months old). In the Sydney Herald in 1831, hundreds of words were published, uncut and untouched, under the headline ‘Original correspondence’, on topics ranging from blight in Hunter Valley grapevines to the state of roads in the Illawarra; from the treatment of Aborigines to horse stealing. In a sign of things to come, there were complaints about printing and typographical errors, angry missives decrying misinformation about the pros and cons of vaccinating children and, in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser in 1834, a furious subscriber rounded on editors of the Herald, the original Australian, the Gazette and the Monitor for boasting and fighting among themselves, using their journalists’ names: ‘We want news; we don’t give one fig about who is editor or joint editor.’ The Sydney Herald printed an editorial in July 1831 on letters with ‘feigned signatures which [have] prevented their insertion. We beg to inform our correspondents that we cannot attend to anonymous writers … but … assure them the transmission of their names … shall be a profound secret.’ But when the ships sailed into Sydney Harbour bearing British newspapers, the letters were suddenly expendable, replaced by a ‘Notice to correspondents’—‘We are sorry we cannot insert the numerous contributions we have received, and beg our friends to observe that it arises, not from disrespect but necessity,’ the Sydney Herald declared on 6 June 1831. As the colony grew and generated more news, the space for letters to the editor grew smaller. And in 1872, when undersea cables linked Australia to Bombay via Singapore and China, news arrived within hours, meaning letters were often relegated to ‘fillers’ scattered throughout the papers. They began to be used on merit, rather than length: bright and newsy got upfront spots; dull but worthy made their way to the back. Perhaps ‘the Jerilderie letter’, signed by Ned Kelly in 1879 and written to Samuel Gill, editor

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lifestyle television of the Jerilderie and Urana Gazette, could take the award for the longest publication delay. It did not get a run until 1930, when it was printed in Adelaide’s Register News-Pictorial. By the late 1940s, most papers were more formatted so readers would know where to find things, and letters were being grouped under their own banner. Increasingly from the late 1950s, letters earned a spot on or near the leader page. Rather than being an optional extra, editors had accepted that readers were keen not only to have a say but also to know what fellow readers were thinking. Eventually, most leader pages went to just three elements: editorials, letters and the editorial cartoonist. By the mid- to late 1990s, the ability to send letters by fax and emails from computers had led to the diminution of handwritten letters. By then, editors were encouraging ‘on the news’, shorter submissions, and copperplate was replaced by Times Roman. Some correspondents, such as Bill Mitchell, have become familiar names to Australian newspaper readers. Compilations of letters from correspondents including Frank Hainsworth (2004, 2006) and Ian D. Lindsay (2001) have appeared, along with books of letters illuminating the social history of towns, including Toowoomba and Gisborne. Fairfax Media has published Best Letters to the Editor (2006) and unpublished letters to the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald (2013). Although the methods of submission have changed dramatically, some topics are perennial: roads, health, crime, justice. Maybe some day, just as a letter from ‘North Shore’ lamented the demise of the bottle-oh’s cry in December 1951, there will be a letter bemoaning the loss of the postman’s whistle. REFs: A. Savvas (comp.), Over a Century of News from the Archives of Truth (1993); G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). JUDY PRISK

L I F E S TYL E T ELEVISION ‘Lifestyle television’ is a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe programs that differed from earlier information or advice shows due to the addition of some entertainment components and various characteristics of reality television. Sociologically, ‘lifestyle’ had come to refer to the way contemporary social subjects gained identity from their consumption of particular products and services, and engaged in an ongoing ‘project of self’. Television programs providing advice about houses and gardens, clothing, food and wine, leisure pursuits—even ways of raising children and reconfiguring the body—capitalised on this trend. Gardening presenter Don Burke has long claimed that Burke’s Backyard (1987–2004) was the first lifestyle television program in the world. However, the category had many prede-

cessors: cooking shows were one of the earliest types of programs screened; state-based ABC gardening shows had existed since the end of the 1960s, prior to the 1991 launch of the national Gardening Australia; and daytime television was replete with advice aimed at the housewife viewer—primarily in magazine-style morning or afternoon shows, and often quite close to advertorial. Burke’s Backyard looked at all aspects of Australian backyard life. Typically of lifestyle shows, it combined a cast of regular experts with both ordinary people and celebrities as exemplars of depicted practices. The next most significant appearance was ABC’s The Home Show (1990–93), presented by Maggie Tabberer and Richard Zachariah, which moved inside the house to focus on ways in which people’s domestic settings could be fashionably improved. Together with other ABC lifestyle shows, like Holiday and Everybody, it was pulled from the schedule in 1994 following a scandal about program funding being linked to favourable product mentions. Except for food programs, the growing genre of lifestyle shows moved completely to the commercial networks after this. SBS screens some relevant programs, primarily ethnic food shows but also gardening and environmental living programs. In some ways, food programs are the least changed by the shift from advice to lifestyle, with many early examples stressing entertainment and their presenters achieving celebrity status. Food programs (local and imported) were the earliest type of information program to be screened in prime-time. Entertaining with Kerr, presented by chef Graham Kerr on Network Ten, was one of the highest rating Australian shows during the 1960s, and involved Kerr cooking for a prominent guest each week. Often cooking shows were screened on the ABC—indeed, between the departure of Kerr and the 2000 move of Jamie Oliver from the ABC to Ten, no cooking show was broadcast on prime-time commercially, although there were daytime examples. Most of the ABC programs were imported British ones, with Keith Floyd the most prominent of the celebrity chefs. Food television has shifted in importance as food has become a more powerful lifestyle indicator. Each channel has its own celebrity presenters, and the proportion of the schedule devoted to food programs has grown substantially. One substantial difference has been competition. In MasterChef Australia (Ten, 2009– ), ordinary people compete at advanced cooking tasks set by professional chefs or cooks, such as Nigella Lawson. Both celebrity, professional and junior versions have screened. Makeover programs were introduced to Australia in 1998 with a local version of the British competitive interior design show Changing Rooms. Many other formatted lifestyle shows were to follow. Before the Seven

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limelight department Network could get its British garden makeover format Ground Force to air in 2000, Burke’s Backyard spun off Backyard Blitz (2000–07) with Jamie Durie for Nine—which was far more successful. Durie remains a prominent lifestyle figure, both nationally and in the United States. Makeovers drew on elements of reality television, introducing melodrama to the lifestyle genre by changing the focus from the details of the tasks to the reactions of the recipients. Melodrama also featured in the stories recipients told, explaining why they deserved the gifts sponsors had provided to the production companies. As well as melodrama, competition and the incorporation of ordinary and celebrity participants, another element of reality television shared with lifestyle is contrived set-ups. To maximise the surprise elements of the reveal, ordinary recipients on shows such as 2004’s Renovation Rescue were sent on holidays unaware of what was being done to their houses. A contrived set-up and competition were very notable in The Block, an Australian-originating format sold widely, though never to repeat the ratings success of its first local series in 2003. Durie hosted the first two series, in which four couples competed to renovate one apartment each of a block of flats in Bondi. The couple making the most at auction won. Scott Cam, a carpenter who had appeared in several property-related programs on the Nine Network, hosted later series (2010– ) and won the 2014 Gold Logie. Not all property shows are makeovers. Some, like Hot Property and Hot Auctions, are real estate programs aimed at buying or selling houses, though such Australian shows often do some work on the properties offered for sale. Many imported programs concerned with finding properties for people wanting to move or acquire a second home, like the British Location, Location, Location, screen on pay television. Pay television is an important site for lifestyle programming. Most lifestyle shows on Foxtel are repeats of older Australian programs, or imports that have not had free-to-air screening here, but there are some local examples made directly for pay, such as the gardening programs presented by Brendan Moar and Antonia Kidman’s shows on parenting. The significance of lifestyle for pay television is shown most clearly in the increase in the number of dedicated lifestyle channels. Initially there was only the LifeStyle Channel (est. 1997), but this has expanded to LifeStyle Food, LifeStyle You and LifeStyle Home. Several other channels screen programs focused on the body, from cosmetic surgery to clothing transformations. The most successful of these lifestyle shows, however, has been on free-to-air: Ten’s local version of the American format The Biggest Loser, which features overweight contestants being slimmed down by diet and exercise until one is declared the winner.

There has been considerable lifestyle media crossover—for instance, the Better Homes and Gardens magazine (1978– ) inspired a Seven Network program (1995– ), while television programming has given rise to a number of magazines, including Burke’s Backyard (1998–2013), the ABC’s Delicious (2001– ) and MasterChef Magazine (2010–12). REFs: F. Bonner, Ordinary Television (2003) and ‘Lifestyle Television: Gardening and the Good Life’, in E. Potter and T. Lewis (eds), Ethical Consumption (2011); B. Rosenberg, ‘Masculine Makeovers: Lifestyle Television, Metrosexuals and Real Blokes’, in G. Palmer (ed.), Exposing Lifestyle Television (2008). FRANCES BONNER

LIM ELIG H T D EP AR TM EN T The Salvation Army’s Limelight Department was formed in 1892. Named after the light source used in lantern slide shows, it would become Australia’s outstanding pioneer film producer. The Limelight Department and the Australian Kinematographic Company (the first film production company registered in Australia) that it spawned in 1901 made more than 300 films between 1897 and 1909. These included records of events of national significance, feature-length documentaries, and epic religious and historical multimedia productions. The Salvation Army was founded by Christian missionary William Booth in London in 1878. While the Army experimented with lantern slide projection to promote its activities and raise funds, this practice did not spread to Australia until local Salvationist and amateur photographer Joseph Perry, with the support of the Army’s special projects officer Major Frank Barritt, initiated Australian Salvation Army screen activities, which were consolidated by Herbert Booth, son of the Army’s founder. While ministering in Ballarat in the early 1890s, Perry established a commercial photographic studio and acquired a slide projector to screen advertising as an income supplement. While promoting General William Booth’s 1891 Australian visit, Barritt called upon Perry’s photographic capacities. The successful advertising experiment inspired them to create a more ambitious slide-based Salvationist lecture, which was toured along Australia’s eastern seaboard during 1892. This venture was formalised as the Limelight Department. Upon Barritt’s departure, Perry became the department manager, a role he held throughout its 17-year history. Through the early 1890s, Perry presented his slide shows across Australia and New Zealand, returning a healthy profit. In 1896, the activities of the Limelight Department were embraced by new Australasian commander,  Commandant Herbert Booth. Exhibitions of imported films began in Australia, and Booth instructed Perry to invest in the new medium.

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listeners In October 1897, Perry produced his first film, just a year after Lumière cameraman Marius Sestier and photographer H. Walter Barnett made Australia’s first film. Booth authorised an expansion of the department, including the construction of Australia’s first film studio in Melbourne. In July 1898, the department completed Social Salvation—its first major film and slide presentation. The Limelight Department began accepting production commissions in 1900, and the NSW government engaged it to document Federation celebrations in 1901. The Inauguration of the Commonwealth, running for over 30 minutes, was Australia’s first feature-length film and the first to include simultaneous multi-camera footage. Many consider this film the Limelight Department’s crowning achievement. But misguided speculation that the department’s ‘passion play’ Soldiers of the Cross (1900) was the world’s first feature-length film has tended to overshadow it. Through the first decade of the 20th century, the department continued to shoot, acquire, distribute and present films across Australia and abroad. In 1909, the department opened a new studio in suburban Melbourne in anticipation of considerable production activity. But James Hay, the new Australasian commander, took a dim view of the Army’s involvement in cinema, noting that it ‘had led to weakness and a lightness incompatible with true Salvationism’. He closed the department in 1910. REF: C. Long, ‘Australia’s First Films’, 20-part series for Cinema Papers (1993–96). CHRIS WILSON and ANETA PODKALICKA

L I S TENERS Some of Australia’s earliest radio magazines were targeted at amateur experimenters—participants in the ‘science’ of radio. But by the 1930s, most addressed listeners primarily as consumers of radio, publishing radio schedules, poetry, cartoons and articles about personalities and programs. In a 1931 editorial entitled ‘Intelligent Listening’, Wireless Weekly instructed listeners to consult the schedules (‘pick what you want and use the tuning dial’), while a delegate to a 1934 conference of the Australian Federation of University Women spoke of the ‘necessity for educating people in how to listen’. In 1930, the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) set licence fees at £25 a year. ‘Listening posts’ were established in shops, pubs and homes for communal listening. The staged ‘synthetic’ Test cricket coverage of ABC and commercial radio in the early 1930s promised an almost cinematic experience, with stations publishing ‘pocket guides’ to the broadcasts and radio periodicals publishing score cards and field diagrams. Radio manufacturers sought to sell their sets through images of domestic life, with families sitting around ornate wooden cabinets. As

smaller, cheaper sets began to emerge, Australia’s 500,000th listeners’ licence was issued in 1933. In letters to radio periodicals, listeners passionately debated the programming merits of the two broadcasting sectors. Radio Advertising in Australia, the 1936 opus of the research manager of J. Walter Thompson’s Australian branch, W.A. McNair, was based on surveys of 3000 adults and 2500 children regarding their listening habits and preferences. A survey undertaken by his former assistant, Sylvia Ashby, a decade later attempted to account for why and when housewives didn’t listen to radio, as they juggled the demands of washing (Mondays), ironing (Tuesdays, with the iron often plugged in to the radio’s powerpoint or causing interference), the butcher (Wednesday mornings), cleaning and collecting welfare payments (Thursdays) and shopping (Fridays). Since the 1920s, radio stations and affiliated newspapers had been conducting ‘ballots’ to identify listeners’ program preferences. This was also a way to be seen to engage with listeners, a strategy that was extended through excursions, competitions, community singing, quiz and game shows, birthday calls to children and sponsoring community events. Social clubs attached to commercial radio stations blossomed across Australia, with the most ambitious probably the 2GB Happiness Club (est. 1929). In an unguarded moment in 1936, the station manager of Sydney’s 2UW told a PMG inspector that ‘he regarded his listeners as morons and treated them as such, hence the popularity of 2UW’. Evidence of a paternalistic view of listeners emerged during World War II. Under the Broadcasting Act 1942, all advertisements relating to medicine had to be approved by the Director-General of Health in order to avoid the exploitation of the ‘credulity of the sick and suffering’. Meanwhile, the Minister for Information, Sir Henry Gullett, concurred with leading industrialists that radio war news should not be allowed to ‘upset the public’, especially workers. In the late 1930s, the ABC formed Listening Groups, a well-tried BBC device, in collaboration with adult education authorities to discuss particular programs. The ABC established a Listener Research section in 1943, renaming it Research and Statistics in 1954 and Audience Research in 1969. For decades, the industry fretted that each summer, radio was supplanted by ‘beach umbrellas, cameras and fishing rods’. Some cars had had radios since the 1930s, but by the 1950s there were still only found in expensive models. With the introduction of television in 1956, the radio industry aggressively promoted the sale of car and transistor radios as a highly individualised medium, dismantling the image of radio as a force for family togetherness. By 1962, nearly 55 per cent of all new cars were equipped with radios. Of the 451,000 radios produced in Australia in 1961, more than half were transistors; there

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local government reporting was now more than one radio for every adult Australian. Top 40 music drifted over the sands of Australian beaches all weekend long, solving the problem of ‘summer radio’. While radio periodicals ran gleeful articles about the phenomenon of fan mail, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board and its successors kept voluminous files of complaints from listeners. The legalisation of talkback in 1967 meant that radio could pick up on ‘real-life’ events and listener opinions, and transmit them in ‘real time’. ‘What’s on your mind, Australia?’ asked John Laws at the beginning of each show. Licence fees were abolished by the Whitlam Labor government. The introduction of community (also known as public) radio in the 1970s gave listeners from a broad range of sectors, including ethnic communities, music enthusiasts and students, more diverse programming, as well as the potential to contribute both on and off air. A 2002 study found that 20,000 Australians were involved as community radio volunteers. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 provided for narrowcasting, which enabled the provision of services to targeted special-interest (such as religious or sporting) and geographical groups. In 1981, shortly after the introduction of commercial FM radio, McNair Anderson ratings showed that television viewing by adult Australians had dropped for the first time since the advent of television, and that all age groups were spending more time listening to radio than watching television. Sandy McCutcheon’s Australia Talks Back was heard nationally on ABC Radio from 1997 to 2008. For decades, Ian Macnamara has been drawing on anecdotes, poetry and music from around the country for his Sunday-morning ABC program, Australia All Over. The rise of the internet facilitated more forms of listener interaction. Stations and networks established websites to provide program and personality information and conduct competitions. Many programs are now live-streamed, and web-cams are installed so that listeners can watch what is happening in the studio. REFs: S. Forde, M. Meadows and K. Foxwell, Culture, Commitment, Community (2002); B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

LOCAL C O N TE N T see Australian content

L O C AL GOVERNME NT REPORTING In Australia’s three-tiered political system, local government is the level closest to the people, and local councils are a rich source of news, particularly in rural and regional areas. Councils have the power to enforce laws and impose rates to provide citizens with a

range of infrastructure and community services. Journalists covering the ‘council round’ report on everything from municipal elections, annual budgets and strategic plans to local planning, environment, health and heritage matters, and council-sponsored community celebrations. The first news coverage of local government affairs can be traced back to 1840, when the Southern Australian (1838–51) published details of a proposed Bill to form a Municipal Corporation for the City of Adelaide—Australia’s first local government. In July 1842, the Sydney Herald (later the Sydney Morning Herald) celebrated moves to establish the Town of Sydney because the colonial government was no longer considered capable of providing adequate services to all areas, particularly regarding planning, streets and roads. The introduction of local government was a significant development for democracy in regional Australia. People in the regions had lacked a strong political voice. Instead, there was a heavy onus on newspapers to ‘represent’ or to advocate community interests. Journals and newspapers played an instrumental role in petitioning for local government and political representation to be established in their towns. Both local government and the news media— including suburban newspapers—are central to a healthy democracy, but the relationship is not always an easy one. The news media provide an important link between councils and citizens, and foster robust public debate about civic affairs. The editorial stance of many local media outlets includes advancing the interests of their communities and working with local government to achieve this. However, journalists also play an important ‘watchdog’ role in keeping local government accountable as part of the news media’s celebrated fourth estate function. The importance of local government reporting has been examined by public journalism scholars, who suggest that journalism cannot remain viable unless public life itself remains viable. They emphasise the importance of news media outlets initiating conversations about civic affairs among key publics. Here, the aim is to create a ‘bottom-up’ orientation to public affairs reporting by letting citizens shape the news agenda, instead of elite sources such as council authorities doing so. The importance of local government to other tiers of politics and journalism is evidenced by developments in related reporting specialisations and the career trajectories of prominent political reporters. For example, the Sydney press’s coverage of Australia’s first ‘Green Bans’—the fight between the local council and developers and Hunter’s Hill residents working with members of the Builders Labourers’ Federation to maintain Kelly’s Bush from 1971–74—foreshadowed the environmental political movement and the development of the specialisation of environmental journalism.

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lockwood family Local government has also been the focus of some of Australia’s best investigative journalism. In the early 1970s, the ABC’s This Day Tonight exposed corruption at Botany Council in Sydney. The Illawarra Mercury’s Mario Christodoulou won the 2008 Walkley Award for Coverage of Community or Regional Affairs for uncovering a corruption scandal within his local council. Local government could also provide good copy for the tabloid press: in the early 1970s, the stoush between Labor’s left and right factions at Leichhardt Council was frequently splashed across Sydney front pages. Just as many federal politicians began their careers in local government, many top political reporters also started in the local arena, including News Limited’s Tony Koch and Matt Price, and the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy, Heather Ewart and Chris Uhlmann. On ABC Television, the state-based editions of The 7.30 Report (known as Stateline from 1995–2011 and 7.30 from 2012) have provided an outlet for major local government stories. The relationship between local government and the news media is changing in a digital landscape. Local governments have embraced new technologies, and are no longer entirely dependent on traditional media outlets to communicate information to ratepayers. They now provide interactive websites that invite community comments on planning issues and embark on social media campaigns, partnering with other community and emergency services to inform the public of road closures, fires and floods via telephone, SMS messages and social media feeds. However, they are required by law to publish public notices in a local or daily newspaper. This revenue might be integral to keeping small newspapers alive in the increasingly competitive digital environment. REFs: K. Hess and L. Waller, ‘An Exploratory Study of Relationships Between Local Government Media Officers and Journalists in Regional Australia’, Asia Pacific Public Relations Jnl, 9 (2008); J. Rosen, What are Journalists for? (1999). KRISTY HESS and LISA WALLER

L OCKW OOD FAM ILY Alfred Wright Lockwood (1867–1956) began an apprenticeship with the Lancefield Mercury at 13, but poor wages induced him to become a ‘tramp printer’. He returned and bought half the Mercury, but sold in 1899 and bought the West Wimmera Mail (est. 1887) in Natimuk, Victoria. In 1900, he married Alice Ellen Francis, a schoolteacher and temperance campaigner who provided the drive to develop newspaper interests in other towns. Lockwood was conservative and humane in the four-page weekly Mail. He denounced larrikins, ‘flappers’, ‘shirkers’ and ‘socialists’. After Alice died in 1913, the business stumbled, relieved by Lockwood’s marriage in 1916 to

another good manager, Ida Dorothea Klowss, who was an Australian of German heritage. This attracted anti-German criticism. The Mail survived the Depression and post-war competition from city newspapers. Lockwood’s daughter and three sons from his first marriage learned to set type and operate the press by the age of 10. His second family of three sons continued the tradition of unpaid labour, with the younger two taking over when Lockwood retired in 1950. Lockwood’s second son, Rupert Ernest (1908–97), joined the Melbourne Herald in 1930, and reported the Spanish Civil War alongside Ernest Hemingway and Arthur Koestler. He was later a leading propagandist for the Communist Party of Australia. He wrote the notorious ‘Document J’ in the 1954 Petrov spy scandal, but let his party membership lapse after two years in Moscow and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. From 1940, he earned his income from the labour press, particularly as associate editor and editor (1952–85) of the Maritime Worker. The eldest son of Alfred’s second marriage, Douglas Wright (1918–80), left school at 12 to help on the Mail. From 16 he worked on other country papers until he joined the Herald in 1941. He was sent to Darwin, and was there for the bombing in February 1942. After war service, he returned and, apart from three years in the Herald and Weekly Times’ Melbourne and London offices, remained until 1968. He won a London Evening News prize in 1957, a Walkley Award in 1958, and wrote 13 books, including the prize-winning I, the Aboriginal (1962) and Australia’s Pearl Harbour: Darwin 1942 (1966). In 1968, he moved to Port Moresby, merging two papers to create Papua New Guinea’s first national daily, the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier. He became managing editor of the Bendigo Advertiser, remaining there until his death. Douglas’s younger brothers, Frank Wright (1919–97) and Allan Wright (1922–2013), stayed in Natimuk with the Mail, turning it into a bi-weekly in the early 1950s, and in 1959 taking over the Horsham Times to create the Wimmera Mail-Times, with Frank as manager and Allan as editor. The paper became Australia’s biggest-selling tri-weekly, and won a Walkley Award in 2002. Allan was awarded an OAM. Douglas’s son, Kim Douglas (1944– ), and Allan’s son, Keith Andrew (1951– ), became journalists and authors. Kim worked in Perth, Darwin and Melbourne, and Keith became chief sub-editor of the Mail-Times. David John (1966– ), grandson of the fourth child of the first family, Raymond Alfred (1910–85), became a boating writer. REFs: A. Lockwood, Ink in His Veins (1985); D. Lockwood, Alfred Wright Lockwood (1976). KIM LOCKWOOD

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logie awards L O G IE AWA RDS ‘The Logies’ is the colloquial name for the Australian television awards formally known as the ‘TV Week Logie Awards’. They debuted in 1959 in Melbourne before Australia’s television system was networked nationally. They were first called the TV Week Awards, and were renamed by the award’s first recipient, Graham Kennedy, after Scottish television pioneer John Logie Baird. Although now commonly referred to as ‘The Logies’, the official name bears testimony to the long-standing affiliation with TV Week. The Nine Entertainment Co. owned both TV Week until 2012 and the Nine Network, which has held broadcasting rights to the awards since 1996. The awards’ broadcast has been hosted by other networks only 12 times in more than 50 years. The Logies seek to honour achievement in production and performance across Australian television. Industry members determine ‘Most Outstanding’ achievement, while the viewing/ voting public determines the awards given for ‘Most Popular’ programs and performances across a range of categories. As new genres and interests come and go, the Logies keep pace, with categories such as Lifestyle Program, Light Entertainment Program, Miniseries, and Teen Personality. It is tempting to describe the Logies as ‘industry awards’, but their emphasis is clearly on viewer opinion. The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA), formerly Australian Film Institute (AFI), has also recognised television ‘excellence’ since 1986, but on a much smaller scale. The most publicised award is the Gold Logie, given to the most popular personality on television. In some years—mainly in the 1970s—two Golds have been awarded, to a female and a male personality. There are also male and female Silver Logies awarded in both the peer-voted and public-voted categories. Beginning with Hector Crawford in 1984, individuals and a handful of programs have been inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame. The Most Popular awards are privileged by the show’s format and the cross-promotion facilitated by TV Week. The broadcast is billed as an annual entertainment ‘special’, with red carpet guest presenters from overseas. The popular awards most often go to programs and performers from the commercial television

networks, whose publicity departments work hard with campaigns on air and in social media to solicit votes for their talent. The public service broadcasters (the ABC and SBS) are more often recognised by their peers for outstanding achievement, particularly in the genres of News, Current Affairs and Documentary, as well as Drama. The path to nationally networked broadcasting is also highlighted by the Logies’ history. In their third year, the awards expanded beyond Melbourne to recognise national achievement and local (state-based) popularity. Awards were given for Most Popular Male, Most Popular Female and Most Popular Program in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia in 1961. Tasmania and Western Australia joined in 1962 (Western Australia left after 1963 and returned in 1970). As a result of television aggregation, the state-based awards ceased in 1993. The awards have had an uneven relationship with television imports and exports. In the early years, awards were regularly given to imported programs: in 1959, the Most Popular Overseas Variety Show was The Perry Como Show and the Most Popular Overseas Drama was Perry Mason. The 1960 Program of the Year went to 77 Sunset Strip. In 1972–73, the awards for overseas shows distinguished between US and British imports, and after 1976 imported programs were ignored until Friends took Silver for Most Popular Overseas Program in 2003. In contrast, the Logies all but dismiss the success Australian programs have had abroad, although Skippy the Bush Kangaroo was awarded a oneoff Logie for Best Export Production in 1969. While the Logies claim to recognise achievement in Australian television, their fan-based affiliation with the TV Week readership excludes performance in foreign markets and has largely ignored pay television operators like Foxtel. REFs: J. McConchie and K.O. Vered, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes: The Logie Awards, Australian National Identity, TV and Popular Culture’, Continuum, 17(2) (2003); http://www.tvweeklogieawards.com.au/logie-history. KAREN VERED

L ONE HA ND see Bulletin

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M MA CK , MARI E LOUISE HAM ILTON (1870–1935) Louise Mack was a novelist, poet, journalist and war correspondent. At Sydney Girls’ High School, she and her friend (and later novelist) Ethel Turner edited rival school papers. Mack’s Girls High School Gazette cost sixpence and carried advertisements. Determined to be a writer, she submitted poetry to the Sydney Bulletin, where J.F. Archibald encouraged and published her, as did literary editor A.G. Stephens. For three years, from 1898 until she left for London in 1901, Mack contributed the Woman’s Letter to the Bulletin under the pen name ‘Gouli Gouli’. The column had been launched with flair in the early 1890s by ‘Sappho Smith’ (Alexina Wildman). Mack’s sister, Amy (1876–1939), was later Women’s Page editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. In London, Mack charmed Review of Reviews editor W.T. Stead, and was soon a regular at Stead’s soirees and in the columns of his Review. However, her autobiographical novel, An Australian Girl in London (1902), recounts the plight of a starving writer looking for freelance work. Mack began writing lucrative romantic serials for Alfred Harmsworth’s stable of newspapers, and the handsome, ruthless Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe) became her hero. From 1904 to 1910, Mack lived in Florence, writing for and then editing the Italian Gazette. In the first weeks of World War I, she joined other war correspondents in Belgium and reported first hand on the German invasion for Harmsworth’s Daily Mail and Evening News. She returned to Australia after the publication of her memoir, A Woman’s Experiences in the Great War (1915). She toured the country, speaking about the war and raising funds for the Red Cross. After the war, Mack failed to secure permanent work as a journalist and moved around the Pacific, giving travel and educational talks. Returning to Sydney, she contributed to the early Australian Women’s Weekly, including the regular column ‘Louise Mack Advises’. Always a larger-than-life raconteuse, Mack embroidered her life as she did her many works of fiction. REF: N. Phelan, The Romantic Lives of Louise Mack (1991). CRAIG MUNRO

M AC P H ER SO N , SIR KEITH D U N C AN (1920–93) As the 59-year-old chief executive of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), Keith MacPherson was a virtual unknown. He was publicity shy, despite running the nation’s most powerful media business. That changed on 20 November 1979 when Rupert Murdoch walked into his office in Melbourne and announced he was taking over the company. MacPherson vowed to stop Murdoch’s $126 million bid. The amiable and conservative executive who had worked in virtually every section of the company, except the newsroom, was in the fight of his life. The next day MacPherson brought forward a bonus share offer and advised shareholders not to sell. He encouraged two friendly companies—Queensland Press Ltd from within the group and John Fairfax & Sons from outside—to buy HWT stock, which they did, and kept doing well after Murdoch gave up his bid and started offloading the shares he had just purchased. MacPherson told the press that he thought little of Murdoch’s editorial standards and that while Sir Keith Murdoch had once run the company, this did not give his son a birthright to own it. Years later, he admitted that the bravado was an act. He hardly slept for the 48 hours of the whirlwind bid. In 1981 MacPherson had to do it all again when Western Australian mining magnate Robert Holmes à Court launched his own takeover. The company was better prepared this time and easily withstood the challenge. These were the highlights in a career that began in 1938, when MacPherson sorted letters in the HWT mailroom. His father, Duncan, had managed the Sun News-Pictorial before and after it was acquired by the HWT. Keith MacPherson trained as an accountant and worked for one of the company’s radio stations, 3DB. After a steady and unspectacular career trajectory, he became company general manager and in 1970 was sent to run the subsidiary West Australian Newspapers Ltd. In 1975, he returned to Melbourne as CEO, to the annoyance of reporters who wanted a former journalist in the role. After a spill on the board in 1977, MacPherson gained control of the largest media group in Australia. He also served on most of the company’s associated

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magazine publishers of australia boards, including Queensland Press and Davies Brothers Limited, and chaired the Australian Newspapers Council and the Media Council of Australia. He was knighted in 1980 and retired in 1985, only to watch Murdoch’s successful second takeover bid of the HWT two years later. REF: Sun News-Pictorial, 22 November 1979. ANDREW DODD

different qualities of magazines and newspapers in order to demonstrate the positive relationships between print magazines and other media such as television and the internet. The MPA aims to provide consistent methodologies to measure the readership of magazine titles. This is achieved through commissioned research and readership surveys that are freely available on the MPA website.

MACQU A R I E N E TW O R K see commercial radio

REFs: Australian, 22 October 2012; http://magazines. org.au/about. ROGER OSBORNE

MA G AZ I NE PUBL I S HERS OF AUSTRALIA The Association of Magazine Publishers of Australia Inc. (MPA) was established in 1995 to represent Australian publishers of consumer, cover-priced and nationally distributed magazines. Matt Handbury was appointed chairman. The association actively commissioned research, held industry conferences and staged the Magazine of the Year Awards to recognise excellence in editing, design, writing and photography, as well as the Folio Awards for advertising. In 2006, MPA spearheaded ‘A New Case for Magazines’, the retraining of the combined sales force of 400 people employed in the industry in a bid to win an additional $90 million in advertising revenue from rival media that year. However, fractures were emerging. In 2003, for instance, the Federal Publishing Company withdrew from the association, apparently concerned that television broadcasters were too dominant in the organisation. In 2009, Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) withdrew after a falling-out over a proposed new readership survey: ACP wanted to stay with the Roy Morgan survey while the other companies backed a new metric pushed by newspaper publishers. The awards were also dropped to save money. In 2012, the Bauer Media Group (which had acquired ACP) joined forces with NewsLifeMedia (owned by News Limited) and Pacific Magazines (part of Seven West Media) to revive the group. Mary Ann Azer, formerly of Proctor & Gamble, became executive director in 2014. The revitalised MPA has been charged with bringing a more cohesive approach to the industry’s bid to convince advertisers and media buyers that magazines remain a vibrant and powerful medium. It has adopted the tagline ‘Magazines Move Me’, referring to the ability of magazines to influence people’s opinions and ideas about brands. In 2013, editors of member magazines launched Australia’s first social media initiative to highlight the collective power and reach of mass consumer magazines, using the hashtag #MagsMoveMe. There has been concerted effort to fight perceptions among advertisers, analysts and media buyers that the magazine sector is in terminal decline. As a result, the MPA has stressed the

M AG AZIN ES AN D P ER IO D IC ALS The long list of all Australian magazines and periodicals published since the early 19th century includes a wide array of forms that have served readers from various walks of life. These range from mass-market magazines designed to inform and entertain a large audience to more serious reviews and avant-garde magazines that have addressed small artistic, religious and intellectual communities. The history of Australian magazines and periodicals is filled with stories of short-lived ventures that left only a few issues and enduring publications that operated for decades. In a print culture with limited opportunities for book publication, Australian writers have regularly looked to magazines and periodicals as a significant source of income, and as a medium through which they could build a reputation or discuss issues that they believed were central to the cultural health of a young nation. Magazines and periodicals record the ongoing conversations of a wide range of Australians, indicating the ways in which ideas about Australia and the world have circulated in the wider community. The foundations for an Australian magazine culture were laid in the early 19th century. As New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land grew in population, communication and trade networks expanded alongside pastoral and industrial development and the wealth associated with the gold rushes. The Australian Magazine, published in Sydney in 1821–22, was the first of several attempts to establish a periodical in the 1820s, but it failed to survive beyond a few issues. Others, such as the South-Asian Register, the Australian Quarterly Journal of Theology, Literature and Science and the Blossom, also failed to thrive, but they continued to feed an editorial interest in local versions of such publications. The commercial failure of the early magazines has been attributed to a number of barriers, including a lack of readers, a dearth of reliable local contributors and a persistent theological focus. The short-lived Hobart Town Monthly Magazine and its successor, the Van Diemen’s Land Monthly, were miscellanies on the model of magazines from Britain and Europe, but access to printing presses was a problem, and

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magazines and periodicals delayed issues made it difficult to maintain a readership. Readers were also more likely to be interested in content from ‘home’ (Britain), further hindering the establishment of a local magazine culture that did not rely on reprinting material from British and European periodicals. With a series of magazines in the 1830s, including Tegg’s Magazine and Literary News, James Tegg moved from the religious interests of the early magazines to more general content with some success; however, even these failed to produce more than a few issues. With the establishment of daily newspapers in the early 1840s, the weekly and monthly periodical publication became a distinct form. The Australasian emerged from the Argus press and was joined by an increasing number of weeklies in the 1840s and 1850s, including the Colonial Literary Journal and Weekly Miscellany of Useful Information, Heads of the People, the Illustrated Sydney News and the Sydney Punch. Monthly journals such as the New South Wales Magazine and the Month: A Literary and Critical Journal also began to appear, but the limited access to a printing presses and a market that still favoured products from ‘home’ continued to hamper the efforts of publishers. By the 1860s, dozens of weeklies and monthlies had emerged and disappeared, with many leaving no trace of their existence except a notice in a competing publication. The first commercial successes also appeared at this time, beginning a period of enduring titles that lasted well into the 20th century. Satirical magazines such as the Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature, the Atlas and Humbug: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Satire made way for Melbourne Punch (1855–1925), Australia’s first illustrated magazine, and the most successful of several local versions of the English original. In 1865, the Australian Journal (1865–1962) joined the Melbourne Punch to become the most successful periodicals until the Bulletin was founded in 1880. All provided a place for local writers to publish work that could not be published in book form. Australia’s emerging literary culture is therefore more strongly observed in the pages of magazines and periodicals than in the few slim volumes that appeared during this period. The Sydney Bulletin (1880–2008) rose to prominence as a radical nationalist periodical, a publisher of many of Australia’s best-known writers and artists, and a publisher of the prose and poetry of many of its readers. Despite its reputation as the ‘bushman’s bible’, the Bulletin was read predominantly by middle-class urban citizens. In its content and advertising, the Bulletin was pitched at a reader who might be interested in a wide variety of issues, including party politics, business, bohemia, banking and finance, society, literature, the theatre and sport. Operating on the border of newspaper and magazine, the Bulletin competed with a series of

weeklies such as the Sydney Mail, the Leader, the Australasian, the Weekly Times, the Australian Town and Country Journal, the Western Mail and many others. During the first decades of the 20th century, A.G. Stephens also edited several versions of the Bookfellow, joining a group of similar literary, arts or story magazines such as the Lone Hand, Steele Rudd’s Magazine, the Triad and Stead’s Review. These have attracted the most interest from historians but, as Jill Matthews has shown, such a list barely scratches the surface of metropolitan magazine culture in the first three decades of the 20th century. Prompted by new cultural forms such as radio, cinema and photography, many new magazines emerged to address readers in innovative ways. Magazines such as these continued to provide the primary place for Australian writers to publish a diverse range of fiction, poetry and prose, serving as a barometer for the state of Australian literary culture as it developed up to and during the years of World War I. Of several troop magazines and newspapers produced during the war, Aussie (1918–19) was one of the most significant, evolving into a higher quality civilian version (1920–32) that included joke cartoons, humorous articles and verse. The tradition of popular periodicals was continued with Smith’s Weekly (1919–50) and the more risqué Man (1936–74), modelled on the American Esquire magazine. Another significant publisher of popular writing during this period was Walkabout, the journal of the Australian Geographical Society. Magazines for women include some of the most successful periodicals of the 20th century. Louisa Lawson’s Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women (1888–1905) delivered a more radical feminist tone than more conservative gossip magazines such as Table Talk (1885–1939). The Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ) followed a similar formula, but by fulfilling its promise to ‘cover and in full detail every field of work, play or interest for women’, it quickly surpassed the circulation numbers of many competing publications such as the Australian Home Journal, Fashion and Society, Woman’s Budget, New Idea and the Australian Woman’s Mirror. The Home—more than a women’s magazine—embraced modernity more deeply than many other magazines of the 1920s. Within the bounds of ‘good taste’, the pages of the Home frequently investigated modern architecture, fashion, decoration and photography. Magazines often distanced themselves from the Bulletin in an attempt to mark a distinct position in Australian culture. After publishing his work in many Australian magazines and newspapers, Norman Lindsay presided over Vision: A Literary Quarterly in the 1920s, a vehicle for communicating his vitalist ideas about life and art. Influenced by the tone and stance of H.L.  Mencken’s American Mercury,

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magazines and periodicals P.R. Stephensen’s Australian Mercury was deeply protective of an emerging Australian culture menaced by culture imported from overseas— particularly America. In the 1930s, a series of little magazines signalled an emergence of the avant-garde in Australia. A vigorous combination of radical political and aesthetic positions was asserted in magazines such as Strife, Masses, Stream, Proletariat, Pandemonium and Yesterday & Most of Today. Many little magazines were short-lived—some were only published as a single issue—but they signalled the emergence of a modern artistic intelligentsia. Some magazines had high production values, but some—like the Jindyworobak Club’s Venture magazines—were produced on a roneo machine for several years. The late 1930s and 1940s saw the emergence of several serious literary quarterlies that remain prominent in Australia’s print culture today. Sydney’s Southerly (1939– ) and Brisbane’s Meanjin (1940– ) were the first journals to publish full-length essays on Australian authors, making significant contributions to the development of academic literary criticism in Australia. In Adelaide, Angry Penguins (1940–46) shared Meanjin’s attention to the modern artist and intellectual, but pursued this with a vitality that was famously bushwhacked by the Ern Malley hoax. This group of magazines was joined by Overland (1954– ), Quadrant (1956– ) and Westerly (1956– ). Overland and Quadrant have represented the left and right of Australia’s political landscape for decades, while Westerly remains devoted to the development and promotion of the arts in the West—most recently extending its reach to South-East Asia. Several important journals of opinion and public affairs also appeared. Australian Quarterly (1929–97) led the way, followed in the 1950s and 1960s by new kinds of journals such as Nation, the Observer, Outlook, Dissent and Prospect. Unlike any of these magazines, the satirical OZ challenged representative conservatism with discussions of sexuality, images of nudity and libertarian ideas about social and political change. In the 1970s, commercial women’s magazines such as Cleo (1972– ) and Cosmopolitan (1973– ) continued to test the limits of Australia’s conservatism with male centrefolds and frank discussions of sex. New types of Australian literary magazines began to appear in the 1960s. Australian Literary Studies (1963– ) remains the pre-eminent academic journal in the field, playing a foundational role in the study of Australian literature in the academy. Outside the academy, attempts were made to connect Australian literature and art with international movements in the pages of Australian Letters, and the Australian Book Review (1961–73, 1978– ) was established to provide a forum for the review of new Australian books. Tabloid Story (1972–80) published short stories.

A number of poetry magazines also appeared during this period. The Poetry Society of Australia published Prism for several years before it was transformed into Poetry Magazine in 1961. Disputes within the society and subsequent groups of editors led to the publication of a separate magazine, Poetry Australia, and eventually the transformation of Poetry Magazine into New Poetry, which became one of the most important spaces for the publication and discussion of the ‘New Australian Poetry’ in the 1970s. The 1970s also saw the re-emergence of avant-garde poetry magazines with unconventional formats and titles, such as Ear in a Wheatfield, Magic Sam, Etymspheres: The Journal from the Paper Castle and Your Friendly Fascist. New literary magazines continued to appear in the 1980s and 1990s, the most important including Scripsi, Australian Short Stories and Heat. The Monthly, an independent magazine of politics, society and the arts, was launched in 2005. A full account of Australian magazines is beyond the scope of this brief sketch. Since the 1970s, large-scale magazine production has seen publishers such as Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) and Pacific Magazines produce large stables of magazines that cater to a wide variety of uses and interests. With the acquisition of ACP by Germany’s Bauer Media Group in 2012, the major commercial players in Australia contracted to three, including NewsLifeMedia (owned by News Limited) and Pacific Magazines (part of Seven West Media). Magazines continue to play a significant role in the production and dissemination of culture, and they remain one of the most significant resources for any study of Australian culture since the early 19th century. It remains to be seen how digital technology will change the way magazines are produced and delivered to readers. John Tranter’s Jacket Magazine (1997– ) was one of the first online literary magazines. Now, many small magazines and journals have shifted to online versions to cut production costs and increase accessibility. Most major commercial magazines have an online version, and many are now delivered to readers through apps made specifically for tablet computers. A negative effect of online delivery might be seen in the significant dip in magazine sales in recent years. Future developments in online delivery will continue to challenge the traditional methods of magazine production, and publishers will inevitably adapt to new media or risk financial ruin—much like they have done since the first magazine was published in 1821. REFs: D. Carter and R. Osborne, ‘Periodicals’, in C. Munro and R. Sheahan-Brigh (eds), Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia 1946–2005 (2006); F.S. Greenop, History of Magazine Publishing in Australia (1947); J. Tregenza, Australian Little Magazines 1923–1954 (1964); http://www.austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets/BookHistory/AustMag. ROGER OSBORNE

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man

M A G A Z I N E S F O R C H IL D R E N see children and the

media

M A G A Z I N E S F O R M E N see men’s magazines M A G A Z I N E S F O R W O M E N see women’s magazines M A G A Z I N E S , A R T see art magazines and

reviewing

M A G A Z I N E S , FA SH IO N see fashion magazines M A G A Z I N E S , M U S IC see music magazines M A G A Z I N E S , O N L IN E see online news and

magazines

M A G A Z I N E S , O U T D O O R see outdoor magazines M A G A Z I N E S , R A D IO see radio magazines M A G A Z I N E S , TE L E V IS IO N see television magazines

MA I T L AND ME RCURY Richard Jones (1816–92), a Sydney compositor, and Thomas William Tucker (1815–95), a Sydney reporter, launched the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser on 7 January 1843. The timing was perfect: it was shortly before a general election that provided the advertising and printing revenue that helped the weekly Mercury survive its first year, whereas its predecessor, the Hunter River Gazette (1841–42), had closed after only six months. In 1848, the Mercury, a bi-weekly since 1846, was described by Governor Sir Charles FitzRoy as one of the colony’s leading newspapers. Tucker, who left the partnership in March 1846, returned as a reporter in 1851. In 1854, Jones left Maitland because of illness, selling the Mercury to three employees—Tucker, Richard Cracknell and Alexander Falls—for £6000, three times its prevailing annual profit. They issued the paper tri-weekly from 1856. It had become the pre-eminent paper outside Sydney, reflecting Maitland’s role as the major commercial centre in northern New South Wales. In 1860, the three proprietors valued the business at nearly £13,000, comprising £3735 for copyright (the average annual profit over the previous three years), £5662 for good book debts and £3394 for plant and stock. Falls became sole proprietor in 1862, although Tucker rejoined as a partner from 1864 to 1868. Falls died in 1870 and his widow Margaret, who assumed ownership, died in 1873. Tucker and two other Mercury employees, John Thompson and Christopher Eipper, bought the newspaper—described in advertisements as the ‘largest and most valuable of the New South Wales provincial newspapers’—at auction in 1874 for £10,150. Tucker was the principal until his death in 1895. The paper became a daily in January 1894, 27 years after the faster-growing Newcastle had spawned its first daily. In October 1924, the proprietorship was incorporated through the Maitland Mercury

Newspaper and Printing Co Ltd. In 1960, Sir Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings acquired a majority interest in the Mercury. It became the flagship of the Packer family’s expanding regional newspaper chain, named Regional Publishers Pty Ltd in 1979. A central figure from 1967 to 1997 was Daniel William Austin, editor of the Mercury between 1967 and 1974. He became general manager in 1974 and then was the chief executive of Regional Publishers. When Rural Press Limited acquired the group in 1987, Austin became the general manager and editor-in-chief of Rural Press’s regional titles throughout Australia. Fairfax Media now owns Rural Press. The Mercury, which changed from afternoon to morning publication in 1989, has had a series of long-serving, sometimes distinguished editors: Richard Jones (1843–54), Thomas Thompson Ward (1862–74), Christopher Eipper (1874–1905), Michael Francis (Frank) Dixon (1930–33), Thomas Manning Woodlands (1937–49) and the first female editor, Lynette Farrelly (1981–89). Dixon became the first news editor of the ABC in 1936 and developed its independent news service. By 2010, the Mercury’s circulation had fallen to 4230, which was 3600 fewer than in 1980, as Newcastle’s urban sprawl swallowed Maitland. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000); Maitland Mercury, 18 August 1983. ROD KIRKPATRICK

M AN Man magazine was the first and most important monthly publication produced by Kenneth Murray, founder of the K.G. Murray publishing empire. The magazine was launched in December 1936, following the success of American men’s publication Esquire, which had appeared three years earlier. Some of the attributes that led to predictions of the magazine’s early failure proved to be its greatest assets. These included high (and costly) production standards and an emphasis on art and cartoons. At the time of its appearance, Man was considered to be daring in even acknowledging, much less joking about, sexuality to a mainstream audience. The first print-run is estimated to have been 10,000 copies, and the issue quickly sold out. In the 1946 anniversary publication ‘Man is Ten’, a retrospective article claimed the magazine was designed to be ‘one of the inexpensive luxuries in the lives of men’. Readers liked the plush, Art Deco style, the diverse articles, the risqué cartoons (presented as full-page illustrations) and the titillating work of such renowned photographers as Max Dupain and Laurence Le Guay. However, newsprint rationing in the 1940s made Man cheaper and less pretentious, and more in tune with a mass audience. By the

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marr, david ewan (1947– ) start of World War II, circulation was about 60,000; by 1946 it was close to 100,000. In the 1930s, Man had aspirations to be serious, alongside its cartoon flippancy. There was a strong interest in foreign affairs, through both commentary and the ‘Cameraman’ section. In its early issues, it editorialised for world peace, then—as tensions increased in the lead-up to war—advocated for armed readiness. In a climate where books, magazines and newspapers were tightly controlled, and where access to paper, ink and other consumables was uncertain, this may partly have been pragmatism on Murray’s part. Murray leveraged Man’s success into a solid revenue stream, able to support a whole stable of publications, including Man Junior, Cavalcade, the Insider and Digest of Digests. After the war, numerous titles were added to the operation. Murray produced a version of Man in the United Kingdom, titled Man: The Empire Magazine for Men. Publication later continued in both the United States and the United Kingdom, with the two flagship magazines published as Man Junior and Man Senior. By the time Man ceased publication in 1974, its advertising revenue stream had dissipated due to the appearance of specialist titles, and it had lost its distinctiveness as a result of the decline of censorship and had been eclipsed by more brazen titles. REFs: F.S. Greenop, History of Magazine Publishing in Australia (1947); R. White, ‘The importance of being Man’, in P. Spearritt and D. Walker (eds), Australian Popular Culture (1979). GREG RAY

MANNI N G FA M I LY see Provincial Newspapers

(Qld) Ltd

MARK E T R E S E A R C H see audience research

MA R R , DAV I D EWAN (1947– ) David Marr is one of Australia’s most accomplished and eloquent journalists. In a career spanning four decades, he has won Walkley Awards for both his investigative journalism and for his writing, was appointed editor of a national weekly newspaper at the age of 33, is equally at home in print, broadcast and online media, and is among a minority of journalists who have become recognised as public intellectuals. As a political progressive, Marr’s continuing preoccupation has been with the power of institutions—whether in politics, policing, law, religion or intelligence—to curtail freedom or harm individuals. Marr graduated from the University of Sydney with degrees in arts and law, but has never practised as a lawyer. Instead, in 1972 he began work at the Bulletin before being appointed arts editor of John Fairfax & Sons’ weekly

newspaper, the National Times, in 1976 and editor in 1980. He swiftly achieved notoriety for publishing David Hickie’s scathing indictment of Sir Robert Askin on the day of the former NSW premier’s funeral. Marr had two stints at ABC Television’s Four Corners, in the mid-1980s and in the early 1990s, where he won two Walkley Awards: for an investigation into the deaths of Aborigines in custody and for a portrait of conductor Stuart Challender, who was dying of AIDS. In 1994, Marr became the first presenter of ABC Radio National’s Arts Today program; in 1996, he joined the Sydney Morning Herald as a senior writer, remaining there on and off until 2012. Between 2002 and 2004, Marr presented ABC Television’s Media Watch, where he shared a Walkley Award for exposing David Flint’s role in the continuing ‘cash for comment’ scandal. He won a fourth Walkley Award for his 2010 Quarterly Essay, ‘Power Trip’, about Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Since leaving Fairfax Media, Marr has written for the Saturday Paper, the online publication the Guardian Australia, appeared regularly as a guest on ABC Television’s Insiders and written a fourth Quarterly Essay. In addition to several works of book-length narrative journalism, most notably Dark Victory (2003), co-authored with Marian Wilkinson, Marr has written two biographies, one of former Australian Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick, the other of Nobel laureate Patrick White, which won five literary awards. REF: S. Eisenhuth and W. McDonald, The Writer’s Reader (2007). MATTHEW RICKETSON

M AR TIN , R AY (1944– ) A television journalist who became so popular he could entitle his 2009 autobiography simply Ray, Martin has had a long and successful career, working for both the national broadcaster and commercial television. He obtained a BA, majoring in history, from the University of Sydney, and in 1965 gained a cadetship with the ABC in Sydney. Just four years later, he was appointed New York correspondent, a position he held for a decade. Martin was enticed back to Australia to be one of three journalists/presenters for the launch of the Australian edition of the pioneering American television current affairs program 60 Minutes. The Nine Network’s program became highly successful; on it, Martin broke a story about systematic abuse of patients at Sydney’s Chelmsford psychiatric hospital, which led to a Royal Commission. After gaining national credibility on 60 Minutes, Martin spent eight years hosting the daily variety show Midday, where his journalistic credentials, coupled with his bloke-next-door good looks and personal warmth (he is known

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may, sir kenneth spencer (1914–2000) to television crews as ‘Captain Have-a-Chat’ because of his willingness to talk to anyone, anywhere), made him a household name and led to an extraordinary five Gold Logies for the most popular personality on Australian television. Martin presented (and sometimes reported for) A Current Affair between 1994–98 and 2003–05, moderated federal election debates (1996, 1998 and 2001), hosted Carols by Candlelight (1990–2007) and was frequently at hand for special events. Until his departure from Nine in 2008, Martin was one of the network’s stable of stars that enabled it to be the nation’s leading commercial television network. Martin’s career has straddled—not always comfortably—credibility and fame. His undoubted journalistic skills contrast starkly with some gleaming television presenters who would be lost without an autocue but his love of being famous has prevailed: as he told an interviewer, ‘I’m driven by what I want to do. I’m an absolute hedonist.’ He was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2001 and was appointed OAM in 2010 for his services to society, especially Indigenous communities, as well as for his journalism. Martin presented the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in 2008. In addition to Ray, he is the author of Ray Martin’s Favourites: The Stories Behind the Legends (2011). REF: M. Ricketson, ‘The Dog Days of Ray’, Monthly, December 2005–January 2006. MATTHEW RICKETSON

MA S TERS, CHRISTOPHER WAYNE (1948– ) Chris Masters is a pioneering investigative journalist, who was the longest serving reporter on Australia’s longest running current affairs television program, Four Corners. A former colleague, Mike Carlton, described him as the antithesis of a television star: ‘He looks a bit like an accountant who has lost his way in the corridors.’ Masters joined the ABC in 1966, gaining what he later recalled as a solid grounding in reporting and storytelling in various rural postings. In 1983, Masters joined Four Corners; his first program, about corruption in Rugby League and in the NSW judiciary (produced by Peter Manning), prompted a Royal Commission and eventually saw chief stipendiary magistrate Murray Farquhar imprisoned. A report by Masters in 1985 on the French government’s involvement in the sinking of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior (produced by Bruce Belsham) won the Gold Walkley. Two years later, Masters’ ‘The Moonlight State’ report (produced by Shaun Hoyt) prompted a Royal Commission that found endemic corruption in Queensland and recommended the setting up of an anti-corruption body and, in 1992, a Queensland Freedom of Information Act. The chief commissioner of police, Terry Lewis, was convicted of corruption and sent

to prison. Masters was not the first to expose corruption in Queensland, but his beautifully crafted program had an impact that underscored the potential power of television as a medium for investigative journalism. The report tied up Masters in legal action that lasted 12 years and cost the ABC about $1 million to successfully defend. Masters joined Network Ten’s short-lived Page One in 1988, returning to Four Corners 18 months later. He was to win further Walkley Awards, as well as a Logie Award in 1995 for his story on the Rwanda refugee crisis. He presented the Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism in 1996. Masters was awarded a Public Service Medal in 1999 and a Centenary Medal in 2001 for his services to journalism. He received honorary doctorates from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 2005 and the University of Queensland in 2009. Retiring from Four Corners in 2008, he made a documentary on Afghanistan for Ten (2011) and The Years that Made Us for the ABC (2013). The author of two books reflecting on his journalism, Inside Story (1992) and Not for Publication (2002), Masters also wrote Jonestown, an investigative biography of Sydney talkback radio host Alan Jones that was controversial because ABC Books rejected it, reportedly under pressure from the ABC board. Masters’ mother, Olga (1919–86), became a successful journalist and novelist after raising seven children, most of whom have had careers in the media: Roy, a former Rugby League coach, is a sports columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald; Sue is a leading television and film producer; Deb is an ABC producer; Quentin is a film director; and Ian is a journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker based in the United States. REF: http://chrismasters.com.au. MATTHEW RICKETSON

M AY, SIR KEN N ETH SP EN C ER (1914–2000) Ken May was the reporter Rupert Murdoch relied on to help him build his company and to run his Australian operation. He ran News Limited for 11 years and had a 70-year association with the company. May joined the Adelaide News as a 15-yearold copy boy. Proficiency in shorthand, which he learnt in the evenings at the South Australian School of Mines, led to him being awarded a cadetship. He was later moved to Broken Hill, where he worked as chief reporter and sports editor at the Barrier Miner until the beginning of World War II, before enlisting and serving in the Middle East and later as an army public relations officer in New Guinea. After the war, he returned to Adelaide as chief political reporter on the News. In 1959, Murdoch asked May to be his personal assistant and made him assistant manager.

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mcdonald, keith henry (1926–2012) May was appointed general manager of the News in 1964 and five years later, when Murdoch purchased the London News of the World, he became chief executive in Australia, a job he held until 1980. He was chairman at Nationwide News and Mirror Newspapers, where the reporters called him ‘Chairman May’, a reference to the Chinese supreme leader, Chairman Mao. Murdoch claimed he demonstrated ‘fearless leadership’ and that his style influenced a generation of executives. He was certainly the most loyal of Murdoch’s company men. May never lost an interest in political journalism, and noted at the end of his career that he had covered, or supervised the coverage of, every federal election since 1946. He was running the Australian business when the Murdoch press embraced, and then hounded, Whitlam Labor in its editorial pages in the 1970s. He was regularly seen in the newsroom of News Limited’s headquarters in Sydney, but denied that he intervened in editorial matters. He served on the board of Murdoch’s global company News Corporation and was at Murdoch’s side when he made his first takeover bid for the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) in 1979. He retired to Adelaide the following year and accepted a seat on the board of the mining conglomerate Santos. After Murdoch succeeded in his second bid for the HWT in 1987, May was appointed chairman of the Adelaide Advertiser, which had been acquired with the HWT assets, and which had been the News’s arch-rival. May was knighted in 1980. REFs: Australian, 15 November 1980 and 24 May 2000. ANDREW DODD

MAYER , H E N RY see Media International Australia

MC D ONAL D, KEI TH HENRY (1926–2012) Keith McDonald was an astute and ethical newspaper manager and finance journalist who served two generations of the Murdoch family dynasty, despite working for the ‘opposition’ for 33 years. He grew up at Biggenden in southern Queensland, graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce with first class honours from the University of Queensland in 1949. McDonald worked as a finance journalist, financial adviser and finance editor before moving into management at the Courier-Mail in 1951. In September 1952, Sir Keith Murdoch, the proprietor of the Courier-Mail and executive chairman of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), sent him to Mildura to try to acquire the local Sunraysia Daily. McDonald formulated an acquisition proposal, but Sir Keith died in October 1952 before it could be submitted. The HWT acquired the Courier-Mail from the Murdoch estate in November 1953.

McDonald became the general manager of Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd (the publisher of two dailies and a Sunday paper) from 1968–76, managing director from 1976–86 and chief executive from 1986–91. As chairman of Queensland Press Ltd, 46 per cent owned by the HWT, he was part of the bidding war for HWT that ensued after Rupert Murdoch’s audacious takeover bid in December 1986. Queensland Press’s 24 per cent interest in HWT played a ‘key role’ in determining the eventual victor. From February 1987, McDonald was working for a Murdoch again, and was made a director of News Corporation (1987–98). McDonald was appointed OBE in 1989, and awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Queensland in 1998. In March 2012, News Limited’s Queensland headquarters was named Keith McDonald House. When McDonald died, Murdoch initiated an award for business journalism in his honour. REFs: Courier-Mail, 3 December 2012; K.H. McDonald, interviews with R. Kirkpatrick (1992 and 2005). ROD KIRKPATRICK

M C G ILVR AY, ALAN D AVID (1909–96) Alan McGilvray began his career as a cricket broadcaster in November 1935, while in the middle of a career as a player for New South Wales, when he was asked by ABC general manager (Sir) Charles Moses to deliver close-of-play summaries of Sheffield Shield games in which he was involved. He became Australia’s most enduring radio commentator of cricket, with a career spanning half a century. McGilvray took part in the ABC’s synthetic Test broadcasts in 1938, where commentators in a Sydney studio provided a commentary on Test matches in England by recomposing ballby-ball descriptions from telegrams. He first visited England 10 years later, broadcasting as the ABC’s representative on the BBC commentary team. His ‘straight’ style contrasted with the more picturesque and descriptive approaches of the locals, but he was accurate, concise, astute and sometimes trenchant. McGilvray spent much of the 1950s in Sydney commercial radio, with 2UW and 2UE, and did not dedicate himself to broadcasting full-time until he sold his family’s shoe business in 1961. Thereafter, he was the ABC’s ‘voice of summer’, even in winter, when he generally accompanied Australian teams on tour; he also edited a hardy and popular annual, the ABC Cricket Book. Late in his career, McGilvray achieved a kind of celebrity. The ABC promoted its cricket coverage with a specially written song, ‘The Game is Not the Same Without McGilvray’. When he called his 100th Test match between Australia and England in February 1980, the MCG scoreboard was adjusted to read ‘McGilvray 100’. McGilvray was appointed both MBE and AM. After a final visit to England in 1985, he wrote

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media and violence three successful volumes of memoirs with Norman Tasker, and a book of tributes, McGilvray: The Voice of Cricket (1996), was published after his death. GIDEON HAIGH

MCPHE RS ON FAM ILY For all except nine years since 1888, the McPherson family has been in day-to-day control of the Shepparton News. The paper, which began in February 1877, has been published daily since 1972. Colin McPherson (1855–1901) had been a Goulburn Valley farmer for six years when his poor health forced him to seek alternative employment. He became one of three partners who launched a farmers’ newspaper in Shepparton in November 1887. He relinquished that interest in 1888—probably when he bought the weekly Shepparton News (as it was then known) on 21 June. In 1894, a reader complimented McPherson on his ‘excellently edited journal’. In the late 1890s, McPherson’s health deteriorated and he had no children old enough to take over management, so he leased the business to three of his printers for nine years from November 1900. He died 11 months later. From November 1909, Colin’s widow, Jean, with the support of son Malcolm (1890–1915) as printer and publisher, formed a partnership with Edward John Morgan, one of the three former lessees. The other two launched the Goulburn Valley Stock & Property Journal, which the McPhersons bought in 1919. Morgan left the partnership in 1913. Another of Jean’s sons, Stanley Roy (1893–1960), known as Roy, became a partner in 1914. Malcolm McPherson enlisted in the AIF in 1915 and died in the Gallipoli campaign. Another brother, Francis Douglas (1899–1967), joined the News about 1918, became a partner in 1925 and was a machine compositor most of his life. Roy managed the family firm astutely from 1915 to 1960. In 1933, the McPherson family refused to sell the News to the emerging Mildura-based Elliott newspaper group. Robert Charles Dunlop Elliott bought a controlling interest in the Advertiser and made it a daily from May 1934. The McPhersons pulled out all stops and the Advertiser dropped back from daily to tri-weekly in November 1936. The McPhersons bought the Advertiser in 1953, closed it, and made the News a tri-weekly. In 1958, the family firm was incorporated as Shepparton Newspapers Pty Ltd. Roy’s only son, Donald Roy McPherson (1925–2005), who had joined the firm in 1946 and trained in all aspects of newspapers, became the managing director (1960–85) and the chairman (1960– 2005). Progressively, he expanded the company, buying the Seymour Telegraph (1961), Nathalia Herald (1962), Kyabram Free Press and Tatura Guardian (1966), Riverine Herald (Echuca) and

Rochester Irrigator (1969), Elmore Standard (1970), Midland Times (1985), Benalla City Ensign (1986) and the Pastoral Times (Deniliquin, NSW), the Southern Riverina News (Finley, NSW) and the Cobram Courier (all 1988). Don’s three sons now run the McPherson Media Group: Graeme Ross (1951– ) as executive chairman and editor-in-chief, Christopher Roy (1954– ) as managing director, and Robert Paul (1949– ) as deputy chairman. Three generations of McPhersons—Roy, Don and Chris—have served as president of the Victorian Country Press Association, and two—Don and Chris—as president of the (variously named) Australian Provincial Press Association. Ross is the only Australian to have presided over the International Newspaper Marketing Association. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, The Bold Type (2010). ROD KIRKPATRICK

M ED IA AN D VIO LEN C E The relationship between the media and violence has been a perennial topic of community concern, which in the Australian context has prompted a range of official inquiries, scholarly studies and policy implications—many of which have coincided with technological advances in the media. Recurrent concerns have been about the pervasiveness of violence in the media—especially in the news and as entertainment—and the possibility of a causal relationship between media violence and violence in society. Studies of media and violence date back to the mid-1950s, with an early emphasis on television and radio, when the content of popular crime and police radio dramas like Night Beat and D24 and the introduction of television news enlivened concerns about media effects. On 4 January 1956, the Melbourne Age reported that the Australian Broadcasting Control Board had received a number of complaints. By 1973, reports from the United States and the United Kingdom that exposure to violence on television ‘made children callous and unfeeling towards other people’ had prompted calls in Australia for a national inquiry into the media’s role in causing acts of violence. In 2010, the Sydney Daily Telegraph questioned why ‘the level of brutal, bloody content on our TV screens’ had escaped the same scrutiny as sex and nudity. In Australia and internationally, the debate about media and violence has often been renewed in the aftermath of atrocities, such as school and other mass shootings. Community anxiety swelled about the influence of ‘video nasties’ following the Hoddle and Queen Street massacres in Melbourne in the late 1980s. Writer Melanie Brown explains that there remains a concern that the reporting of violent and criminal events, and suicides, will result in imitation or ‘copycat’ acts. This, together with evidence of the Australian media’s perpetuation of misconceptions about mental illness and

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media council of australia violence, led to the introduction of resources in the 1990s—such as the Mindframe National Media Initiative—to encourage responsible, accurate and sensitive reporting and portrayals of suicide and mental illness. In Australia, the strength of public concern about copycat violence prompted the establishment of a National Committee on Violence and the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s 1990 Inquiry into Violence on Television. Sixty per cent of the adults surveyed as part of the inquiry believed that too much violence was shown on television, with particular concerns about news and current affairs. These concerns were revitalised following the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. In response to emerging forms of popular media and changing consumer trends, more contemporary studies of the relationship between media and violence have focused on violent video games, rap music videos and the internet—with a continued emphasis on the potential influence on children and youth. In Australia, the debate about the relationship between media and violence has also led to public discussions about media regulation, censorship and government policy. In 2007, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found that inflammatory media coverage, spearheaded by radio broadcaster Alan Jones, had been partly responsible for igniting the racial tensions that had underscored the Cronulla riots two years earlier. According to the ACMA, Jones’ program had breached the Commercial Radio Code of Practice by broadcasting material in the days before the riots that was ‘likely to encourage violence or brutality’ and ‘vilify people of Lebanese background and people of Middle-Eastern background on the basis of ethnicity or nationality’. Although social and mobile media technologies had carried the ‘call to arms’ for the mob violence, the repetition of the messages by more traditional media outlets, such as Jones’ radio program, had ensured the content reached an even wider audience. In 2006, controversy also accompanied the ABC’s Lateline, after its report (nominated for a Walkley Award) about ‘paedophile rings’ operating in remote Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory was adopted and broadened by Australia’s major metropolitan media to include sensationalist reporting of widespread Indigenous ‘gang violence’ and lawlessness. The lengthy 10-year campaign to introduce an R18+ classification for violent video games (which passed through the Senate in mid-2012) was another notable moment in Australian media history. Prior to its introduction, video games that did not fit within the MA15+ category or below were ‘Refused Classification’, falling into the same regulatory net as child pornography and extreme violent pornography—a principle that also extended to certain political texts and

media that could be considered ‘instructive in the matter of crime’. The change in classification resulted in popular video games being released unedited to the Australian market under the R18+ classification in early 2013. In spite of the emphasis on potentially negative consequences of the relationship between media and violence, in 21st century Australia, traditional and emerging forms of media, such as social media, have also played a fundamental role in energising public debate and education about the complexities of violence in relation to important social issues, such as alcohol-related street violence—for example, the deaths of Thomas Kelly in 2012 and Daniel Christie in 2014, and the associated ‘coward punch’ debate—and racial violence—such as media commentary on the violence against Indians in Australia in 2009–10. In 2012, traditional and social media— including Facebook and Twitter—played a significant role in bringing the disappearance, rape and murder of Jill Meagher to prominence, prompting public marches and critical reflections on broader community concerns towards violence against women. The following year, the News Limited tabloids the Herald Sun and Daily Telegraph launched their respective ‘Take A Stand’ and ‘Man Up’ campaigns, which urged their readers to confront family and domestic violence in their communities. The same year, Sunday Age journalist Nicole Brady won the Gold EVA at the Eliminating Violence Against Women Media Awards for her ‘Lifting the Lid’ series on family violence. REFs: M. Brown, The Portrayal of Violence in the Media (1996); W. Jarred, Violence in the Mass Media (2001); http://www.mindframe-media.info. KATRINA CLIFFORD

M ED IA C O U N C IL O F AU STR ALIA The Media Council of Australia (MCA) was an association of commercial publishers’ and broadcasters’ organisations formed in 1968 as a peak advocacy body for the media industry, and specifically to be responsible for administering a range of self-regulatory codes and the accreditation of advertising agencies. This arrangement effectively put the media in charge of both advertising content and the advertising industry itself. The MCA would submit voluntary regulatory codes to the Trade Practices Commission (TPC) for approval, and be accountable for the effective conduct of those codes. The TPC was a federal government statutory authority, replaced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), in 1995. The codes included regulations for the advertising of certain kinds of products, notably therapeutic goods, cigarettes and alcohol. Advertising material for such goods had to be approved by the relevant member bodies of the MCA—such as, in the case of television commercials, the Federation of

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media criticism Australian Commercial Television Stations (now Free TV Australia). The MCA also administered an Advertising Code of Ethics, intended to be binding on all forms of media. In 1974, the Advertising Standards Council (ASC) was set up under the auspices of the MCA, in conjunction with the advertiser and advertising agency associations, the Australian Association of National Advertisers and the Advertising Federation of Australia respectively. The purpose of the ASC was to interpret and adjudicate on breaches of the various self-regulatory codes, particularly in response to complaints from the public. However, when the ASC’s decisions were published, the small number of complaints upheld encouraged the perception that they often found in the advertiser’s favour. As well as administering codes governing advertising content, the MCA was in control of the accreditation of advertising agencies through its component organisation, the Australian Accreditations Bureau. In an era in which advertising agencies were remunerated entirely by the commissions paid by the media for the sale of advertising space and time to their clients, the media had an interest in making sure that the agencies were solvent enough to be able to trade on credit. The MCA could thus ensure that only agencies in good financial standing would be accredited—that is, eligible to be paid commissions—so accreditation became like a licence to practise advertising. However, advertisers did not see their interests being served by these arrangements. In 1995, the system was challenged by the TPC, which found it anti-competitive, and determined that it should be abolished. The MCA’s arguments that the system provided financial stability to the industry, and a basis for enforcing the regulatory codes, did not prevail. In the wake of the TPC’s ruling, the MCA no longer had a rationale, and ceased to operate. The administration of the industry codes and handling of complaints from the public was put under a new self-regulatory body, the Advertising Standards Board, established in 1998 and funded by a levy on advertising, and replacing the former ASC. REFs: Australian, 26 March 1998; K. Fowles and N. Mills, Understanding Advertising (1981). JOHN SINCLAIR

ME DI A CRI TI CISM Media criticism is a broad field that reflects developments in the more scholarly fields of media, journalism and film studies, as well as the journalistic field of reporting on the media. It began to expand in Australia from the 1960s when literary magazines that previously had restricted their cultural criticism to books, theatre and poetry began to publish some articles about media policy, particularly in relation to the development of television. The growth of publications that were editorially positioned as

independent of, or alternative to, mainstream media implied critique and provided an outlet for media criticism. Alternative and radical student newspapers explicitly objected to failure of the media to fairly cover by increasingly active social and political movements for change. Media owners were portrayed as linked to narrow economic interests. Internationally, there was a growing awareness of the power of the media and of its shortcomings. Nation (est. 1958) featured regular columns— mainly by Mungo MacCallum, but also by Bob Ellis—about the development of television in Australia during the 1960s; Professor K.S. Inglis wrote about the press. After the Sydney-based Nation merged with the Melbourne-based Review to form Nation Review in 1972, detailed criticism of the press and broadcasting media became a highlight of the new publication, with publisher Richard Walsh and editor George Munster both publishing columns. ‘Ferret Watch’ was a regular anonymous column. A few days before the election of the Whitlam Labor government, Munster wrote that ‘government is the proper concern of journalism for the 36 months of its office’. He warned journalists against flattery of any government or merely restricting themselves to ‘responsible criticism’. As editor of Nation Review and a pioneer of business investigative journalism, Munster focused on Rupert Murdoch, as Murdoch became an increasingly significant figure on the Australian media landscape; Munster’s A Paper Prince (1985) was published posthumously. More conservative commentary also began to appear—often in response to more radical critiques. Quadrant (1962– ) featured media criticism, including contributions from MacCallum and Professor Henry Mayer, the founder of Media International Australia. In May 1972, the New Journalist, which called itself the ‘Media Critic’, was launched in Sydney by a group of radical and dissident journalists. A major initiative in the field of media criticism, it was founded with the basic aim of ‘acting as a critic of the major institutions of the Australian mass media’ which included four large owners, the ABC, the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA), the Sydney Journalists’ Club, the ‘amorphous public relations machine’ and ‘the government when it acts on its own rather in the public interest’. Critics, correspondents and collaborators were invited to give the ‘Australian mass media a thorough going over’. Early issues reflected the editors’ policy that a democratic media would only exist when those involved in its production were fairly represented in its control. Issues covered in early years included the concentration of media ownership and the differences between the purposes of journalism and the growing public relations industry. There were also profiles evaluating the performance of newspaper editors, and critiques of the leadership of the AJA, particular reporting genres

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media criticism (such as court reporting) and the restrictive nature of defamation laws and other causes of ‘self-censorship’. Later issues reflected concerns about the impact of computers on journalism, which included an increasing use of syndication. The New Journalist regularly featured articles by female journalists who were part of the Media Women’s Action Group, which had been formed in 1971 to combat sexism in the media. The New Journalist closely tracked the increasing influence of Rupert Murdoch, particularly during the politically tumultuous year of 1975, and was critical of editorial policies that took John Fairfax & Sons’ National Times in a less progressive direction. The New Journalist ceased publication in the summer of 1991–92. Journalism staff and students at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) were involved in the production of the magazine for the last few years, producing an award-winning issue on freedom of speech in 1989. This was an early example of the impetus for media criticism provided through journalism education in which students produce media about media in university-based publications or in partnership with external media. Meanwhile, Quadrant continued to develop as a vehicle for conservative media commentary. In the first half of the 1980s, Anthony McAdam wrote ‘The Watchman’, a column about journalism and the media that regularly critiqued the National Times. In 1989, then opposition leader John Howard wrote a piece for the Independent Monthly on the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery’s ‘part’ in the Coalition’s ‘downfall’. David Bowman, a former editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald, emerged as a significant media critic in the 1980s in response to the building public debate about the concentration of media ownership. He produced a ‘Fourth Estate’ column for the independent magazine Australian Society (1982–92, briefly renamed Modern Times) and also wrote for the Adelaide Review. He drew on his insider experience to cover the Age’s takeover by John Fairfax & Sons and internal pressures on the editorial stance of the National Times, and raised concerns about the increasing foreign ownership of the Australian media. In 1988, Gerard Henderson began publishing a bi-monthly journal, Media Watch, to look ‘critically at the role of journalists, editors, presenters and producers’. It was published by the conservative think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs (NSW), which became The Sydney Institute in 1989. Since 1997, Media Watch has been published as part of the Sydney Institute Quarterly. It was founded on the principle that ‘the proposition that the media should be subject to the same severity of scrutiny as that to which it subjects others’. It scrutinised specific journalism ‘rounds’ such as industrial relations and featured a ‘review of the reviewers’ by Stephen Matchett. Since 2009, Henderson has published a weekly online blog, Media Watch

Dog. These and other conservative publications have been persistently critical of perceived ‘leftwing bias’ in the media, particularly at the ABC and Fairfax Media. Tim Bowden hosted Backchat (1986–94) on ABC Television, reading out viewers’ letters on programs and reporting on the makers’ responses. Media Watch has been broadcast on the ABC since 1989. Specialist publications also emerged, including Communications Update (1985–2005), the newsletter of media analysis published by the Communications Law Centre on behalf of the Media and Communications Council (representing consumer and community organisations, and media and communications unions), which was edited by Gil Appleton. The Update included an annual compilation of media ownership data and provided a critical perspective on media policy and industry issues, including the development of pay television. Since 1989, the Australian Press Council has produced a newsletter carrying critical features on issues such as press regulation. In 1990, the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS published its first major report, Accuracy in Australian Newspapers, which was followed by reports on the influence of public relations, shortcomings in business journalism, and media coverage of cultural diversity. In the late 1980s, David Bowman (The Captive Press, 1988) and Paul Chadwick (Media Mates, 1989) both published significant non-fiction books examining issues of media control and accountability and charting significant debates and changes in the media. There was an explosion of Australian media criticism in the 1990s as the media took off as a reporting ‘round’ in its own right, and media and journalism research expanded in universities. Journalists also stimulated interest with public campaigns about potential threats to editorial independence as a result of changes in ownership. Since 1993, ABC Radio National (RN) has broadcast a weekly program, The Media Report. For some years, RN also produced annual series of panel discussions about journalism issues with the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS. From 1912 to 1992, the AJA and its successor, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA), had itself produced the Journalist. In 1997, the MEAA launched the Walkley Magazine as a ‘forum for discussion of media and professional issues by and for journalists’ with a preference for ‘examining trends across the industry rather than focus on individuals or organisations’. Published four times a year, the magazine is muted in its critique of the media industries. Contributors are invited to keep their criticism ‘constructive’ and consider ‘possible solutions’. In 1998, the Australian launched a weekly media and marketing supplement that, as well

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media effects as news, includes opinion columns by Errol Simper and Mark Day. Since 2009, the Australian has also become increasingly critical of the role of public service broadcasting and perceived progressive bias in the Australian media. Interviewed by The Media Report in 2012 after 14 years of reporting for the media section, Amanda Meade commented on journalists as a subject for journalism: ‘They’re incredibly sensitive, incredibly thin-skinned. And, you know, they can dish it out to other people but they hate being written about themselves.’ The development of online media provided new possibilities for a greater range of media criticism. Crikey, a daily online news magazine, features a section on the media. Investigative journalist and author Margaret Simons built on two non-fiction books, Fit to Print (1999) and The Content Makers (2007), in regular reportage and critique for Crikey. Since 2011, The Conversation has also provided media and journalism studies academics with the opportunity to reach a broader online audience. The Australian Centre for Independent Journalism undertook a joint project, Spinning the Media (2010), on the relationship between public relations and journalism, with Crikey, and a major project, Women in the Media (2013), with online magazine the New Matilda. Online specialist publications including Mumbrella (2008– ) aimed at the media and marketing industries. Destroy the Joint, a feminist social media initiative that in part critiques and responds to media perceived by its supporters as misogynist or sexist, has more than 40,000 followers. The weekly Fourth Estate, produced by 2SER FM, is heard on community radio stations across the country. Media criticism developed alongside increasing awareness of ‘media’ as a distinct sphere of activity in the 20th century. Over the last 50 years, it has become a distinct sub-field, both as a specialist form of media and as a ‘round’ within more general media. Individual critics and publications reflect their own political perspectives and economic interests. As mediatisation and digital media have developed, media criticism is now embedded in the unending flow of media communications and interaction. WENDY BACON

ME DI A EFFECT S The idea that the media have direct effects on people implies that audiences and individuals lack the judgement required to negotiate media messages. Decades of research have failed to identify any clear impact, yet the theory remains influential. As each new medium—film, radio, television, the internet and social media—comes along, it raises new fears that this time it really will change both the people who consume it and society as a whole. One indication of this was the 2009–10 debate around

mandating an Australian national filter for the internet, in addition to existing regulation of content, such as the prohibition of materials promoting extremist and violent politics. When people express concern about media effects, however, they usually believe that consuming certain kinds of media products has an impact on (other) people’s behaviour, perhaps by influencing them to think or vote in a certain way, or making them more violent. In a liberal democracy, the media play a political role in creating an informed electorate. Jones and Pusey (2010) argue that Australia’s compulsory election system means that Australian media engage their audiences differently from countries where one role of the media is to interest the public in the political process. They suggest that there is political involvement in regulatory processes, and that powerful Australian media organisations have a direct impact on the framing of legislation regulating their activities. Inquiries such as that following the 1999 ‘cash for comment’ commercial radio scandal also indicate alliances between commercial interests and media organisations that are unusual in Western democracies. Yet the impacts of both the politicisation of Australian media and commercial alliances are as uncertain as other media effects. Young (2002) notes that opinion polls and televised leader-style debates are particularly relevant to Australian electoral practices, but points to the public funding of much political advertising (since 1984) as indicating the importance of such communication in the view of the dominant political parties. She comments that there is no established correlation between the ‘spend’ on political advertising and electoral success. The theory of media effects underpins all censorship and classification systems. A major review of Australia’s National Classification Scheme in 2012, undertaken by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC), included a recap of the evidence for and against the ‘media effects model’, noting that two disciplinary fields have taken a particular interest in this research area: psychological research, which often takes place in the laboratory; and cultural research, which focuses on everyday experiences. Neither field has made much attempt at longitudinal work, while cultural researchers argue that controlled laboratory settings are not a good predictor of real-life behaviour. Research results remain inconclusive, but classification systems remain, with regulators continuing to worry more about (for example) the portrayal of consensual sex than depictions of domestic violence. It is notable that media effects research has paid almost no attention the negative effects of high culture—for example, the impact of violence and depictions of under-age sex in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Similarly, there has been little research into any possible

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media history positive effects of exposure to different genres of media content. It might be expected that some studies would investigate people in challenging situations, such as prison populations, to see whether positive media affects them beneficially. This has not happened. Even so, some Australian research indicates the positive value of media. Alan McKee’s (2007) work with same sex-attracted young people indicates that some ‘adult content’ serves a valuable educative role in validating young people’s experience of queer and alternative sexualities. Since Tim Rowse’s discussion of Australian children’s television (see Boehringer et al., 1980), minors increasingly have become the focus of concerns about media effects. This is because they are seen as impressionable, vulnerable and less capable of making informed judgements. Certainly, issues arise when children see—accidentally or otherwise—age-inappropriate materials. In one recent study by Green et al. (2011), nine out of 10 Australian 9- to 10-year-olds were bothered by seeing sexual images online. In contrast, 15- to 16-year-olds were five times more likely to see sexual images online, but only one in eight had been bothered by them. Schrock and boyd’s literature review for Enhancing Child Safety (2008) argues that young people at risk online are also at risk in other contexts, and that there is no clear causal relationship between media exposure and subsequent behaviour. Most research in this area fails to distinguish between the effects of portrayals of real violence and fictional violence. Australian Broadcasting Tribunal research in the early 1990s indicated that viewers could readily tell the difference between the real and the fictional, and were more troubled by news and documentary footage of actual occurrences. Yet such materials are generally excluded from classification systems on the grounds that the benefits of full reporting outweigh the possibility of viewer distress. The ALRC’s 2012 National Classification Scheme Review concludes that the available research does not point to the media having no effects, arguing instead that ‘there are many and varied results from these studies, and … this evidence base has not generated clearer findings over time’. REFs: K. Boehringer et al. (eds), The Media in Crisis (1980); L. Green et al., ‘AU Kids Online: Risks and Safety for Australian Children on the Internet’, Cultural Science, 4(1) (2011); P.K. Jones and M. Pusey, ‘Political Communication and “Media System”: The Australian canary’, Media, Culture and Society, 32(3) (2010); A. McKee, ‘“Saying You’ve Been at Dad’s Porn Book is Part of Growing Up”: Youth, Pornography and Education’, Metro Magazine, 155 (2007); A. Shrock and d.m. boyd, ‘Online Threats to Youth: Solicitation, Harassment and Problematic Content’, in Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies, (2008); S. Young, ‘Spot On: The Role of Political Advertising in Australia’, Australian Jnl of Political Science, 37(1) (2002). LELIA GREEN

M ED IA H ISTO RY ‘Australian historians have tended to neglect the history of the Australian press,’ wrote economist W.M. Corden in an overview of newspaper ownership in Australia published in Meanjin in 1956. Until then, those histories had tended to focus on the press in the colonial era—notably James Bonwick’s Early Struggles of the Australian Press (1890)—and on individual, usually colonial, newspapers, including the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser and the Australian. W.A. McNair’s Radio Advertising in Australia (1937) constituted the first major study of Australian broadcasting, and was joined by W. Macmahon Ball’s Press, Radio and World Affairs in 1938. Corden’s article was followed by W. Sprague Holden’s Australia Goes to Press (1961), focused on 15 metropolitan dailies, and a major overview of ‘The Daily Papers’ by K.S. Inglis in Australian Civilisation (1962). Then came Henry Mayer’s seminal The Press in Australia (1964), which aimed, in part, to ‘give the basic facts about the history, structure and content of the Australian Press’. State-based histories of the press included George H. Pitt on South Australia (1946) and E.  Morris Miller on Tasmania (1973). New South Wales was best served, with authoritative histories up to 1945 by R.B. Walker (1976 and 1980). Major institutional histories included Gavin Souter’s Company of Heralds (1981), commemorating the 150th anniversary of John Fairfax & Sons, and Inglis’s This is the ABC (1983), marking the broadcaster’s 50th anniversary. They complemented major industrial histories: Jim Hagan’s Printers and Politics (1966) and C.J. Lloyd’s 1985 history of the Australian Journalists’ Association (now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance). In Australians: A Guide to Sources (1987), Mayer could still lament that ‘the literature on our media is scanty’. A year later, in a bibliographical essay in Australian Cultural History focused on journalism, John Henningham expressed surprise that ‘200 years of Australian history have not produced a comprehensive study of Australian journalism’. Social and political historians tended to use newspapers uncritically as contemporary journals of record, with little attention to the contexts in which they were produced. Australia’s federal structure meant that it was difficult to generate overviews of the press in Australia without studies of the press in each state. Established media archives were scarce, and not always open to independent researchers. Back-issues of some newspapers and magazines were not extant. Broadcast material was even more elusive, or very costly to access. Despite the sheer volume of media output, often with little in the way of finding aids such

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media history as indexes, the historiography of the Australia media has expanded considerably since the Bicentenary. This was no doubt due in part to the proliferation of media and communications courses in Australian universities. The majority of scholarship in the field over the last 30 years has been undertaken outside history departments—by academics with disciplinary backgrounds in media, communications, cultural studies, literature and political science, as well as by independent scholars. The most important contribution to Australian journalism history remains Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz’s Journalism: Print, Politics and Popular Culture (1999). It was augmented by Denis Cryle’s study of colonial journalism, Disreputable Profession (1997), and major studies of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery (by C.J. Lloyd, 1998) and news at the ABC (Neville Petersen, 1993 and 1999). G. Gilson and J. Zubrzycki’s pioneering Foreign Press in Australia (1966) was complemented by an edited book by A. Ata and C. Ryan (1989). Substantial studies of Indigenous media in Australia began to appear from Michael Meadows in the 1990s, while Michael Rose (1996) published a history of Aboriginal print journalism. Histories of the press in eastern Australia blossomed. Rod Kirkpatrick’s histories of the provincial press in Queensland (1984 and 2008), New South Wales (2000) and Victoria (2010) were followed by his Short History of the Australian Country Press (2000). Cryle wrote a social and political history of the press in colonial Queensland (1989), and Elizabeth Morrison a history of the press in 19th-century country Victoria (2005). Cryle (2008) also published a history of the first 25  years of the Australian (est. 1964). Frank S. Greenop’s History of Magazine Publishing in Australia (1947) remains a singular work. Australian Magazines of the Twentieth Century, a sub-set of the AustLit database, presents information about around 100 magazines, generally more literary and intellectual than popular, and the Australian Women’s Weekly had been a favourite subject for historians. Institutional histories included Souter’s second volume on Fairfax (1991) and Bridget Griffen-Foley’s The House of Packer (1999), while Robert Crawford wrote about the history of the advertising industry (2008). They built on in-house commemorations (such as Fairfax’s A Century of Journalism, 1981) and compilations (Geoffrey Hutton and Les Tanner’s 125 Years of Age, 1979). Biographies of media barons ranged from the uncritical (R.S. Whitington on Sir Frank Packer, 1971, and Ronald Younger on Sir Keith Murdoch, 2003) to the critical (Paul Barry on Kerry Packer, 1993 and 2006, and Morrison on David Syme, 2014) and the iconoclastic (T.D.C. Roberts’ thesis on Keith Murdoch, 2013). With

the exception of George Munster’s A Paper Prince (1985), there has been little sustained scholarship on Rupert Murdoch’s activities in Australia. Inglis’s second volume on the history of the ABC (2006) was augmented by histories of SBS (by Ien Ang, Gay Hawkins and Lamia Daboussy, 2008), commercial radio (Griffen-Foley, 2009), commercial television (Nick Herd, 2012) and talkback radio (Liz Gould’s PhD thesis, 2012). Community radio was examined in Phoebe Thornley’s PhD thesis (1999) and by a major report (2002) for the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. Albert Moran and Chris Keating’s Historical Dictionary of Australian Radio and Television (2007) was published internationally. Memoirs, autobiographies and biographies of (often male) editors, journalists and broadcasters proliferated, particularly by foreign and war correspondents. These have been augmented by John Tebbutt’s thesis on the history of foreign correspondents (2003) and Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath’s Witnesses to War (2011), and by studies of Australian journalism and the Vietnam War (Trish Payne, 2007) and Asia (Prue Torney-Parlicki, 2000). In 1999, Rod Kirkpatrick and Victor Isaacs formed the Australian Newspaper History Group (ANHG), which publishes substantial bi-monthly newsletters keeping members informed of contemporary happenings in the press and of new work undertaken on Australian press history. The ANHG also publishes timelines and bibliographies. Also in 1999, media historians and practitioners came together at the Australian Media Traditions conference, now a biennial event. The papers of the inaugural conference were published in a special media history issue (no. 99) of Media International Australia (MIA). With no dedicated Australian journal in the field, media historians publish in a range of journals, from MIA and Australian Studies in Journalism to History Australia and Australian Historical Studies. Graeme Osborne and Denis Cryle edited an ‘Australasian Media History in 2002’ issue of Media History. Many Australian scholars have made important contributions to the history and study of new media, but it has tended to be focused on the international rather than the Australian context. Such works include Melanie Swalwell and Jason Wilson’s edited book on the cultural history of computer gaming (2008). In Australian internet studies, there has not been a book to succeed Gerard Goggin’s major edited collection, Virtual Nation (2004). Much important work on new media has been published in successive editions of The Media and Communications in Australia, now edited by Stuart Cunningham and Sue Turnbull, and in special issues of Australian journals ranging from MIA to the Fibreculture Journal.

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Australia’s first Centre for Media History (CMH) was formed at Macquarie University in Sydney in 2007. It took over hosting of the Australian Media History Listserv and the Australian Media History Database (a database of researchers working on current projects, and listings of resources in the field) from the ARC Cultural Research Network (2004–09). It also provides a digital home for the ANHG, and runs the Media Archives Project Database, a register of archives held in private hands. The Australian Newspaper Plan aims to collect and preserve every newspaper published in Australia, while since 2007 the Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program has aimed to make freely available online through the National Library of Australia’s Trove as many Australian newspapers as possible. Topics still to attract the sustained interest of Australian historians range from printing, suburban newspapers, student media and public relations to the Herald and Weekly Times, the media in Western Australia and the Northern Territory, and reporting and reviewing genres. And there is more to do to situate the Australian media in a transnational context, building on work by scholars including Peter Putnis (news), Virginia Madsen (radio documentary), David Goodman and Susan Smulyan (radio drama), Kevin Patrick (comics) and Simon J. Potter (imperial communication). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

ME D IA I NTERNAT I ON AL AUSTRALIA Media International Australia (MIA) is Australia’s pre-eminent scholarly journal in mass communication. In 2010, it was ranked A in the ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia) journal rankings. It has appeared quarterly since it began in July 1976 as Media Information Australia. That first edition apologetically advised individual subscribers they would have to pay an annual charge of $10 for the four issues; in 2014, it was $125 for Australian residents. But it is not only price inflation that separates the contemporary journal from the original. In 1976, formal journal rankings were not on the scholarly horizon. But even by the less formal standards then prevailing, MIA was a very individual publication. It reflected the aspirations and intellectual reach of its founding editor, Henry Mayer (1919–91). Mayer had already been the editor of Politics (subsequently the Australian Journal of Political Science), the leading Australian political studies journal, and was the editor of one of the liveliest and most widely used Australian politics textbooks. Until 1975 he had had a weekly column, ‘Speaking Freely’, in the Australian. The new journal, to which he devoted his indefatigable energy, was funded by the Australian Film and Television School (subsequently

the Australian Film Television and Radio School) at a time when media teaching and research were still in their infancy. The school’s director, Julie James Bailey, shared Henry Mayer’s vision of a journal that would act as a bridge between media scholars, media practitioners and interested lay people. It sought to create a space rarely found in academic journals. MIA shared information about tertiary courses and research projects, and often carried articles and speeches by industry figures, public servants and politicians. In a pre-internet, pre-digital age, the Media Briefs section—a compilation of media-related items in the news—helped readers keep in touch with contemporary controversies. The editor’s pluralism was particularly manifested in the regular forums on current issues, where at their best three or four people with contrasting views teased out the different dimensions of a debate. MIA’s intellectual and scholarly qualities were manifested in the range of articles by mostly, though not exclusively, Australian researchers. In the midst of summarising recent research, Mayer would often launch into an acute and erudite analysis of its theoretical problems and the strengths and weaknesses of its genre. In short, he produced a journal of considerable vibrancy and intellectual energy, adding scholarly depth to public issues and a contemporary edge to academic scholarship. After Mayer’s death, six co-editors (Stuart Cunningham, Murray Goot, Elizabeth (Liz) Jacka, John Sinclair, Rodney Tiffen and Peter White) replaced him, introducing a number of changes, including themed issues—usually involving guest co-editors. Over time, the forces of academic evolution came to the fore. The journal had only instituted a formal refereeing process at the end of the 1980s. (Before then, articles had to pass through the demanding process of satisfying the editor.) Industry input declined, while scholarly refereeing became more stringent. MIA’s managing editor, Meredith Quinn, improved the journal’s production standards, and it was renamed Media International Australia in 1995. Three years later, the journal passed first to Griffith University, where it was merged with Culture and Policy to become Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy—the last part of the name was dropped in 2007) and became one of two journals distributed to members of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association. Edited by Gillian Swanson (1998), Graeme Turner (1998–2002) and Helen Wilson (2002–06), MIA moved in 2004 to the University of Queensland. Gerard Goggin became editor in 2006 and Sue Turnbull took over in 2010. In 2007, MIA was selected for coverage in Thomson’s Social Sciences Citation Index. A special

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media monitors australia commemorative 150th issue was published in February 2014. REFs: ‘Remembering Henry Mayer’, MIA, 61 (1991); R. Tiffen (ed.), Mayer on the Media (1994). MURRAY GOOT and RODNEY TIFFEN

M E D I A LAW see copyright; defamation; freedom of information; freedom of speech

ME DI A MONI T ORING Over the years, the highly competitive nature of Australian politics has seen governments of all persuasions adopt a range of communications practices. Governments have established highly sophisticated public relations machines that have evolved to reflect the increasing demands and complexity of winning and retaining government. The Australian Press Cuttings Agency (APCA), established in 1904, and later to become Media Monitors Australia, was Australia’s first media monitoring specialist. For the next seven decades, there was a steady growth in the number of media monitoring services in Australia’s major cities. The election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 saw the emergence of the first genuine public relations machine to service the needs of the incumbent political party. Whereas previous federal governments had operated with a skeleton staff of press secretaries (they were not known as ‘media advisers’ until the 1980s), Whitlam allowed each of his ministers to have their own press secretary. While this provided a mechanism by which ministers could compete with each other for media coverage, it also meant that the government could dominate political debates in the media by both generating commentary and tracking what the opposition was saying out on the hustings. This latter function would also help inform the media advisory role in the 1980s and 1990s. While the media relations function had been finessed by the Fraser Coalition government (1975–83), through its Government Information Unit (GIU), and at a state level by the Bolte (Victoria) and Wran (NSW) state governments, the Hawke Labor government added a new dimension to the notion of government–media communications with the establishment in 1983–84 of the National Media Liaison Service (NMLS). The title of this organisation was something of a misnomer—although it was not dissimilar to Gough Whitlam’s Australian Government Liaison Service (AGLS), as a number of commentators have pointed out. Its primary function, which was never publicly conceded, was to monitor Australian media content with a view to providing government MPs with ammunition that they could use against their

political opponents. Journalists quickly dubbed it aNiMaLS, a moniker that suggests a more aggressive function than simple media liaison. The NMLS was staffed by former journalists in Canberra and in each of the states. Their function was to monitor all media—print, radio and television—across all levels (national, state, regional and community) with a view to responding to comments from opposition MPs and other critics. Armed with the information, they would then draft responses for ministers and backbenchers to use in rebuttal. The NMLS was a highly successful organisation—so much so that John Howard dismantled it immediately upon winning government in 1996—although it wasn’t long before he had set in place his own organisation, ultimately dubbed ‘baby animals’, or Animals II. Under the Howard Coalition government, responsibility for media monitoring was managed by the Government Members’ Secretariat (GMS). Like the NMLS before it, it operated out of rooms in Parliament House, Canberra, not far from the PM’s offices. And, while it operated separately from the PM’s media advisers, it also appeared to work closely with his advisory team. This practice has continued in the post-Howard era at both the state and federal levels. While staffers employed by the NMLS had the tedious task of monitoring the various media outlets and then providing a clipping service for their political masters in Canberra, today that function is undertaken electronically by a number of commercial companies, including Media Monitors and AAP Newscentre. All Australian governments subscribe to one or more of these services at significant cost to taxpayers—a point the media regularly highlights. In seeking to obtain political capital from this, opposition parties regularly seek to score political points by promising to disband the machinery that helps their opponents to stay in office. But as the performance of Howard and others at a federal level, and a number of statebased opposition leaders-turned-premiers has attested, these promises are often hollow. The reality is that governments will seek to do anything that provides them with an advantage in the communications battle. Spending millions of dollars every year to monitor what their opponents are saying or doing is considered a small price to pay. REF: S. Young, Government Communication in Australia (2007). STEPHEN TANNER

M ED IA M O N ITO R S AU STR ALIA Established in Melbourne in 1904, the Australian Press Cuttings Agency (APCA) was Australia’s first media monitoring specialist. Within two years, its clientele included Sir John Forrest and his wife, several members of parliament, and various companies and community groups.

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media ownership From 1915, it was headed by Beatrice Fowler and staffed entirely by women. By 1938, APCA claimed to be Australia’s largest press clipping agency and had links with international agencies. Competitors included the Country Press (est. 1923). As the need for monitoring services grew, each capital city had at least one agency. National coverage was provided through informal networks. Modernisation occurred gradually. Monitoring of broadcast media commenced in the 1970s while the cut-and paste-process of filing newspaper reports was computerised in the late 1980s. Neville Jeffress’s purchase of the Country Press in 1982 began a succession of takeovers that radically altered the monitoring industry’s structure. Bringing the Lynch Pidler agency on board, Neville Jeffress Pidler would embark on an expansionist campaign by buying out competitors, with APCA an early acquisition. In addition to expanding the agency’s client list, each acquisition extended its reach and expertise. By the 2000s, Media Monitors Australia (as it was now known), had bought out its largest local competitors and was extending internationally into New Zealand, Singapore, and China. In 2012, it was renamed Sentia Media. Rebranded iSentia the following year, it would apply this title to its entire operations in the Asia-Pacific region. With a staff of over 1200 servicing some 5000 clients across 15 countries, iSentia claims to be the largest media intelligence firm in the region. REF: P. Allen (ed.), Media Monitors Australia 1904–2004 (2004). ROBERT CRAWFORD

ME D IA OW NERSHI P Since the mid-20th century, there has been substantial international support in Western democracies for plurality of media ownership. Public policy and laws designed to place structural limits on the number of media outlets owned or controlled by one proprietor have been regarded as a precondition for achieving a diverse range of viewpoints in democratic nations. The assumption has been that concentrated ownership confers undemocratic power on ‘influential’ owners to sway governments, and advance their own private interests. So, while the power of the major media groups in this key area of public policy has long been recognised—particularly during election periods—ruling political parties increasingly only make significant policy changes with an eye to how they may impact on their media allies. Consistent with other Western nations, there was an overall trend to deregulation in media markets from the 1980s. The combined result has been a steady concentration of media ownership in Australia. Australian politicians have tended to use the term ‘diversity’ to justify rules to curb dominance by particular media owners. The debate has been

between those who would like to see further liberalisation to allow for freer local and foreign investment and those who argue for continuing ownership restrictions. The argument has been that concentration within the sector will result in a further reduction in diversity of viewpoints and opinions, to the detriment of democratic processes. There was also a prevailing view that, with the rise of broadcast media, the airwaves should be protected by parliament. The first serious concerns about the concentration of media ownership in Australia emerged in 1935, when the powerful Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) entered into negotiations to lease 2CH Sydney as a hub for relays to its country stations. This led to a parliamentary and public debate centred on the allegation that two corporations—the AWA and the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT)— controlled some 24 commercial radio stations. Regulations were introduced, providing for a maximum of eight radio stations to be owned by one company. Restrictions on the foreign ownership of radio in 1951 were informed by a parliamentary resolution that it was ‘undesirable that any person not an Australian should have any substantial measure of ownership or control, over any Australian commercial broadcasting station, whether such ownership or control be exercisable directly or indirectly’. Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies argued that the policy was directed at non-Australians who wished to secure a ‘substantial control over some form of internal propaganda in Australia’. This gave way to specific percentage limits in television and radio, aimed at capping total individual foreign ownership at 20 per cent of the shares of a television company. In subsequent decades, the words ‘in a position to exercise control’ of a media company would become the contested mantra of successive governments. It was widely recognised that the foreign ownership rules did not achieve their intent, and governments had wanted a flexible outcome that allowed substantial control in some cases. Network Ten was an example: Canadian media corporation Canwest used creative debt financing instruments to control the company from 1992 to 2009, and work around the foreign ownership restrictions. At their heart, anxieties over foreign ownership were about ‘internal propaganda’ or ‘directed coverage’ and sovereignty. The accepted preference for local ownership was a matter of perceived accountability. A combined practice has emerged of the Foreign Investment Review Board picking ‘acceptable foreign owners’, together with statutory percentage and numerical limits for both foreigners and local owners, in the hope that no single owner’s megaphone would become too loud. But a series of ownership consolidation deals throughout the 20th century has seen Australia’s

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media ownership print media concentration steadily increase to one of the highest levels among Western democracies. Three owners—News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media and APN News and Media— hold approximately 98 per cent of the sector, and News and Fairfax together hold about 88 per cent of the print media assets in the country. Internationally, this is very high: the United States, with a population of around 307 million, has three corporations controlling 26 per cent of the circulation of newspapers. The United Kingdom, with a population of 62 million, has three corporations with 62 per cent of the circulation. News alone owns and controls approximately 65 per cent of the circulation of Australia’s capital city and daily newspaper titles. This concentration of print media ownership in Australia can easily be seen in the steady reduction in the number of titles and owners over the past century. In Australia in 1903, there were 21 daily newspapers and 17 owners in the capital cities. By the mid-20th century, there had been a gradual fall to 15 dailies and 10 owners. In 2013, there were 10 metropolitan dailies and three owners (Fairfax Media, News Corp Australia and West Australian Newspapers). In 2014, News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited), a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, and Fairfax Media control the metropolitan print markets, and much of the rural and regional press in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. They have diversified on to the web with all of their city, suburban and rural titles, grouped as News Digital Media, with more than 140 generalist online news titles, and Fairfax Digital, with over 180 titles including five state farming news sites and four talk radio websites. These two major interests operate alongside lesser regional publishers, APN News and Media and West Australian Newspapers, which operate in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, and Western Australia, respectively. During the 20th century, these companies expanded through takeovers and mergers, and due to cross-media restrictions that encouraged intra-sector growth. The impact of Australian media’s specific sectoral configuration has played a role too: a BBC-type public sector broadcaster in the ABC and the multicultural SBS have been a diversifying counterbalance to the commercial media. One proprietor who shone brightly in the early years of the newspaper industry was Sir Keith Murdoch. At 30, Murdoch was a powerful editor in Australia who moved in influential media and political circles in London, and later established an Australian base at the Adelaide Advertiser to launch a global media dynasty. The HWT grew from a 19th century newspaper into a top-ranking media corporation. Although Keith Murdoch had financial interests in the HWT, death duties disposed of much of

that investment. The Adelaide Advertiser was his only major asset when he died in 1952, and this was to become the base for an empire controlled by his son, Rupert, that spanned Australia, Britain, the United States and New Zealand. The Murdoch family-controlled News Corp became the dominant player in the Australian media. The other dominant dynasty in newspapers throughout this period has been the Fairfax group. It originally published the Sydney Morning Herald, but then added the Sunday Herald (merged with Associated Newspapers Ltd’s Sunday Sun to become the Sun-Herald), the Australian Financial Review and the National Times. Later, with the full buyout of David Syme and Co. Ltd, the Fairfax group acquired the Age in Melbourne and was able to establish a powerful Sydney–Melbourne media stable. After more than a century, the Fairfax family’s equity interests have gradually been diluted through a broad range of institutional investors in the publicly listed corporation. From the 1930s, along with News Corporation, the Packer family’s Australian Consolidated Press was also significant; this changed in 2012, when it sold its remaining print media assets to focus on casino businesses. Sir Frank Packer, who built the media empire, ruled his fiefdom with an iron fist—a family trait transmitted to his son and successor Kerry, whose reign lasted until his death in 2005. Kerry’s explosive appearance before a House of Representatives Select Committee inquiry into the print media in 1991, centred on his attempt to gain control of John Fairfax Holdings, is the stuff of legend. Since the first television licences were issued in Australia in the second half of the 1950s, concerns about ownership and control have been controversial, and led to continuous amendments to the laws governing these licences. The Royal Commission on Television of 1953–54 recommended that, as in radio, the relevant minister (the Postmaster-General) would be responsible for allocating licences. At the outset of television, full foreign ownership or interests connected with political parties were rejected. Local ownership, newspaper ownership and the concentration of control were the key concerns in the ‘Brisbane and Adelaide Affair’ of 1958. The licence-allocation process was overseen by the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB), which recommended that licences not be awarded to existing newspaper and television interests in Sydney and Melbourne. The Menzies Coalition government rejected that recommendation and insisted the ABCB recommend two licences for each of Brisbane and Adelaide from the existing applicants. In the 1960s, there were unsuccessful attempts to introduce laws that would regulate share transactions and other ways of controlling television companies. Takeovers in Sydney (TEN10) and Wollongong (WIN4) in the late 1970s led to

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media ownership a string of further takeovers in commercial television. They established the structure of three major commercial networks that persisted for several decades, when the rise of internet media began to undermine television’s audiences and revenue base. From the late 1970s, the ABCB’s successor, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT), oversaw a licence-renewal process of public hearings in which the public was permitted to participate. But the ABT then reduced the frequency and scope of inquiries, partly in response to changes in the law. One of the better-known moments of high drama in media ownership occurred in 1981, with the passage of legislation that effectively gave a green light to Murdoch family interests to acquire controlling interests in Ten Network stations in Melbourne and Sydney while maintaining existing newspaper assets. This followed News Limited’s purchase of 50  per cent of Ansett Transport Industries, which held interests in television licences, including ATV10 in Melbourne. The acquisition was in breach of the Broadcasting and Television Act 1974 and the ABT refused approval in September 1980 (initially it did not even consider it, but its hand was forced by the High Court). The ABT rejected News Limited’s application on the grounds that owning stations in Sydney and Melbourne would be against the public interest. However, the decision was short lived because News Limited appealed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and had the decision overturned. Separately, but in tacit accord with that decision, new legislation ushered through by a Fraser Coalition government-controlled Senate removed the prior approval requirement for the ABT in takeover situations. Concentration of ownership was no longer to be taken into account in considering share transactions such as the ATV10 control issue. Foreign ownership was also redefined around a test based on ‘citizenship’ rather than ‘residency’. Rupert Murdoch, now a US resident, was to benefit from this change as well, and these amendments came to be known as ‘the Murdoch amendments’. The limit on television station ownership to two stations per licence owner that had been in place since the introduction of television in 1956 came under increasing pressure in the 1980s. In the context of the introduction of the television ‘equalisation’ (also known as aggregation) scheme in 1986–87, to introduce additional licences to single-station markets, there were moves to change the limit to one based on a maximum percentage of the Australia population. This question had not been resolved by the time the introduction of the ‘equalisation’ scheme was announced in May 1986. This maximum percentage of the Australian population ‘reached’ eventually settled on 75 per cent, but this anti-concentration rule was over time slowly rendered redundant by the internet, and no

updated version had been formulated by 2014. This became a featured element in debates about media reform Bills introduced by the Gillard Labor government in March 2013. In addition to concentration in the press, and an oligopoly of television ownership operatingat a national level, there has been regional television concentration controlled by Bruce Gordon’s WIN Corporation (acquired from Murdoch’s News Limited in 1979), and Paul Ramsay’s asset-diversified Prime Media. The place of regional television groups is tending to be increasingly under the gaze of general competition law administered by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and the challenges of defining particular media markets in a converging landscape a recurring theme. The capacity of competition law to deal with media pluralism is often rightly questioned, when overshadowed by concerns about ‘substantial lessening of competition’ and contested definitions of media markets. Undoubtedly the most controversial and popularly recognised ownership rules are the so-called ‘cross-media rules’ introduced by the Hawke Labor government in 1986–87. The rules were designed to limit cross-ownership between television, radio and newspapers. Indeed, the implementation of these rules is regarded as a key element of the government’s legacy. In Treasurer Paul Keating’s famous words, media proprietors could be ‘princes of print or queens of the screen’, but not both. In what he described as ‘the biggest newspaper takeover in the world’, in 1987 Rupert Murdoch succeeded in his second bid for the HWT. Through the takeover, he added to his holdings six metropolitan dailies, a number of magazines, and several regional and suburban newspapers. Somewhat controversially, the Trade Practices Commission did not view the takeover as creating ‘market dominance’. Elements of the Broadcasting (Ownership and Control) Act 1987 were carried over to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, which made it unlawful for an individual or companies ‘in a position to exercise control’ of commercial television or commercial radio licence to also control a newspaper in the same licence area. To determine this overlap, the media regulator (since 2005, the Australian Media and Communications Authority) is required to keep an ‘associated newspaper register’ to monitor whether more that 50 per cent of the circulation of the newspaper is within the licence area of the relevant commercial broadcasting licence. This law has had an important diversity-maintaining impact on the structure of Australian media. Legislators formed the view that it was sound public policy to prevent media concentration across these key media platforms. Critics have always decried their shortcoming of not including other popular media sectors such as magazines, free-to-air

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media ownership television or pay television and, from the late 1990s, online news media sites. Prior to introduction of the 1987 cross-media laws, limits were placed on the numbers of media-specific outlets within a single sector. However, groups such as John Fairfax Holdings and the HWT had been able to accumulate media across these platforms, and it was considered not to be in the public interest to allow this kind of concentration of influence. Successive Coalition governments led by Prime Minister John Howard from 1996 attempted to reduce the impact of laws about media concentration, but it took until 2006 for this goal to finally be achieved. The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Act 2006 took effect from April 2007. Foreign ownership and control rules were repealed by the same legislation. In essence, the new laws removed the main cross-media ownership restrictions, now allowing television/newspaper/radio mergers with a ‘two out of three’ media sector limit, and introducing metropolitan and rural/regional voice limits under the so-called ‘five/four’ voices test. The new media ownership laws equated ‘voices’ with ‘media groups’—or a group of two or more traditional media operations (a commercial radio broadcasting licence, and associated newspaper or a commercial television broadcasting licence, in any combination). The conditions for breaches of these licences are said to occur when an ‘unacceptable media diversity situation’ arises from a merger. The newly liberalised rules resulted in some dramatic changes to the Australian media landscape. First, lifting of the foreign ownership rules allowed for two commercial television networks, Seven and Nine, to sell 50 per cent of their media assets into US private equity arrangements (first Nine with CVC Asia Pacific and then Seven with Kravis Kohlberg Roberts), using these sales to reposition themselves with expansion into other media and non-media assets. The Packer family-controlled media interests (via ACP) gradually sold down their remaining 50 per cent stake to CVC Asia Pacific. In 2012, they also sold their highly profitable 25 per cent of Foxtel to News Corporation, and their magazine interests to Germany’s Bauer Media Group. The once-powerful Packer dynasty thus exited from the media sector almost entirely, except for a 10 per cent stake in Network Ten. Seven West Media has also undertaken financial reengineering of its private equity arrangements with Kravis Kohlberg Roberts, which now holds about 45 per cent of the Seven Media Group. There are mixed opinions about the merits or otherwise of this foreign private equity-led restructuring, which saw much of the ownership of Australian commercial television networks move offshore into the hands of private institutional investors. The passage of laws allowing for commercial television to receive

very generous licence fee rebates suggests the sector is struggling to survive on its own. This may point to an argument that the US private equity arrangements have been of temporary benefit at best, and at worst paved the way for yet further dominance of US television products and even weaker Australian content rules. The newspaper sector also saw concentration of newspaper ownership. The Seven Network bought 14.9 per cent of West Australian Newspapers (WAN) but then continued to over 20 per cent, and easy control of the company. In the Perth market, at the time of the buy-up by Kerry Stokes’ Seven, it meant that the highest rating television network had control of the highest circulation daily newspaper and the second most popular online news site associated with the paper (TheWest.com.au). At the same time, Fairfax Media took the opportunity to consolidate on buoyant share prices to make a pre-emptive defensive move, and initiate a merger with Rural Press Limited. This merger created a group valued at around $9 billion (including $2.3 billion in debt). At the time of the merger, the group held more than 240 regional, rural and suburban publications, nine radio stations and the leading New Zealand internet site TradeMe (which it subsequently sold to pay down a large debt burden), as well as 20 agricultural titles in the United States. Consolidation in the radio sector saw the Macquarie Media Group (MMG) taking a 14.9 per cent ($170 million) stake in Southern Cross Broadcasting, a major networked radio operation. Fairfax Media also acquired Southern Cross Broadcasting’s metropolitan radio stations in a three-way deal between itself, Southern Cross Broadcasting and MMG for $520 million in November 2007. While the cross-media changes were underway, Labor’s shadow Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, attacked the Howard government for its proposed changes to ownership laws. The legislation passed, and Australia renewed its dubious distinction of having the most concentrated print media among comparable Western democracies. The Howard government’s legacy to media ownership laws was to dilute cross-media restrictions and to remove foreign ownership limits, with no discernible benefit to Australian audiences. A 2000 report published by the Productivity Commission recommended a program of ongoing deregulation of Australia’s commercial media system. However, it argued that before such liberalisation of the ownership rules could proceed, a number of events should occur, including: the removal of existing foreign ownership restrictions: the introduction of additional spectrum for new entrants; and the introduction of a media-specific public-interest test to govern takeovers. These objectives were in part met by the 2007 reforms, but the public-interest test was omitted. It was raised again by the 2012

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media peace awards Convergence Review and Ray Finkelstein’s Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation recommendations, and in the Labor government’s response calling for the establishment of a Public Interest Media Advocate. The Australian media landscape has had virtually the same local players since the 1990s, along with increasing levels of ownership concentration. However, in an era of convergent media, the former monopoly telecommunications giant Telstra (and its antecedent companies) are now powerful multimedia enterprises. The dominant traditional media corporations have to some extent been re-engineered, and are in decline. In the transition to a media landscape dominated by broadband internet distribution and the growth of US-centric new media behemoths like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and eBay, the continuing longer-term involvement of Australia’s traditional media owners seems remote. REFs: B. Bonney and H. Wilson, Australia’s Commercial Media (1983); Centre for Policy Development, Issue Brief: Media Ownership Regulation in Australia (2011); K. Karppinen, Rethinking Media Pluralism (2013); P. Keating, Keith Murdoch Oration, State Library of Victoria (2012); G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). TIM DWYER

ME D IA PEACE AWARDS The annual Media Peace Awards of the United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA) have been presented since 1979. They recognise those in the media whose work highlights and champions human rights, and humanitarian and social justice issues. Held in Melbourne, the awards are organised by the UNAA’s Victorian branch. Since 2013, they have been known as the UNAA Peace Awards. Major award categories are: Best Print— News, Best Print—Feature, Best Photojournalism, Best Radio, Best Television News, Current Affairs (less than 20 minutes), Documentary (more than 20 minutes) and Best Online. There are special award categories of Promotion of Aboriginal Reconciliation, Promotion of Multicultural Issues, Promotion of the Positive Image of the Older Person, Increasing Awareness and Understanding of Women’s Rights and Issues, and Increasing Awareness and Understanding of Children’s Rights and Issues. Recipients over the years reflect contemporary preoccupations. In 2011, for instance, as both government and opposition adopted harsher rhetoric and policies towards asylum seekers, two awards went to Cordell Jigsaw Productions and SBS Television for their groundbreaking reality series Go Back to Where You Came From. It showed Australians coming face to face with refugees, and allowed viewers to see them reassessing preconceptions and prejudices.

The inaugural winner was the journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who also later, in 2009, won the Sydney Peace Prize. REF: http://www.unaavictoria.org.au/awards-programs/media-awards. JAKE LYNCH

M ED IA TR AD E P R ESS Trade periodicals have tracked transformations in the mass media. Changes in printing methods were paralleled by the Australasian Typographical Journal from 1870 and the appearance of the Australian Lithographer in 1964. Wireless Weekly began in 1922 as a technical guide. Oswald Mingay started Broadcasting Business in 1934 as an insert in Radio Retailer, and by 1947 was publishing two trade journals and five annuals. Broadcasting and Television has operated under various mastheads since 1950. In 1921, D.W. Thorpe initiated the Australian Stationery and Fancy Goods Journal, which became Ideas for Stationers, Sporting Goods, Newsagents, Art and Gift Shops, Booksellers and Libraries in 1934, or Ideas for short after 1937; it has been Bookseller and Publisher since 1971. With the growth of local publishing, Ideas spawned a separate title from 1962 as Australian Books in Print, then Australian Serials (Periodicals) in Print in 1981. In 1988, the resale of D.H. Thorpe Pty Ltd saw its absorption into the Reed Elsevier group. The creation of industry bodies such as the Country Press Associations from 1900 and the Australian Newspapers Conference (later Council) in 1924 underpinned Newspaper News from 1928; it became Advertising and Newspaper News in 1969. As advertising agencies went from selling space to providing a full service of artwork and research, at least 15, frequently fugitive, periodicals—starting with The Reason Why (1908)— represented the shifting nature of their business. The Waddy (1919) was ‘for driving home club facts’; Smith and Miles’ Proof (est. 1925) built goodwill by selling the advertising firm’s ‘personality’. Advertising Monthly in 1928–30 rose with the boom and sank in the Depression. Rydge’s (est. 1928) always advanced the ties between commerce, entertainment, finance and publicity. Market researchers gained a separate voice in 1956 with the stencilled Journal of the Market Research Society of Victoria, which expanded Australia-wide from 1960. The media journals became explicit about the packaging of audiences for sale. By the late 1960s, Newspaper News had 2575 subscribers, Advertising in Australia 2376 and B&T Weekly only 1811. Like the mass media they serve, the trade publications are squeezed by online advertising. In addition to its print version, B&T launched an electronic edition in 2003. It went bi-weekly in 2008.

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media women’s action group REF: J. Nicholson, A Life of Books (2000). HUMPHREY McQUEEN

ME DI A WAT CH The origins of the 13-minute weekly television program that has monitored the Australian media since 1989 had more to do with the ABC managing director’s desire for revenge on his perceived enemies than concern over the standards of print and broadcast journalism. During 1988, the corporation’s new managing director, David Hill, endured regular criticism from the John Fairfax Group, and asked his assistant, Tony Ferguson, to explore the possibility of using the ABC’s own outlets to mount a counter-attack. Colleagues from his time as executive producer of This Day Tonight suggested a program based on the British What the Papers Say and Points of View, broadened to include radio and television. After a series of established ABC presenters auditioned unsuccessfully, a Sydney barrister and former journalist, Stuart Littlemore, was appointed host. Littlemore sidestepped any indication that he should single out the ABC’s critics and devised the program’s tightly written ‘illustrated lecture’ format. Transmitted on Monday nights, the program was named Media Watch—The Last Word before the subtitle was dropped in 1992. From the outset, Littlemore insisted that this was not news or current affairs, but rather a program of critical commentary and review—a platform for well-informed and properly researched opinion about the performance of the Australian media. The intention was that Media Watch should be told from the standpoint, and on behalf, of media consumers. For that reason, it maintained that the conventional journalistic requirements of ‘balance’ and offering a ‘right of reply’ were not applicable to its content. This position provoked sustained hostility from the mainstream media, and in 1994 ABC management decided to cancel Media Watch—a decision that was quickly overturned after staff objections. However, the program did disappear from ABC screens in 2001, reportedly because it had aired an aggressive interview with the then ABC chairman, Donald McDonald. Media Watch returned to air in 2002. Shortly after a former John Fairfax & Sons executive, Mark Scott, became managing director in 2006, the program was instructed to follow editorial policies more in keeping with those expected of current affairs. Media Watch continues to negotiate this difficult path: it is about, but also part of, the media. An additional—often uncomfortable—requirement of the program is that, in order to maintain its credibility and independence, it needs to be as critical of the ABC as it is of the commercial media. The principal concerns of Media Watch are offences against the journalists’ Code of Ethics: plagiarism, undeclared conflicts of interest,

intrusion, breaches of privacy, deliberately misleading reporting, sensationalism, undisclosed commercial influence, falsehoods, manipulation of images, unsubstantiated opinion, racial and sexual prejudice, and incitement. A secondary theme has been the consistent failure of Australia’s systems of media regulation to discourage and punish ethical lapses. This serious fare is punctuated by more humorous material that highlights journalistic ignorance, sloppiness and lapses of taste. David Salter, who produced more than 200 episodes, described the job of Media Watch as being ‘to bring the worst impulses and excesses of its colleagues to account in a public way’, and thereby to help lift the standards of Australian journalism. Among the more notable Media Watch items over the past 20 years have been revelations that a newspaper column by Alan Jones was plagiarised from a Frederick Forsyth novel; that a Channel Nine crime reporter had implied he was acting for police to obtain photos of a shooting victim; that a Seven Network current affairs program had faked footage of being chased by police on Majorca; that ABC News had fabricated ‘live’ two-way interviews between its studio presenter and overseas correspondents; that a series of ‘welfare cheat’ exposés in the Herald Sun was without factual foundation; that the ABC’s then managing director, Brian Johns, had authorised coverage of a political function in contravention of the corporation’s guidelines; and that most Australian women’s magazines routinely invented stories about celebrities and published faked photographs. The most celebrated Media Watch revelation came in 1999, when the program presented proof that talkback radio hosts Alan Jones and John Laws had failed to disclose to their listeners that they had been handsomely paid to provide favourable on-air comments about companies including Optus, Foxtel, Qantas and the major banks. These ‘cash for comment’ exposures, which resulted in an Australian Broadcasting Authority inquiry, won Media Watch three Walkley Awards. The presenters of the program have been Stuart Littlemore (1989–97), Richard Ackland (1998–99), Paul Barry (2000, 2013– ), David Marr (2002–04), Liz Jackson (2005), Monica Attard (2006–07) and Jonathan Holmes (2008–13). REFs: S. Littlemore, The Media and Me (1996); D. Salter, The Media We Deserve (2007). DAVID SALTER

M ED IA W O M EN ’ S AC TIO N G R O U P The Media Women’s Action Group (MWAG) was formed in 1971 during the second wave of feminism in Australia. Founding members included Dany Humphreys (Daniela Torsh), Sandra Symons, Francis Maclean and Elisabeth Wynhausen. It drew women from across news-

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media, entertainment and arts alliance papers in Sydney, and grew rapidly to draw in women from radio, television and film. Formed initially to gain equal membership rights for female journalists to the Sydney Journalists’ Club, it soon broadened in scope. It was the first time women working in the media had come together to lobby on issues of sexism within the profession, and to change how the media portrayed women. The Journalists Club, formed in 1939, had resisted earlier attempts to admit women as members. The MWAG, with support from younger members of the club, won its campaign for equality in 1972. Though the Sydney-based group had minimal formal structure and was short lived, it was influential, writing guidelines for non-sexist journalism and publishing them in the New Journalist, sparking debates on child care policy, and on 14 October 1972 taking over an issue of Nation Review to counter the sexist assumptions within its pages. The group also challenged media habits of assigning women to report on fashion and society gossip, while men covered politics, education and other serious arenas of policy. The influential MWAG child-care group (Julie Rigg, Robin Hughes, Sandra Hall, Susie Eisenhuth and Pip Porter) campaigned for a child-care policy that would enable mothers to work. The group published Child Care: A Community Responsibility in July 1972, lobbying the Whitlam Labor government for child care. The MWAG published a bulletin until at least August 1973. The group had largely dispersed by 1975, as members went on to campaign against barriers to women, and the way they were represented on television (through the Australian Women’s Broadcasting Co-operative), and in film (through the Women’s Film Workshop). The group was briefly revived by Liz Fell and others, who wrote a critical press statement about sexist reporting of the 1975 Women and Politics Conference in Canberra, held to mark International Women’s Year. REF: D. Torsh Papers (NLA). SIOBHÁN MOYLAN, with JULIE RIGG and DANIELA TORSH

ME D IA, ENT ERTAI NMENT AND ARTS ALLIANCE The Alliance was formed in 1992 through the merging of the unions covering actors, journalists and entertainment industry employees: Actors’ Equity, the Australian Journalists’ Association, and the Australian Theatrical and Amusement Employees’ Association. Since amalgamation, the Symphony Orchestra Musicians’ Association and the NSW Artworkers’ Union have joined the Alliance and the Screen Technicians’ Association of Australia has come under the Alliance banner. The Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) was formed at a meeting of journalists in

Melbourne on 9 December 1910 after several unsuccessful attempts to form a bond or union as a professional association for journalists. The meeting was called by Melbourne Herald reporter B.S.B. Cook, who saw an opportunity under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 for journalists to register as an industrial organisation. The Act provided that ‘an employer shall not dismiss an employee or injure him in his employment or alter his position to his prejudice by reason of the circumstance that the employee is entitled to the benefit of an industrial agreement or award’. Having taken advice from Prime Minister Alfred Deakin and the federal industrial registrar, A.M. Stewart, he was told that the legitimacy of registration by journalists as an industrial organisation was unclear and there would have to be a test case to determine this. Cook organised a meeting at Melbourne’s Empire Café, during which more than 100 journalists voted to form an organisation for registration under the Act. James McLeod of the Age was elected president, Arthur Norman Smith senior vice-president, W.A. Brennan junior vice-president and William Letcher treasurer. Cook was appointed secretary. Smith took over the presidency soon afterwards. The AJA lodged its application for registration on 23 December 1910 and was met with opposition from all major newspaper proprietors. The case came before the registrar on 11 April 1911, with Frank Brennan KC arguing successfully that there was no objection under the Conciliation and Arbitration Act 1904 to journalists registering as a profession. Registration was granted on 24 May 1911. Within four months, district branches had been registered in each state. The next major battle for the fledgling AJA was the establishment of an award to cover the various duties of journalists. A committee was formed for this purpose and in November 1911 the ‘Blue Log’ of journalists’ duties was lodged with newspaper proprietors. A conference was held on 14 December 1911, between representatives of the employers and the AJA, at which there was stalemate between the employers’ position and the AJA’s log of claims and a brief walkout by AJA representatives. A compromise was reached and the agreement filed in the Arbitration Court, for 12 months dating from 1 January 1912. The breakthrough was hailed by the National Union of Journalists in Britain as ‘an agreement which revolutionised the condition of daily newspaper staffs’. In 1917, after further disagreement between the proprietors and the AJA, a hearing of the Arbitration Court established the grading system for journalists, as well as sick pay and three weeks’ annual leave. Justice Isaacs remarked that: ‘No just comparison can be made by journalism with any other profession. Journalism is a profession sui generis.’

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melbourne press club A leading article in the Journalist commented that the result of the case ‘will be to raise the prestige and status of the profession. Journalism will become less a means of earning a living and more a profession imbued with high ideals’. Those ideals were to achieve their fullest expression in 1944 with the AJA Code of Ethics for journalists, in the face of opposition from proprietors—many of whom refused to display the eight-point code in their newsrooms. To promulgate and enforce the code, each state set up an Ethics of Judiciary Committee, which administered the code and dealt with complaints. The code was revised substantially in 1984, when it was issued as a set of 10 clauses, and again in 1999 when it became the 12-clause Media Alliance Code of Ethics that still exists. One of the most significant contributions of the AJA to journalism as a profession has been the establishment of the Australian Press Council in 1976 after more than 20 years of lobbying by the union. The Council comprises representatives of the proprietors, the union and the public. The union’s core focus on arbitration and conciliation has been challenged on a number of occasions: in 1944 and 1955 in support of colleagues in the print unions—disputes that ended when strike newspapers (in 1944, the News and in 1955, the Clarion) sold up to 200,000 copies, indicating where the real balance of power lay in the production of newspapers. Industrial action has rarely been over money, with the union successful in its wage negotiations. Instead, strikes and other action have been in support of colleagues in allied unions, over proprietorial interference in content, to secure adequate compensation for the introduction of new technology or over the devaluing of journalistic skills. The AJA has been central to the establishment of journalism as a profession. In 1956, the chairman of Ampol, Sir William Gaston Walkley, set up a foundation to run awards for journalistic excellence. Since its inception, the Walkley Awards have grown from five to 34 categories and introduced a raft of professional development initiatives. The union has also led the way in campaigning for equal pay and status for women journalists, and was the first union to introduce a quota system to ensure equal representation of women on the governing body. In recent years, the association has recognised Australia’s shifting geopolitical priorities and has moved towards greater involvement in regional issues, hosting the Asia-Pacific office of the International Federation of Journalists at its Sydney headquarters. REF: C.J. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist (1985); G. Sparrow (ed.), Crusade for Journalism (1960). JONATHAN ESTE

ME DIA , S PORT S see sports media and reporting ME DICA L RE PORT ING see health and medical

reporting

M ELB O U R N E P R ESS C LU B Unlike Sydney, Melbourne never had a full-time licensed Journalists’ Club. Those who worked at the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) would congregate in the back bar of the Oriental Hotel in Collins or the Phoenix Hotel in Flinders Street. Those at the Age would go for the Hotel Australia in Collins Street or Hosies in Elizabeth Street. Just after World War II, there were some serious attempts to begin a club. There was no problem renting premises, but how could journalists exist in a club without a drink—or two or three? In wowser-ridden Melbourne, this was a hopeless quest. Any mention of liquor was electoral disaster, and no government wanted to issue a licence to a bunch of journalists. When the 1956 Olympic Games were in the offing, the journalists appealed to the Victorian Premier Thomas Hollway, arguing that hundreds of journalists were coming to town there. The premier agreed to ‘look into it’, and nothing further happened. That situation continued until 30 November 1971, when a group of journalists met at Leon’s Bistro in Prahran. Well-known figures included Geoff and Nan Hutton, Stuart Sayers, Lyle Tucker, Tony Whitlock and Patrick Tennison. Tennison was elected the founding president of the Melbourne Press Club, with Jim Dickinson chosen as the secretary. The first meeting was on 15 February 1972, when the editors of the three dailies—Harry Gordon of the Sun News-Pictorial, Graham Perkin of the Age and Cec Wallace of the Herald—were invited for lunch at the Southern Cross. So the Melbourne Press Club became a lunch club, always with a speaker. It was not easy finding members—particularly among young journalists. The inevitable reaction was, ‘I get paid to hear guest speakers ranging from parliament through to Templestowe Rotary. Why should I pay to hear people blab during my time off?’ The committee responded by throwing the club open to all: clergymen, accountants, lawyers and (after some opposition) a flock of public relations types. Rohan Rivett became president and the club steadily picked up prestige. There were speakers like Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Peter Ustinov and John Mortimer. At first the major newspapers showed zero interest. They even expected the club to give free lunches when they sent along a reporter. However, eventually John Fairfax & Sons became sponsors, followed by the HWT. In 1976, the club started the Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year,

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melbourne punch

the first winner of which was Denis Butler of the Newcastle Herald. Today, the winner receives $20,000. The Quill Awards began in 1995, recognising a range of achievements. They covered news, features, cartoons, photographs, sports, columns, Young Journalist of the Year, and a top award that stood above all the others: the Gold Quill. The inaugural winner was Terry McCrann of the Herald Sun. After four decades, the club now has 500 members and attracts prestigious speakers—including, in recent times, Nelson Mandala and the Dalai Lama. REF: K. Dunstan, Informed Sources (2001). KEITH DUNSTAN

ME L B OURNE PUNCH The Melbourne Punch (MP) was a quarto-sized, originally eight-page sixpenny weekly first issued on 2 August 1855. It became one of the most successful colonial imitations of the London Punch (est. 1841). MP was started by Edgar Ray, publisher of the Auction Mart Advertiser, and Frederick Sinnett, a London journalist and MP’s first editor. MP copied the format and presentation of the London Punch, but had no direct link with it. However, the unpaid contributor (Sir) William à Beckett, later Chief Justice of New South Wales, was the elder brother of Gilbert à Beckett of the London Punch. Sinnett gathered a circle of talented contributors, including (Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy, R.H. Horne, Henry Kendall, (Sir) Archibald Michie and Charles Whitehead. Sinnett was succeeded as editor by James Smith (1857–63) and Charles Bright (1863–66). Despite its similarities to the London Punch, MP did not begin as a radical paper, but represented the interests of the independent citizen and played an important role in the development of Australian political caricature. After the first issue, Nicholas Chevalier took over as illustrator. Many of the early cartoons maintained a local focus, frequently aimed at local politicians, the terrible state of Melbourne’s streets and drains, and the Melbourne larrikin. Literary contributions were a consistent feature in the first decades, along with often excoriating editorials on Victorian politics. Under the full control of long-serving proprietor Alexander McKinley from 1881, MP commenced a sustained shift in content following the incorporation of the Melbourne Bulletin (also owned by McKinley) in 1886. Cartoons remained, but poetry and serialised stories declined to make room for expansive columns on theatre, society balls and the local undertakings of the well-connected. Editorially, MP displayed consistent opposition to unions and campaigns for the female franchise, but welcomed the collective military endeavours at Gallipoli. McKinley’s departure in 1920 heralded a new masthead featuring Mr Punch’s Australian

son dressed as a stockman, and the continued slow decline of a journal by now reflecting the spirit of changed times with regular features on ‘Modern Transport’ and photography. The sting of the cartoonist’s pen and the columnist’s prose long since lost, MP was incorporated in Table Talk in 1925. REFs: M.L. Shannon, Dickens, Reynolds, and Mayhew on Wellington Street (forthcoming); S. Sleight, Young People and the Shaping of Public Space in Melbourne, 1870–1914 (2013). MARY L. SHANNON and SIMON SLEIGHT

M EN ’ S M AG AZIN ES The first Australian magazine to be aimed specifically at men was K.G.  Murray’s Man (1936–74), which in its prime in the 1940s and 1950s easily outsold the late 1990s ‘lad mag’ giants Ralph and FHM (Australia). Man’s formula of adventure fiction, stories of war and heroism, damsels in states of distress and undress, erotica, humour and illustrations reflected the broader magazine market for men in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s: true stories, fiction, cartoons, gags and gals. Murray himself published widely within these genres, alongside other local titles (many of them short-lived), and some published by the Stag Publishing Co., including Impact: Exciting Adventure Stories for Men, Adventure Life, Cartoons and Gags, Out of the Mouths of Babes, Guy, Mr, Sir, Knight, Caper, Him and Wow!, and the somewhat more successful Squire (1953–56). In the pre-war years, the Australasian (est. 1864; Australasian Post, 1946–2002) and Pix (1938–72) had been general-interest pictorials. From the 1950s, they were aimed more specifically at men, featuring scantily clad female cover models and pin-ups, and stories of sex, sensationalism, sport and motoring. People entered this men’s ‘p-mag’ market in the 1950s, as did the more risqué Parade (1947–81) and Peep: For Men Only (1952–57). In the 1950s and 1960s, illustrations and drawings of women in the men’s magazine press gave way to more explicit photographic erotica. Titles from the 1960s included Pleasure (1965–66), Dare (1965–66), Gentlemen’s Choice (1965–66), Australian Models (1966) and Man’s World (1967–197?), followed in the 1970s by Climax (1972–73), Foxylady (1975), World of Men, Australian Debonair: The Sensuous Magazine for Men and Casual. Extending the ‘p-mags’, Australian Playboy (1979–98) and Australian Penthouse (1979– ) were launched in 1979, later joined by Picture (1988– ). Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) obtained the Australian licence for Playboy, publishing interviews, feature articles and entertainment reviews, and crowning an Australian ‘Playmate of the Year’ annually. People (which had absorbed Pix in 1972) started a ‘Covergirl of the Year’ quest in the early 1980s,

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men’s magazines with the buxom British model Samantha Fox an early winner. Aside from (but often including) pornography, the men’s magazine sector has typically included specialised categories of sport and motoring, which flourished from the 1970s, focusing on hunting, shooting, fishing, diving, racing, AFL and Rugby League. The birth of popular titles such as Motor Manual (1946– ), Wheels (1953– ), Australian Motorcycle News (c. 1955– ), Sports Car World (1957–88) and Two Wheels (1968– ) was followed by publications including Ozbike (1977– ) and Street & Strip (1986–97), many featuring semi-naked and naked female models. While other specialised areas of the men’s magazine sector—business and finance, technology, and crafts such as woodworking and home maintenance—don’t tend to feature sexualised representations of women, this has been the historical staple of men’s mass magazine publishing in Australia and when a new genre of men’s magazines emerged in the 1990s, it was clear that these could not survive without images of ‘babes’. Observing the success of the 1980s men’s style magazines in Europe and the United States, Sydney publisher Bruno Giagu launched Follow Me Gentlemen in 1984. It drew on the ‘new man’ iconography, promoting men’s fashion and grooming, health and nutrition. Addressing urban image-conscious professional men, it also covered computing, travel, wine and fine cuisine. It failed to find mass market success, folding in 1991. Press journalists attributed its demise to being ‘too gay’, with its strong emphasis on fashion, grooming, health and ‘heavily gelled hunks in boxer shorts’. Australian men, it was suggested, didn’t want to see men’s bodies or male narcissism in any form. The new lifestyle magazines for men—Max (1997–99), Ralph (1997–2010), Men’s Health (1997– ), FHM (Australia) (1998–2012), GQ Australia (1998– ) and more recently men’s style Australia (2003– ) and Australian Men’s Fitness (2008– ) brought—to varying degrees—the disparate men’s interests of technology, motoring, sport, humour and women together. But they also increasingly incorporated fashion and style, skin care, nutrition and health. This feminisation of the men’s magazine genre, grounded in ideologies of narcissism and consumption, was new in Australia. In the mid-1990s the UK men’s lifestyle sector quadrupled following the phenomenal success of ‘new lad’ magazines Loaded and FHM, which celebrated juvenile humour, hedonism and a disinterest in effeminate fashion and grooming in favour of a hypersexual obsession with women’s bodies. Australian publishers saw the obvious similarities between the British ‘lad’ and the Australian ‘larrikin’, and it was the ‘lad’ magazines that broke the Australian market for men’s lifestyle magazines.

The genre experienced a rocky start. Men’s Stuff (1995, Mogul Media) and Amnesia (1996, Horwitz Publications) each lasted just two issues. Metropolitan Style (1995, Pure Adrenalin) made it to four issues. Men’s Stuff and Amnesia drew on the ‘lad’ formula, but none of the mid-1990s launches featured sexualised representations of women. In 1997, three more titles—Max (Next Media), Ralph (ACP Magazines) and Men’s Health (Murdoch Magazines)—were launched. Max and Ralph were modelled on Britain’s FHM and Loaded, but this time including scantily clad ‘babes’. Their publishers had money to invest in their production and cross-media promotion. Ralph was the most ‘laddish’ of the two, but also the most self-consciously Australian. Max was more sophisticated, drawing from men’s fashion magazines while embracing ‘laddishness’. It ushered in the more contemporary style of men’s magazine publishing, with its first issue selling over 40,000 copies. Max’s elevation of fashion to a priority category was transgressive for a magazine aimed at the ‘average Australian bloke’, and it provided the successful formula on which its successors were eventually modelled. Ralph had more ‘babes’, more lurid sex stories and more emphasis on drinking. There was no discussion about relationships or health. Its fashion section (‘Clobber’) typically featured ‘babes’ in bikinis and overweight bikers modelling leather wear, in line with its sexist, ‘ocker’ humour. Ralph was immediately successful, with its launch issue selling over 70,000 copies and its circulation peaking at 122,000 in 2000. Despite becoming more and more like Ralph, Max folded in September 1999. Men’s Health, focusing on fitness, health, nutrition, relationships and style, also launched in 1997 with a shirtless, buff male model on its front cover. Its circulation remained steady at around 38,000 over its first few years of publication. FHM Australia (EMAP Australia) was launched in 1998, rivalling Ralph in its humour and coverage of ‘hot babes’, sex, sport and cars, but it was more sophisticated and cosmopolitan, featuring men’s style and grooming; it also attracted more advertising revenue than Ralph. Selling 60,000 copies of its first issue, FHM was a serious rival to Ralph, which immediately became more up-market. FHM (Australia) and Ralph boosted the Australian men’s lifestyle magazines to exponential growth. By 2002, FHM (Australia) was the 21st best-selling magazine in the country and Ralph was at number 22. The ‘lad mag’ formula had catapulted the sector into the mass market. Yet the imagined ‘average Aussie bloke’ had become more health and image-conscious, as fashion, food, style and grooming content had become a key feature of men’s lifestyle magazines—albeit communicated in the repertoires of sexist and sardonic ‘bloke speak’. The rise of the Australian ‘lad mags’ was meteoric, but their decline was more so.

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In 2006, Ralph and FHM (Australia) were still selling more than 100,000 copies each month, but by the end of 2007, Ralph’s monthly sales averaged 70,500 and FHM (Australia)’s had plummeted to around 64,500. By December 2008, FHM’s sales had fallen to 51,825 and Ralph’s to an average of 66,319. It folded after the July 2010 issue. Meanwhile, Men’s Health’s sales soared. In 2002 it averaged just under half of their circulations, but by 2008 it was outselling both the ‘lad mags’. The following year, FHM (Australia)’s circulation slumped and the magazine folded. Men’s Health is currently the market leader, with Men’s Fitness Australia, men’s style Australia and GQ Australia as the remaining monthly men’s lifestyle magazines. Using male models and with core narratives of health, nutrition, successful relationships, fashion and cosmetics, men’s lifestyle publishing has done a dramatic U-turn, which has seen the decline of the traditional ‘p-mags’ and those centred on the sexualisation of women. Australasian Post folded in 2002 and Australian Playboy in 1999, although Australian Penthouse remains in circulation. Sales of the weekly People and Picture plummeted in 2012, when ACP removed them from the Audit Bureau of Circulations audit. Launched in 2006, Zoo Weekly initially sold over 100,000 copies but now sells just under half that number. REFs: J. Burton, ‘“Fair Dinkum Personal Grooming”: Male Beauty Culture and Men’s Magazines in Twentieth Century Australia’ (PhD thesis, 2008); http://www. warrigalpress.com.au/magcom.html. JENNY BURTON

ME R CURY ( HOBART ) The Mercury first appeared on the morning of 5 July 1854, a four-page bi-weekly broadsheet published by emancipist John Davies and pastoralist Auber George Jones. Davies soon became the sole owner. The Davies family would guide the paper for a century. Within six months, the paper became a tri-weekly and in February 1857 the title changed from Hobarton Mercury to the Hobart Town Mercury. A further name change in January 1858, to the Hobart Town Daily Mercury, celebrated the fact that it had become Tasmania’s first daily newspaper. In August 1857, the Mercury took over the Colonial Times (est. 1825), one of the oldest journals in the colony. The Tasmanian Daily News (est. 1855) and the Courier (est.  1827) were absorbed in 1858 and 1859 respectively. The paper’s name was shortened to the Mercury in July 1860. John Davies retired from the business in October 1871, handing over to his sons. He died less than a year later, on 11 June 1872, aged 58. His sons traded as ‘Davies Brothers’.

A weekly newspaper, the Tasmanian Mail (later the Illustrated Tasmanian Mail), was launched in 1877 and continued until 1935. In 1954, the debut of the Saturday Evening Mercury coincided with the centenary celebrations of the Mercury, and this weekend title continued until 1984 when it was superseded by the Sunday Tasmanian. Expansion into suburban and regional areas began in 1966 with the acquisition of the Glenorchy Independent News (est. 1964) and its rebranding as Northside News to appear weekly as a tabloid liftout in copies of the Mercury delivered to Hobart’s northern suburbs. This was joined by Eastside News and Southside News in 1967. The three titles shared much copy and were occasionally rolled into a single Mercury Northside Southside Eastside until that arrangement became permanent in 1977, and was renamed the Mercury Suburban the following year. This was replaced by the broadsheet Community Express in 1985, published as part of the Mercury until 1994 when it was relaunched as a free tabloid delivered to 60,000 homes in Hobart and suburbs. In 1998, it was restored to its previous place in the Mercury until the final issue in early 1999. From 1978–83, the Mercury published Northern Scene for the Launceston area, initially as an insert and then as a separate publication. From 1983–87, the Mercury partnered with the Examiner (Launceston) to produce the weekly Tasmanian Mail (est. 1978). A fortnightly tabloid for the state’s west coast was launched in 1979. With a full-time journalist living in Queenstown, the Westerner moved to weekly publication, expanded to broadsheet and then returned to tabloid. It ceased publication in 1995. The 1980s saw the acquisition of the Derwent Valley Gazette (est. 1953) and its printing works in 1981, and Tasmanian Country (est. 1980) in 1983. Both titles continue as stand-alone newspapers. The Mercury has been involved in a number of innovations. On 27 October 1919, copies were flown to Launceston in Tasmania’s first trial commercial air flight. In March 1928, the start of deliveries to Launceston by car enabled the Mercury to be in northern homes at breakfast. The company had a role in the introduction of commercial radio and television to Tasmania. In December 1924 the Tasmanian Broadcasting Station (7ZL, later part of the ABC) was established at the Mercury office, while in 1960 the Mercury was part of Tasmanian Television Ltd, which secured a licence for what became TVT6. Various printing technologies were used by the Mercury over the years, with four-colour printing introduced in 1993, heralding the conversion of all titles to tabloid. In 1941, the Mercury was one of the newspapers behind the establishment of Australian Newsprint Mills upriver from Hobart.

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mobile and portable media Ownership of the company started to shift from the Davies family in 1962 when the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) purchased nearly 15 per cent of the shares in Davies Brothers Limited (DBL), increasing to 23 per cent in 1963 and 49 per cent in 1964. In 1988, DBL, through the HWT, became a wholly owned subsidiary of News Limited. The Mercury was published from the same site in Macquarie St, Hobart, from 1854 to 2012. New offices were erected next to the original building in 1902, while a major reconstruction in 1939-40 saw the landmark art deco building completed in its present form. In 1953, a miniature replica of the Hobart office was built in Launceston to replace another destroyed by fire. In 2012, the newspaper relocated to Salamanca Square, Hobart, and the Macquarie Street premises were sold the next year. In 2013, the Mercury recorded a circulation of 37,419 Monday to Friday and 51,302 on Saturdays, while the Sunday Tasmanian’s circulation was 48,605. The Mercury was founded on the principle that it was ‘the servant of one master … the public’. On the eve of the 160th anniversary in 2014, editor Matt Deighton said the Mercury remained unashamedly apolitical: ‘Our only political leaning is to make the government of the day accountable, regardless of left or right. We are respectful of all sides of politics but believe government should govern for all Tasmanians.’ REF: http://www.mercurynie.com.au/print_museum/ menu.html. DAMIAN BESTER

M I N I - S E R I E S see television drama

MI T CHEL L , HAROLD CHARLES (1942– ) Harold Mitchell is an advertising and media executive whose media planning and buying agency altered the operation of the local advertising industry and formed the basis of one of Australia’s largest and most influential media companies. Mitchell arrived in Melbourne in 1959 to work with advertising agency Briggs and James. After seven years, he left to become the media manager at USP Needham, where he honed his television skills. He then moved to Masius Wynne Williams as media director. The advertising agencies’ focus on creative work frustrated Mitchell. Seeing that advertising budgets were spent largely on buying suitable media space, he formed his own media buying and planning agency in 1975. The agency found traction with clients wanting greater accountability for their media expenditure. Angered that Mitchell was taking media space and the commissions media outlets paid on it, the advertising agencies denied him accreditation.

Mitchell responded by buying an accredited agency. His capacity to identify what programs worked with which markets saw the agency, renamed Mitchell & Partners, grow in size and stature. Mitchell’s non-media ventures almost cost him his business in the 1980s, but the agency’s fortunes improved in the late 1990s. The dismantling of the accreditation system ended the advertising agencies’ monopoly over media commissions and enhanced the media buyers’ hand. Advertising agencies closed their own media departments and came knocking at Mitchell’s door. The internet’s growing popularity prompted Mitchell to expand into the new medium. He formed emitch, a digital media buyer. It was floated on the stock exchange in 1999, earning Mitchell $11.5 million overnight. By 2007, emitch had bought out Mitchell & Partners to form basis of the Mitchell Communication Group. With various media, advertising and public relations companies under its umbrella, the group boasted billings of $16  billion in 2007. In 2010, the Mitchell Communication Group sold out to multinational Aegis Media for $363 million. Mitchell delivered the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in 2003, and has been appointed AO and AC. He became chairman of Free TV Australia in 2013. REF: H. Mitchell, Living Large (2009). ROBERT CRAWFORD

M O B ILE AN D P O R TAB LE M ED IA Like the telegraph before it, the telephone was embraced by Australians as an indispensable form of communication in a dispersed nation, as well as providing overseas telecommunications. The first commercial automatic mobile phone service was introduced by Telecom Australia in 1981 (and closed down in 1991), thus making the telephone portable. It was followed in 1987 by the first cellular mobile phone service, Telecom’s Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS)—a first-generation analogue service. Initially, the federal government reserved mobile service for the monopoly carrier, following an AUSTEL inquiry. For a brief period, Australian policy-makers also considered Public Access Cordless Services (PACTS) as a major alternative to cellular mobile, but enthusiasm waned (apart from what become a very significant market for cordless landline phones). In 1992, Optus was awarded a licence for its analogue service, with Vodafone becoming the third carrier, launching its second-generation (2G) GSM digital network in 1993. GSM was the government-mandated standard, but lacked the geographical range of AMPS transmitters in country areas. Telstra briefly offered a service based on the other main 2G standard, CDMA, which gave the government cover for the 2000

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moorehead, alan mccrae (1910–83) decommissioning of AMPS. Hong Kong-based Hutchinson Telecommunications entered the fray, launching its third generation (3G) mobile service in 2003. Many customers also purchased mobile products from service providers, or virtual mobile carriers such as Virgin Mobile. In its early days, the cost of mobile handsets, as well as call charges, ensured that the first customers were business users, and wealthy early adopters wanting the latest technology. As user experimentation with mobile phones grew, technology improved, networks were extended and prices fell, the mobile phone found novel niches in small business—with ‘tradies’ (tradespeople), for instance, as well as for household and personal use. Typically installed in vehicles, early mobile phones were prohibitively heavy. As handsets become smaller and lighter, mobiles become portable media carried in handbags, briefcases and pockets. Their emerging social, personal and cultural uses—for time-keeping and scheduling, adornment, accessorising and fashion, and later for media and entertainment—recalled earlier histories of portable media, including the wristwatch, alarm clock, car radio, transistor radio, Sony Walkman, pager and personal organiser. By the mid-1990s, the mobile phone had become an accepted part of Australian life, despite the difficulties providing ubiquitous coverage, especially in remote and rural areas. The Howard Coalition government initiated a blackspot program to gradually extend coverage to country areas, something that continues to the present day. From the early 2000s, mobiles had become a fixture in the media landscape. Text messaging, a phenomenon in Australian youth culture in the late 1990s, served as the long-awaited back-channel for interactive audience participation, especially with reality television and music video formats. Mobile data premium services took over from telephone information services. Popular early on, mobile music become a significant revenue stream with smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Games also became very popular on mobiles, including new kinds of mobile games such as pervasive reality gaming, casual games and social games (popular with Facebook on mobiles). In the smartphone era, mobiles became a key way of accessing the internet for millions of Australian users. Not only did users browse websites and access email, they especially availed themselves of the many new kinds of software (‘apps’) available. By this stage, few mobile phones were manufactured or designed in Australia (modifications for disabled and older users being an exception). However, Australian software developers gained a share of the international as well as national markets through the ‘apps’ ecosystem. Mobile apps become an important part of everyday media, with

users expecting business, service providers and community organisations alike to have these as well as a website. New kinds of providers entered the mobile media sector, such as health apps designers. Along with smartphones came a range of mobile computing devices, such as tablet computers that jostled with laptop computers to be the portable device of choice. Tablets like the iPad saw the stalled project of mobile television finally become a reality, and also made the long awaited e-book a popular consumer phenomenon. Yet issues such as the unfathomably high cost of international roaming, the rise of mobiles as an entertainment medium for infants and very young children, etiquette worries and fears of social disconnection remained controversial topics. Government policy lagged behind, with its prime focus on traditional competition and consumer issues. Australia was not alone internationally in its tardy approach to content regulation and censorship on mobile devices. Important issues such as texting and young people’s circulation of erotic images via mobiles were handled by inappropriate state laws devised to address child abuse. Tellingly, for its first formative years, the National Broadband Network was focused on fixed internet rather than offering an integrated vision that captured the reality that, for many Australia consumers much of the time, the internet was a mobile experience. From 2010, mobile media were less standalone device, and rather had become a hybrid, multimedia form. Fourth- and fifth-generation mobile technologies were premised on the crossover of mobile, internet and next-generation (Next G) networks. The gap between data-intensive mobiles and wearable computing devices (such as Google Glass) narrowed dramatically. With location-based GPS, mobile, mapping and sensor technologies, mobiles housed new forms of ‘locative media’, posing a range of privacy, intellectual property and cultural policy issues. REFs: G. Goggin, ‘Notes on the History of the Mobile Phone in Australia’, Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture, 38(3) (2006) and ‘Making the Australian Mobile in the 1990s: Creating Markets, Choosing Technologies’, MIA, 129 (2008). GERARD GOGGIN

M O O R EH EAD , ALAN M C C R AE (1910–83) Alan Moorehead was one of Australia’s most renowned journalists and writers of the 20th century. Born in Melbourne, he obtained a BA at the University of Melbourne, but abandoned his law degree to become a journalist, joining the Herald (Melbourne) in 1933, and setting off to Britain in 1936 in search of a wider vision. Moorehead had ‘a nose for news’, and his rise as a journalist was striking. Hired initially as a retainer for the Daily Express, reporting from

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moses, sir charles joseph alfred (1900–88) Gibraltar on the Spanish Civil War, he quickly became an Express staffer, was appointed to the Express’s Paris office in 1938 and, as the Axis presence gathered, was selected by Arthur Christiansen to open an Express bureau in Rome. With Italy’s entry into the war in June 1940, Moorehead was transferred to Cairo to become the Daily Express chief correspondent in the Mediterranean and simultaneously British War Correspondent in the Western Desert. Moorehead’s writing from the battlefront was urgent and immediate. His compelling despatches on the British Army’s role in the African Campaign won him special prominence in the newspaper world and the title of ‘The Prince of War Correspondents’. He would bring his painterly eye and vivid reporting techniques to the D-Day Landing and to the very different scenes of conflict in Europe. Along the way, he published Mediterranean Front (1941), A Year of Battle (1943) and The End of Africa (1943)—brought together in 1944 as African Trilogy—and his sequel on the European war, Eclipse (1945). Tired of journalism and war, he retired with his English wife and children to Tuscany, writing a stream of books including Montgomery (1946), The Villa Diana (1951), The Traitors (1952) and Winston Churchill in Trial and Triumph (1955). Moorehead, however, was essentially a wanderer, and his skill and eloquence as a writer of historical narrative emerged from his far-flung journeys in Africa that produced No Room in the Ark (1957), The White Nile (1960) and The Blue Nile (1962), the prize-winning Gallipoli (1956), and a series of works that brought him back to his native shore and included Rum Jungle (1954), Cooper’s Creek (1963), The Fatal Impact (1966) and Darwin and the Beagle (1969). Published in their millions and widely translated, his books won him critical acclaim and international fame. Moorehead’s autobiographical A Late Education was published in 1970. He received an OBE in 1946, a CBE in 1968 and an AO in 1978. REFs: A. Moyal, Alan Moorehead (2005); Moorehead Papers (NLA). ANN MOYAL

MORRI SON, GEORGE ERNEST (‘CHINESE’) (1862–1920) A reporter’s first lesson is the value of being on the spot when newsworthy events occur. Such an approach was the mark of George Ernest Morrison’s extraordinary career. For more than 40 of his 58 years, Morrison found and reported on the major events and leading figures of his day. Indeed, he not only reported history, he made it, in the process becoming one of the most influential people of his time. Morrison, whose father founded Geelong College, walked to the tip of the Mornington Peninsula as a teenager, progressing to Adelaide

in 1880 and later from Normanton to Melbourne. He kept a diary throughout his life, which became the raw material for his reportage in the Age, where he exposed the ‘Kanaka’ slave trade in 1882. He was only 21 when the paper financed him to lead an expedition to cross New Guinea from south to north. It ended abruptly when Morrison was speared beneath the eye and in the abdomen. Sent to Scotland for an operation to remove the tips, he remained in Edinburgh to complete a medical degree. After a period as medical superintendent at Ballarat Hospital, he resumed his marathon journeys, culminating in a remarkable trek from Shanghai to Rangoon. The resulting book, An Australian in China (1895), brought him to the notice of the London Times, and from 1897 to 1912 he was the newspaper’s correspondent in Peking. This was a period of intense political activity in the area, and Morrison was always to the fore—a hero of the Boxer Uprising and an influential figure in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. However, he will be best remembered for the role he played—with another Australian journalist, William Donald—in paving the way for the downfall of the Ching Dynasty and the rise of the Chinese republic. Although Morrison came to believe he had ‘backed the wrong horse’ in supporting Yuan Shi-kai, he left the Times and continued to work for the republic until his death in 1920. He married his secretary, Jennie Robin, when he was 50 and she 23. Morrison has been the subject of several biographies, including by Frank Clune and Cyril Pearl, and inspired Linda Jaivin’s novel, A Most Immoral Woman (2009). The eldest of Morrison’s three sons, Ian, was the Times’ correspondent in Singapore at the time of the Japanese conquest in 1942. Ian was memorialised as the lover of novelist Han Suyin in A Many-Splendored Thing (1952) and was killed while reporting on the Korean War. REF: P. Thompson and R. Macklin, The Life and Adventures of Morrison of China (2007). ROBERT MACKLIN

MOSES, SIR CHARLES JOSEPH ALFRED (1900–88) Charles Moses was an influential Australian broadcaster and an inspiring and intimidating leader at the ABC in the mid-20th century. Moses was born on 21 January 1900 in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England. He migrated to Bendigo with his family, later moving to Melbourne and entering broadcasting. In August 1930, he became a radio announcer for the Australian Broadcasting Company. In 1934, Moses introduced commentary on cricket Tests played in England between England and Australia to the ABC, using cables sent from London and producing his own sound effects in the Sydney studios. As a consequence, the sale of radio sets increased dramatically.

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motoring journalism While the ABC began national broadcasts in 1932, with a public-interest obligation to meet the needs of those in country areas, it was not until 1935 that the ‘federalisation’ project expanded with the selection of Moses as general manager. New appointments were made for positions of federal controller of talks, federal controller of music, federal controller of celebrity concerts, federal controller of productions and federal news editor. The work undertaken in the new departments was coordinated by a federal controller of programs and financed from the increased revenue from wireless licences, which were being purchased by more people than expected. His guidance was much missed when he enlisted in the AIF and was appointed a lieutenant in 1940. Prime Minister John Curtin personally secured his return to the ABC early in 1943. Moses successfully broadcast educational programs, including general and political information, as well as ‘the best’ in entertainment such as drama, music and sport—with his main goals being to support local Australian talent of ‘high standards’ and develop a sense of national culture. Moses established permanent ABC orchestras in each state and in 1955, with (Sir) Eugene Goossens, was influential in advancing the planning for a Sydney Opera House. Moses appeared before a parliamentary committee in 1946 to argue the need for an independent news service, although the main champion was news editor Frank Dixon. Moses oversaw the ABC’s move to provide Australia’s first national television service, with initial broadcasts in time for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. Moses was made a CBE in 1954 and knighted in 1961. His relations with successive ABC chairmen were difficult, and his last decade at the organisation was clouded with controversy. Moses became the first Secretary-General of the Asian Broadcasting Union in November 1964 and retired from the ABC in January 1965. REF: K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983). TOIJA CINQUE

MO T ORI NG J OURNA LISM Reporting cars and motoring has evolved from the worship of power and performance to a preoccupation with fuel efficiency, lower emissions and safety. As far back as 1905, the Sydney Morning Herald carried a story by a ‘motoring correspondent’. Motoring journalism has been an almost exclusively male preserve, but there was one early exception: Myra Dempsey, who hosted sport and other sessions on commercial radio in Sydney and Bendigo in the 1930s. With the emergence of Australia’s first locally made, mass-produced car—the Holden—in 1947, specialist motoring writers began to surface. K.G. Murray launched a monthly

magazine, Wheels, in 1953, followed by Sports Car World four years later, while Modern Motor appeared from Consolidated Press Ltd in 1954. Prominent Australian motoring journalists of the 1950s were Athol Yeomans and Peter Burden (both of Wheels), Jules Feldman (co-founder of Wheels and Modern Motor), Peter Antill (Sunday Telegraph) and Sturt Griffith (Sydney Morning Herald) in Sydney, and Bryan Hanrahan (Age) and Keith Windsor in Melbourne. Welshman Pedr Davis began his freelance career with Wheels in 1953, and established a successful syndicated motoring section two years later. His road tests appeared in countless rural and suburban newspapers around Australia for 40 years, and he wrote more than 50 books. Evan Green, a long-distance rally driver and best-selling author, wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald in the late 1950s, then moved to the Seven Network as a commentator on the annual race at Bathurst. In 1972, Green wrote a controversial front-page story for the Sun-Herald, highlighting the dangers of powerful road-andtrack cars such as the Ford Falcon GTHO. Like other motoring journalists, Green was lured into public relations—in his case, for Holden. When Rupert Murdoch started the Australian in 1964, he appointed Mike Kable, who remained with the national broadsheet for decades, spreading his work further afield into the Sydney Daily Mirror before it closed. Larger-than-life Bill Tuckey found his metier in magazines and then a stream of books on motor racing. In 1963, as editor of Wheels, Tuckey introduced the prestigious Car of the Year Award, still running today. He wasn’t afraid to criticise new models, at one stage being blackballed by General Motors. He also invented an alter ego, an irascible Anglophile called Romsey Quints. Wheels’ editor, Peter Robinson, didn’t quite match Tuckey’s flamboyant writing style, but no one knew the industry and its people like he did. He was followed at Wheels by hard-nosed journalist Phil Scott, who moved on to set up the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Drive’ section in 1996. Australian television’s most significant motoring presenter was Peter Wherrett, a writer, advanced driving school operator and sometime racing driver. His ABC series, Torque (1973–80), became a magnet for consumers and car buffs, followed by Marque, a unique ABC series on the history of the motor car. Wherrett, David McKay, Evan Green and Peter Antill were all accomplished drivers who moved comfortably into evaluating cars after racing and rallying careers. However, legend has it that David Robertson was appointed Sydney Morning Herald motoring writer without possessing even a driver’s licence. Later the editor of Motor (formerly Modern Motor), he was always more accomplished at the keyboard than behind the wheel.

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murdoch family John Wright taught English at La Trobe University before writing about and collecting cars. Motor mechanic Barry Lake went on to found Chequered Flag (1974–89) before editing Motor, while David Berthon was an architect before entering motoring journalism with 2CH, 2GB and the Sydney Morning Herald. Motor sport commentator Will Hagon was a Leyland public relations officer before becoming Sunday Telegraph motoring editor and car expert at the ABC. An Australian Centre for Independent Journalism analysis of motoring articles in 2010 found over 64 per cent of stories across all 10 newspapers were generated by public relations. With the enormous popularity of the BBC Television series Top Gear in Australia as elsewhere, Top Gear Australia was aired on SBS in 2008–09 and Nine in 2010–11, although it did not prove as popular as the British original. In 2011, ABC Television broadcast a three-part series, Wide Open Road, a history of the car’s place in Australian society. In recent times, the internet—with its many motoring websites—has brought a new immediacy, though in some cases it has given a voice to those who have little to commend them other than a brash enthusiasm. The motoring sections of major newspapers are inexorably migrating from print to online. CarsGuide (a joint venture between News Corp Australia and leading car dealership groups), Fairfax Media’s Drive, and web-only sites Carsales, CarPoint Australia, The Motor Report and CarAdvice are all attracting high reader traffic. Increasingly, members of the motoring media are also required to be video presenters. As long as there is a car industry, there will be people wanting to write about cars. REF: M. Nichols, ‘From Kentucky to Cooee to Clarkson—Literary and International Influences in Automotive Journalism’, http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/ jomec/resources/mtm2011/Nichols_Mel.pdf. PETER McKAY

MOTT FAMI LY The Mott family has launched newspapers in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia and has owned or held an interest in Australian newspapers for all except seven years since 1856. George Henry Mott (1831–1906) started Albury’s first newspaper, the Border Post, in 1856 after working as a journalist in Melbourne and an editor in Castlemaine and Beechworth. He sold the paper in January 1859, but remained editor until 31 March 1860. The next day he became the owner of the Chiltern Standard in Victoria, and also soon bought the Ovens Tribune in Beechworth. In November that year, he again bought the Border Post. For 11 months, he published his three papers bi-weekly virtually as the one newspaper, with only slight variations. The Albury and Chiltern papers were published daily from 19 January

1863, but changed to tri-weekly 10 weeks later, only three weeks after buying the Constitution in Beechworth. Mott sold his newspapers in February 1864. As a citizen, he campaigned for separation of the Riverina, organised an anti-customs league and in 1868 was mayor of Albury. His greatest work was the formation of the North-Eastern Railway League, which resulted in the completion of the Melbourne–Wodonga line and the eventual link with Albury. In 1869, George Mott returned to Victoria, having bought a partnership in the Hamilton Spectator, which he edited until 1885. Three sons—Sydney Arthur Charnock (1859–1929), Hamilton Charnock (1871–1963) and Decimus Horace (1873–1947)—joined the rush to the Western Australian goldfields in the 1890s, starting newspapers at Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie. Back in Melbourne, with Federation a reality, Mott reminded his sons that Albury was one of the sites being considered for the national capital. Hamilton and Decimus returned to Albury and established the daily Border Morning Mail on 24 October 1903. With 11 Motts working at the Mail in 1924, the two brothers decided they should take separate paths. Hamilton stayed, buying the interest in the Mail held by Decimus, who moved to Melbourne with his family, buying and developing the Leader group of suburban newspapers. At least one of Decimus’s three older brothers owned newspapers in the suburbs of Melbourne from 1888 until 1923. The Leader group merged with Progress Press in 1976. By the 1980s, the Leader group controlled more than 40 per cent of Melbourne’s suburban newspapers. The Herald and Weekly Times bought Leader for $57 million in 1986, but was swallowed by News Limited a year later. One branch of the family continued its newspaper interests when Walter Hilaire Mott acquired an interest in the East Gippsland Newspaper Group (James Yeates & Sons Pty Ltd), publishers of the Bairnsdale Advertiser, Lakes Post and East Gippsland News. At Albury, the Mott family continued as owners of the Border Mail and moved it across the border to Wodonga in 1999. On 25 July 2006, John Fairfax Holdings Ltd (now Fairfax Media) completed the acquisition of the Albury daily that the Motts had run for 103 years. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000). ROD KIRKPATRICK

M U R D O C H FAM ILY The Australian-American media dynasty holds Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch (1885–1952) as its progenitor. Keith’s birth in Melbourne came a year after his father, a Free Church of Scotland Presbyterian Minister, emigrated with his family to Melbourne. Rev. Patrick John Murdoch (1850–1940) not only became an influential force in the Presbyterian Church in Australia,

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murdoch family his prodigious networking laid the ground in politics and the newspaper world for his son’s career. The family’s close-knit ties and Calvinistic discipline would also prove crucial. Despite his father’s hope that he would attend university and enter the church, Keith was determined to become a journalist. Inspiration came from his uncle, the academic and essayist Sir Walter Logie Murdoch (1874–1970). Connections with the Syme family smoothed Keith’s entry to the newspaper world as ‘a penny-a-liner’. Resilient and determined, Keith advanced to the role of federal political reporter. Keith’s fortunes accelerated during World War I. His notorious ‘Gallipoli letter’ in 1915 served as an entrée to political power in London and brought him to the attention of the press baron Lord Northcliffe, who became his mentor. The Murdoch family cite the mythologised importance of this letter as exemplifying the family’s support of press freedom, obscuring Keith’s darker actions as Prime Minister William Hughes’ spin doctor and propagandist for the conscription cause during the rest of the war. In 1921, Keith returned to Melbourne as editor of the Herald. For the next three decades, he drove the development of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), implementing a monopolising, countrywide chain model of newspapers and associated commercial radio stations. Clashes with the ABC over government-funded versus commercial broadcasting models, claims of interference in the political process and the favouring of business interests would all echo down the decades for his descendants. A workaholic, and devoted to his career, Keith remained a bachelor until he married 19-yearold (Dame) Elisabeth Greene (1909–2012) in 1928. Elisabeth bore Keith four children: Helen (later Handbury, 1929–2004), (Keith) Rupert (1931– ), Anne (later Kantor, 1936– ) and (Elisabeth) Janet (later Calvert-Jones, 1939– ). Towards the end of his life, Keith, who had been knighted in 1933, sought to build up an independent power base of media interests to hand on to Rupert. His will, written when Rupert was 16, declared the desire for his son to ‘have the great opportunity of spending a useful altruistic and full life in newspaper and broadcasting activities and of ultimately occupying a position of high responsibility in that field’. Rupert was still at the University of Oxford when Keith died in 1952. The estate’s debt meant the inheritance was largely reduced to News Limited and its Adelaide publication, the News. Rupert returned to Australia, having first gained Fleet Street experience with Lord Beaverbrook’s Express titles. With the support of his mother and sisters, he began a meteoric rise. He expanded News Limited aggressively, acquiring suburban and provincial newspapers throughout Australia, while moving into television. In 1964, he achieved an ideal held by his father: launching the country’s first national

daily, the Australian. From 1968, however, Rupert’s attention increasingly turned overseas, with acquisitions first in Britain and from 1973 in the United States. In 1985 he became an American citizen to enable him to expand his American operations and develop the Fox Network. Sentimental family ties and business opportunity coincided a year later back in Australia, however. With his mother at his side, Rupert announced the successful takeover of the HWT. The subsidiary has remained closest to the family’s heart, chaired initially by Janet Calvert-Jones and, since 2013, by her daughter, Keith’s granddaughter, Penny Fowler. Rupert’s first marriage to Patricia Booker brought him a daughter, Prudence (1958– ). His second marriage, in 1967, to Anna Maria Torv, an Estonian-Scottish journalist who worked for his titles, proved more enduring, with three children: Elisabeth (1968– ); Lachlan Keith (1971– ) and James Rupert (1972– ). Rupert’s divorce from Anna in 1999 laid bare a dynastic struggle. Anna agreed to the terms on the condition that the four existing children would be the sole beneficiaries of the Murdoch family trust and its significant holding of voting shares in News Corporation. Rupert’s controversial third marriage (1999–2013) to Wendi Deng resulted in two more daughters, Grace Helen (2001– ) and Hope (2003– ). In 2006, Rupert revealed that his two youngest daughters would receive equal shares in the family trust but would have no voting rights. All six children were given US $150 million in cash and stock. Though Prudence has never actively worked in the business, her husband, Alasdair MacLeod, was with News Corporation for 20 years and served as managing director of a News Limited subsidiary, the Community Newspapers Group, and then Nationwide News until his sudden resignation in 2010. Their three children are the oldest of Rupert’s grandchildren, so significantly placed in terms of the dynasty’s next generation. Elisabeth gained early experience with News Limited before working in News Corporation’s television interests in America and the United Kingdom. After a fractious time with BSkyB, she struck out on her own, founding production company Shine in 2001. Elisabeth sold the company to News Corporation in 2011 but declined an invitation to join the corporation’s board. Lachlan cut his commercial teeth at Queensland Newspapers Ltd. Groomed by Rupert as heir apparent, he rose through News Limited to become deputy chief operating officer of News Corporation but, frustrated by challenges to his authority, resigned in 2005. He had led the doomed purchase of One.Tel, though time would view News Limited’s 2000 investment in the website realestate.com.au more kindly. Insistent that he would not return to News Corporation, Lachlan based himself in Sydney, developing media interests through his Illyria

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music investment vehicle. In 2007 he joined forces with his friend and fellow media dynasty heir James Packer in failed bids to take over Consolidated Media Holdings. The pair also joined forces to invest in the struggling Ten Network, which Lachlan would later chair. Lachlan’s purchase of the Daily Mail Group’s Nova radio network has proved more prudent and profitable. James, initially regarded as the rebellious black sheep of the family, returned to the fold with international roles at Star TV in Asia and then BSkyB and News International in London. Following Lachlan’s resignation, his primacy in the succession appeared assured. From 2011, however, the fallout over phone hacking undermined his prospects. Branches of the family have directed their share of News Corporation wealth to philanthropy—such as the environmental initiatives of Eve Kantor, daughter of Anne. Matt Handbury, son of Helen, also successfully developed Murdoch Books, after purchasing the subsidiary from News Limited in 1991. Having served as the family matriarch for over eight decades, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch died in 2012, leaving 77 living descendants and a legacy of dedicated support for the arts and other causes. Keith’s memory is kept alive through the News Awards’ highest honour, the Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism. The 2013 rebranding of News Limited as News Corp Australia, following the global division of newspaper and entertainment interests, saw Murdoch family heritage re-emphasised: the font of the rebranded logo combines both Rupert and Keith’s handwriting. In 2014, those questioning the Murdochs’ ability to maintain control of two multi-billion dollar global corporations as effectively family businesses were confounded. With Lachlan’s return to active involvement as non-executive co-chairman of News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, and James’ appointment as cochief operating officer of 21st Century Fox, Rupert’s family succession plan seems—for the moment at least—assured. REFs: T.D.C. Roberts, ‘Before Rupert: Keith Murdoch, Media Power and the Genesis of a Dynasty’ (PhD thesis, 2013); M. Wolff, The Man Who Owns the News (2008). TOM D.C. ROBERTS

MUS I C Music has played an integral role in the media habits of Australians since Federation. Amalgamated Wireless Australasia (AWA) broadcast gramophone records as early as 1919. Music was a central part of the ABC’s early programming, with orchestral, choral and opera music fulfilling its charter to ‘elevate the mind’ from 1932. From the start, governments were prepared to encourage local music production.

Concerned about the health of an emerging local recording industry, the 1927 Tariff Board Inquiry proposed tariffs on imported recordings, which became law in 1928; the Australian Broadcasting Act 1942 stipulated that 2.5 per cent of radio airplay comprise Australian composers. Before and during World War II, live community singing, broadcast in large theatres, was especially popular with regional stations, which also provided Australian ‘hillbilly’ and country performers with their early radio experiences on programs such as The Smoky Dawson Show and Joy and Heather McKean’s The Melody Trail. Talent quests, such as Star Finder and Australia’s Amateur Hour, were also useful for filling airtime and encouraging local performers. After World War II, some 40,000 ABC concert subscribers listened to the ABC’s Sydney and Melbourne orchestras, while programming diversified to include ‘light entertainment’. By the 1950s, the visible emergence of a new demographic (youth) and a new media form (television) changed both the forms and roles of music across Australian media. The gradual importation of Top 40 programming from the United States provided a useful format for rock’n’roll, bolstered by the increase in the number of young people listening to radio in their cars and on transistor radios, and the increase in the local quota to 5 per cent. Local rock’n’roll stars could be found on television’s Your Hit Parade (HSV7, 1958), Brian Henderson’s Bandstand (TCN9, 1958–72) and Six O’Clock Rock (ABC2, 1959–62), hosted by Johnny O’Keefe. The GO! Show (1964–66) and Kommotion (1964–67) on the 0-10 network also produced loyal audiences. ‘Variety music’ continued to be an important staple of television variety and chat shows, such as Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music (1963–70). Show orchestras have played an important role in live television. Geoff Harvey (Tonight With Dave Allen, The Don Lane Show and Midday on Nine), Tommy Tycho (Review 61, The Mavis Bramston Show, The Saturday Show, and Sydney Tonight on Seven) and Brian May (ABC’s Melbourne Show Band) were influential across their employer stations, composing program theme songs in addition to band leadership duties. Network orchestras have also been vital to the array of reconfigured talent shows such as Dancing With the Stars, The X Factor and Australia’s Got Talent (Seven). Established in 1988, the SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra has proven to be an important training institution for young musicians. From May 1970, Australian radio stations refused to play the majors’ recordings for nine months, believing the recording companies’ claims to performance royalties to be unreasonable. Deprived of their central promotional source for new releases, the major labels ended the dispute. In 1973, the local radio quota rose to 10 per cent, then to 20 per cent in 1976.

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music For pop/rock audiences, GTK provided an important forum for Australian music in the early 1970s. The most successful music television program was arguably Countdown, which debuted on the ABC in 1974 and ran until 1987 hosted by Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, presenting (mimed) performances from international and local acts with interviews and video clips to an estimated audience of three million. Its unashamed pop stance in time was complemented by alternative programs that highlighted ‘indie’ music, such as Rock Arena, Rock Around the World and The Noise (SBS), and Beatbox (ABC). These programs provided bands with a national audience that in turn assisted in the formation of national touring circuits, as did the growth in local recording labels, including Festival (1952), W&G Records (1953), Albert Productions (1964), Mushroom (1972), Deluxe (1979) and Ivy League (1997). Festival and Mushroom were the only companies of sufficient size and influence to challenge the majors; they merged in 1998, with Festival-Mushroom becoming a part of News Corporation, and subsequently acquired by Warner Music in 2005. By 2010, founding owner Michael Gudinski had re-acquired the label as part of the new Mushroom Music group of companies. AM radio profited considerably from pop music programming. By 1978, Sydney’s 2SM had achieved 24.9 per cent audience share. Meanwhile, BAL Marketing (now Rural Press Events), which operated 2TM Tamworth, staged the first Australasian Country Music Awards in Tamworth in 1973, leading to the annual Tamworth Country Music Festival and promotion of Tamworth as Australia’s country music capital. After considerable government delay, FM radio was introduced in 1975, with classic music station 2MBS and ABC Classic FM in 1976, followed by rock/pop stations in 1980: 3EON and 3Fox (Melbourne), 2MMM and 2Day (Sydney), 4MMM (Brisbane), 5SSA (Adelaide) and 96FM (Perth). By the 1990s, many AM stations (2UW, 4BK, 5DN and 6PR) had converted to FM, while commercial music networks, such as Austereo, captured larger audiences. The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) was established in 1980, and has been influential in producing Indigenous country and rock acts, as well as Indigenous language recordings. The arrival on air in January 1975 of 2JJ, the ABC’s youth station, signified the public broadcaster’s commitment to local content not found on mainstream radio. The decision by the Whitlam Labor government in 1975 to allocate community radio licences provided an important forum for emerging artists. Stations such as 3RRR and 3PBS (Melbourne), 4ZZZ (Brisbane) and FBi (Sydney) all have policies offering at least 50 per cent Australian content, and have played a more decisive role in ‘indie’ scenes and genres

than the commercial networks. Further support was to be found in 2JJ’s shift to FM in 1980, when it rebranded as Triple J, and its subsequent programs dedicated to emerging Australian acts (Live at the Wireless, Unearthed and the Australian Music Show). The Howard Coalition government amended music broadcasting codes in 1999 to ensure that the mainstream, contemporary hits stations aired new local material. Popular music has also provided the occasional censorship controversy. In 1998, former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was successful in preventing further airplay of Simon Hunt’s recording ‘(I’m a) Back Door Man’ on Triple J, under the pseudonym ‘Pauline Pantsdown’. Subsequent court rulings on the song and Hunt’s next single, ‘I Don’t Like It’, agreed with Hanson’s argument that she was defamed. In 1996, the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) introduced a Recorded Music Labelling Code of Practice. Updated in 2003, the code incorporates a three-tiered system of warnings about explicit language on recordings. The Prices and Surveillance Authority’s Inquiry Into the Price of Sound Recordings in 1990 investigated the dominance of the multinational recording companies in Australia. The report concluded that, due to the absence of domestic price competition and protection from imports afforded by the Copyright Act 1968, Australian consumers paid excessive prices for CDs; it recommended the end of local subsidiaries’ exclusive licence agreements for CDs within Australia by allowing non-pirate CDs to be imported without requiring the consent of the Australian copyright owner (parallel importing). The recommendation became law in July 1998. Clear battle lines emerged between the industry, which argued the need for clear territorial rights and incomes, and the Howard Coalition government, which emphasised the economic benefits of reduced CD prices. Parallel importing has had little discernible effect upon local profits, and negligible effects upon CD pricing. The Australian music industries have been central to global debates in relation to media copyright law. They have consistently followed the lead of other national recording industry bodies (in particular, the Recording Industry Association of America) in a dual process of litigation and legislation to prevent illegal music copying and sharing. In 2003, ARIA launched cases against three universities, citing large volumes of downloading by students using university computers. In 2004, it initiated court action against Kazaa, a file-sharing company based in Sydney, with an estimated 60 million users globally. In 2005, the Australian Federal Court ordered Kazaa to implement software changes to prevent file-sharing. In 2003, the Federal Court upheld the rights of a number of recording companies against five disc jockeys who had sold unauthorised CDs containing remixed tracks.

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music The dominant global talent contest franchises (Popstars, Australian Idol and The X-Factor) have been local ratings successes as hybrids of reality television that exploit multimedia sponsorships and cross-promotion. While these programs have produced credible stars such as Guy Sebastian, they have provoked considerable debate within the music industry about their usefulness in finding and launching new artists. Following British television traditions, pop music has provided the basis for successful quiz programs (RocKwiz on SBS and Spicks and Specks on the ABC) that mix pop trivia, celebrities and nostalgia. The axing of Video Hits on the Ten Network in 2011 left Rage (ABC, 1987– ) and Channel [V] (pay television) as the primary sources of exposure for new music. On the ABC’s 70th birthday in 2002, it launched an online music station, DiG (later renamed Double J), targeted at 30- to 50-yearolds; this was followed by DiG Jazz and DiG Country. From 2009, they were broadcast digitally, and in 2011 they were joined by another digital radio station, Triple J Unearthed, devoted to new Australian music. SBS launched Chill, a world music digital radio channel; PopAsia, offering mainstream Asian pop music for younger Chinese Australians; PopDesi; and PopAraby. The Australian music industries continue to play a prominent role in reinforcing existing copyright law and revenues for audio-visual content. In 2007, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) was successful in Federal Court attempts to secure higher royalties from hotels, bars and nightclubs. In 2010, the PPCA achieved royalty increases from gym franchises. In 2012, the outcomes from other copyright battles were less clear. First, the case brought against iiNet, Australia’s second largest internet service provider (ISP), by Roadshow Films and 33 other multinational film and music companies in 2009, failed (twice, including subsequent appeals) in arguing that ISPs were ultimately responsible for any illegal downloading on or connected to their sites. The original Federal Court decision that iiNet was not responsible for and did not sanction the use of illegal copying technologies such as BitTorrent has failed to provide local music and television industries with the precedent ruling they wished to combat file-sharing. Second, the PPCA lost its 2011 application with the High Court to lift the 1 per cent cap on radio broadcasting royalties. Commercial Radio Australia (CRA) has questioned the viability of local music quotas on its stations. In 2011, CRA was successful in lobbying the federal government to withdraw local content quotas for digital music stations. In February 2013, the Federal Court upheld the PPCA’s claim that commercial broadcasters should pay

separate licensing fees for streamed internet simulcasts. Legal battles of this type reveal how much industry settings have changed in the last decade. Recent successes by the major recording companies and APRA/PPCA in raising composer incomes across ‘secondary’ media uses have been crucial in an era of declining revenue from ‘primary’ sales (CD and digital recordings). Yet they also connect with older industry assertions that music remains a central input, and not incidental, to other media businesses. Consumers continue to favour illegal copying systems, and radio and television networks view music as simply a cost to business. The Australian subsidiaries of the major recording companies (Universal, SonyBMG, Warner and EMI) now advocate the ‘graduated response’ laws for ISPs found in New Zealand, Britain, France and South Korea, which provide a process of identification, user warning and then disconnection from an ISP for illegal downloaders. New technologies continue to shape music consumption and forms of convergence with other media. The launch of the Apple iPod in 2001 instigated the biggest change in personal, mobile music listening since the introduction of the Sony Walkman in 1979. An Australian iTunes store has been in operation since 2005 and, with a current library of over 20 million songs, remains the market leader. Mobile phone ringtones were worth $4.7 million to the local industry in 2010, reinforcing the importance of revenue derived from secondary media sources. The ABC was an early adopter of podcasting from 2005 on its Triple J network, and other radio stations (including the Austereo network, 2MBS FM and 3RRR) have also realised the flexibility podcasts offer listeners. The internet has seriously challenged traditional radio in the range of services it offers. Last.fm remains a good example of an internet ‘radio’ service. Similarly, social networking media have assumed some of the promotional services traditionally conducted by recording companies. The major internet companies, Google and Yahoo, recently entered the music market, both offering subscription streaming services in an effort to challenge Apple’s dominant market share. Another successful streaming service in Europe, Spotify, was launched in Australia in 2012. How the various major digital media companies structure their relationships with recording labels and musicians will be a central question in the growth of online media. REFs: T. Cvetkovski, Copyright and Popular Media (2013); B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); S. Homan ‘Popular Music’, in S. Cunningham and S. Turnbull (eds), The Media and Communications in Australia (4th edn, 2014); J. Whiteoak and A. Scott-Maxwell, Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia (2003). SHANE HOMAN

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music magazines MUSIC B R O A D C A S TI N G S O C IE T IE S see community

radio; music

MU S IC MA GA Z I NES Australian publications in the 19th century often reported on opera and popular concerts. Australian Musical News (1911–63) focused more on classical music. As popular music became more commercial and internationally influenced, magazines provided important connections between audiences and artists. The local rock and pop industries benefited from an increasingly sophisticated music press from the 1960s, beginning with Go-Set in 1966. Published weekly in Melbourne until 1974, the teen-oriented title introduced the first national pop record charts and featured contributors including Stan ‘The Man’ Rofe, Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, Lily Brett and Vince Lovegrove. Interestingly, Go-Set predated the iconic international popular music magazine Rolling Stone by a year. Rolling Stone Australia was initially published by Go-Set’s co-founder, Phillip Frazer, in Melbourne in 1970 as a supplement in Revolution, a monthly counter-culture spin-off from Go-Set. When the Australian stand-alone version of Rolling Stone was released, it included local and international reports, and is one of the longest surviving international editions still in circulation. By 2013 it was published by the Bauer Media Group, with a circulation of 18,000. Influenced by the British rock magazines New Musical Express and Melody Maker, RAM (Rock Australia Magazine, 1975–89), Juke (1975–94) and Roadrunner: Australia’s Independent Music Paper (c. 1978–79) also provided fans with intelligent interviews and analysis. Following these were Australian versions of international pop titles like Smash Hits (1984–2007), Kerrang (2001–05), focusing on heavy rock music, and the Australian version of Classic Rock (2008– ). A relatively distinct local voice, Juice (1993–2003), was published as an alternative voice. ABC classical music titles such as 24 Hours (1989–2003) and Limelight (2003– ) focused on the most popular Australian and international artists of the day. Within the music magazine landscape in Australia, Rolling Stone is considered by publicists, record labels and artist managers to be a ‘long-lead’ publication—one with which publicists communicate in advance about editorial coverage. These include the weekend magazines that are published with newspapers, broader culture/style magazines such as frankie (2004– ), key music magazines like triple j magazine (2005– ) and trade publication The Music Network (1994–2013). These are usually published monthly and are key ‘taste-making’ publications. In addition, the Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA), the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), the

Australian Music Industry Directory (AMID) and the Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) have circulated trade oriented long-lead publications from time to time. Zines, magazines and newspapers are often referred to as the ‘street press’ because they are available free to consumers from outlets such as cafes, bars, clubs, live music venues and record stores. They are subsidised by advertising, and their editorial coverage sometimes correlates with advertising spending. These publications have varied over time in terms of funding, expertise, exposure and support; however, they remain important touchstones for artists, audiences and music enthusiasts, and have been an important resource for up-and-coming artists, journalists and photographers. While the front covers of street press magazines are often secured a long way out by publicists, these magazines are often used by live music promoters, due to their wide distribution and fast publication. Artists and promoters can sometimes pay to get editorial coverage and advertisements in a package deal with a short turn-around time to publication. Most major capital cities (and some regional centres) have had dedicated street press or community music press at some point; however, as with much media in recent times, these have also undergone changes in terms of ownership, networking and sharing of resources. A good example of this is Street Press Australia (SPA), which now owns formerly independent titles including Drum Media (Sydney, 1990– ); Perth, 2006– ), Inpress (Melbourne, 1988– ) and Time Off (Brisbane, 2004– ). The change in ownership, and the changing nature of media and music consumption, have meant that content is now shared broadly across these titles. In August 2013, SPA’s four titles were all rebranded as The Music, with additional features in each city edition, a move that also allowed for the consolidation of the print titles with the company’s internet presence, theMusic.com.au. Beyond SPA’s suite of publications are other street publications, including Brag (Sydney, 2003– ), Beat Magazine (Melbourne, 1989– ), Rip It Up Magazine (Adelaide, 1989– ) and X press Magazine (Perth, 1990– ). Specific music genres have their own publications. The development of jazz in Australia was covered notably in Australian Band News, established in 1906 and continuing as Music Maker until 1972. In the country music field, the monthly Capital News has been published out of Tamworth since 1989, while Country Update (1996– ) is published quarterly. The enduring challenge for any niche publisher in Australia, with its small population, is to survive commercially. For example, during publication of its 361 monthly issues, Opera Australia/Opera-Opera (1978–2007) was supported by the finances and professional diligence of its sole editor, David Gyger. Such

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music reviewing Australian publishing requires subsidy—in ‘cash and kind’—by all who are associated with it. Music Forum (1996– ), the monthly organ of the Music Council of Australia, publishes serious material on music education, music and society, composition, music and political policy as well as reviews of recordings, largely thanks to the benevolence of the editor, Dr Richard Letts. The significance of print titles has diminished in the digital age, as online magazines, websites, gig guides and blogs have largely superseded them. These include the Oz Music Project (archived at Pandora) and sites dedicated to specific genres like inthemix (dance), FasterLouder (rock), and Mess+Noise (indie/ alternative), which over the last decade have developed strong followings locally as well as internationally, covering Australian music as well as international artists visiting here. Consumers can now access editorial content from leading international magazines and blogs such as Pitchfork.com and NME.com, and promoters can use Facebook and other social media to advertise shows to consumers. REFs: S. Groth and S. Sennett, Sean (eds), Off The Record (2010); D. Kent, The Place of Go-Set in Rock and Pop Music Culture in Australia, 1966 to 1974 (2002). GUY MORROW

MUS I C REVI E WING The first report of musical performance in the colony at Sydney Cove is in the diary of Surgeon Arthur Bowes (Smyth), revealing that the legal inauguration of the new society on 7 February 1788 was accompanied by music: ‘The Marines … received the Governor with flying colours and a Band of Music … the Soldiers marched with music playing Drums and fifes’. François Péron, who visited Port Jackson in 1802, noted that at church services, ‘the regimental band plays various pieces’ and that the band of the New South Wales Corps was ‘numerous and well-composed’. Those bands were the backbone of early colonial music-making, both in the theatre (including The Beggar’s Opera in 1797) and in public and religious ceremonies. It is generally considered that the earliest authentic music reviews appeared in 1826 in the Sydney Monitor and the Australian. The knowledge of the anonymous writers was certainly not trivial, despite their sometimes quaint vocabulary. For such a young colony, there was a remarkable amount of musical journalism because of the impressive extent of musical activity, which involved such significant names as W. Vincent Wallace, the Deane family and, after 1840, the singers Anna Bishop and Catherine Hayes, as well as the composer-performer Stephen Marsh and Isaac Nathan, who brought considerable journalistic experience from London. Later in the century, the experienced Australian-educated journalist Francis Campbell

Brewer wrote his comprehensive essay, Drama and Music in New South Wales. The music of Australia’s Indigenous people attracted early attention. In his Account of the English Colony in New South Wales (1798), the Judge-Advocate, David Collins, wrote: ‘[T]hey begin at the top of their voices, and continue as long as they can in one breath, sinking to the lowest note, and then rising again to the highest.’ The doctor-biologist John Lhotsky collected some Aboriginal music, but seemed not to have written about it, while Isaac Nathan did both, notably in The Southern Euphrosyne and Australian Miscellany (1849). He also collected ‘Koo-ees’ and successfully set one, the Koorinda-Braia of the ‘Maneroo tribe’, to music. The explorer and governor George Grey gave serious attention to the native people’s music in his Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery (1841), emphasising the social and ritual importance of music as well as the strong association of song and dance. In more recent years, anthropologists and musicologists have made and published numerous detailed field studies of Indigenous music (notably Alice Moyle), including its more recent incorporation into popular music. The wealth deriving from gold discoveries and growing pastoral prosperity made Australia an attractive destination for visiting musicians such as Paolo Giorza and Sir Frederick Cowen, as well as the many who chose to live and work here. Inevitably, as concert-giving increased (Giorza, for example, was contractually obliged to provide a daily concert during the 1879–80 International Exhibition in Sydney), so did journalistic commentary, with the three noteworthy names being Dr  James Edward Neild in Melbourne (Australasian, Melbourne Punch, Weekly Review and Victorian), Gerald Marr Thompson (Daily Telegraph and Sydney Morning Herald) and James Griffen Foley (Star and Sun) in Sydney. All had been born and educated abroad, and wrote about drama as well as music; they were all extremely influential and feared. Henry Tate was a versatile writer whose writing about music—as a critic for the Melbourne Age (1924–26) and as a thoughtful composer and musical philosopher—was his most important achievement, particularly the essay Australian Musical Resources: Some Suggestions (1917) and the more substantial Australian Musical Possibilities (1924), in which he urged the creation of an ‘Australian school of music’ that drew on the sounds of the bush. European fascism and World War II greatly enriched Australian music criticism. When Kurt (Curt) Prerauer arrived in 1934, it was with a formidable background, especially in modernist music (he had been coach for the Berlin and London premières of Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck). His first writing was in the earliest issues of the ABC Weekly, established in 1939;

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music reviewing he also presented opera broadcasts on ABC Radio. He wrote for the Sydney Sun and several European publications, but his greatest influence was as a music critic (with his wife, Maria) for the fortnightly Nation from 1960 to 1967. He championed Australian composition, initially Peter Sculthorpe and then Richard Meale. Neville Cardus, an Englishman who spent the war years in Sydney, succeeded Prerauer at the ABC Weekly as well as broadcasting on ABC Radio and writing for the Sydney Morning Herald. His was an experienced but conservative journalistic voice, and he was both less passionate and philosophical as a commentator than the German-Jewish composer and teacher, Felix Werder, who succeeded the composer Dorian Le Gallienne at the Age (1963–75). Werder was followed by the far more conservative Kenneth Hince. At the Herald, John Sinclair—whose background was in art—also offered his Victorian readers a traditional musical outlook. Roger Covell exerted considerable influence in his four decades at the Sydney Morning Herald (1960–2011). He paid notable attention to opera and Australian composition. His book, Australia’s Music: Themes of a New Society (1967), was a substantial achievement. At the Australian (1971–96), Maria Prerauer was no less passionate or authoritative but, in mostly restricting her politics and advocacy to her ‘Marietta’s Column’, was arguably more trustworthy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ‘outer’ states have been less well served, though the eminent Handel scholar, Dr Robert Dalley-Scarlett, at the Brisbane Courier-Mail (1945–46, 1952–59) was a glowing exception, as were Albert Kornweibel in Perth, who wrote on music, dance and drama for almost 50 years as ‘Fidelio’ in the West Australian, and composer Tristram Cary in Adelaide in the 1980s. There were periods when the religious press did better than the metropolitan dailies. In the Sydney Catholic Weekly, Ron Roberts regularly reviewed classical recordings: while those reviews were almost invariably (and probably unrealistically) positive, he performed a notable service simply by documenting those activities. Even News-Weekly, the newspaper

of the National Civic Council, ran articles on ‘classical’ music—both concerts and recordings. Pop and rock music were not so much reviewed as covered in a wide range of media outlets, from the Australian Women’s Weekly and its ‘Teenagers Weekly’, to disc jockeys on commercial radio. The establishment of Go-Set in Melbourne in 1966 provided a dedicated place for pop and rock criticism. The music reviewer who most helped shape popular music discourse in Australia was Lillian Roxon (1932–73), the Italian-born, Australian trained writer and activist who served as New York correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald in the 1960s among other appointments. Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopaedia (1969) was one of the first international commentaries on pop and rock. While ABC Radio has played a great deal of music over its history (‘classical’ repertoire on its national FM network since 1975 and before that on its AM network, as well as ‘non-commercial rock’ and other innovative popular music, with an Australian emphasis, on its youth network Triple J), it has a scrappy record in musical reportage and commentary. Glen Menzies’ Music Magazine in the 1960s and 1970s and Andrew Ford’s wide-ranging Music Show (1991– ) are noteworthy exceptions. ABC Radio, especially with such informed and committed presenters as Eric Child and Kym Bonython, consistently offered news and commentary as well as presenting jazz. Popular music journalists and reviewers include Glenn A. Baker (former Australian editor for international trade publication Billboard), Toby Creswell, Clinton Walker, Craig Mathieson, Jeff Apter and Christie Eliezer. Television has been a wasteland for classical music—both its performance and reportage—with critical commentary and assessment systematically (and ideologically) spurned. REFs: W. Bebbington (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Australian Music (1997); R. Covell, Australia’s Music (1967); A. Gyger, Civilising the Colonies (1999); J. Whiteoak and A. Scott-Maxwell (eds), Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia (2003). JOHN CARMODY

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N NARROW CAST I N G A new broadcasting category called ‘narrowcasting’ was introduced by the Broadcasting Services Act 1992. Originally thought of as a radio medium, television narrowcasters also broadcast in and into Australia. Narrowcasting is a creature of legislation, yet narrowcasters operate under a ‘class licence’, allowing them to provide a service without ever having to ‘apply’ for a licence under the Act. Many narrowcasters use low-power transmission licences under the Radiocommunications Act 1992, but they can use any transmission technology so long as the service can be received by an audience. Narrowcasters are required to comply with the standard conditions applying to all broadcasters, and they must also create and abide by Codes of Practice. Two types of narrowcasting exist— subscription (pay) and open (free)—sharing descriptive criteria intended to fill a gap in the services provided by commercial and community broadcasters. Narrowcasting has a niche or specialty remit, and is intended to provide services for special-interest groups, in limited locations (such as arenas or business premises), during a limited period or to cover a special event, to provide programs of limited appeal and other types of niche services. Despite the intention that narrowcasting should have a narrow focus, a number of open radio narrowcasters interpreted these rules broadly, and set up services in competition with commercial and community broadcasters. After a series of complaints, investigations and findings against a number of narrowcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) issued Clarification Notices in 2001 (varied in 2011), specifying the types of content narrowcasters are allowed to provide and the amount of time they are allowed to broadcast. Typically, narrowcasters can broadcast special events and pre-recorded looped services such as tourist information stations, and content with a narrow remit, such as religious services (but not popular religious music) and ethnic broadcasting. Since 2002, open radio narrowcasters have been required to provide the ABA—now the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)—with information about their service, and any changes.

Anti-Terrorism Standards have applied to open and pay television narrowcasters since 2006. Following amendments in 2008 and 2011, narrowcasters cannot broadcast material that directly recruits a person to join, or participate in, the activities of a ‘listed terrorist’, solicit funds or assist in the collection or provision of funds for a listed terrorist, or advocate the doing of a terrorist act. REFs: ACMA, Narrowcasting for Radio: Guidelines and Information About Open and Subscription Narrowcasting Radio Services (May 2011), Guidelines Relating to the Broadcasting Services (Anti-Terrorism Requirements for Subscription Television Narrowcasting Services) Standard 2011 (July 2011), and Broadcasting Services (Anti-terrorism Requirements for Open Narrowcasting Television Services) Standard 2011 (July 2011). MARETT LEIBOFF

N ATIO N AN D N ATIO N R EVIEW Bearing the motto ‘An Independent Journal of Opinion’ from issue no. 1 on 26 September 1958 to the final issue, no. 345, on 22 July 1972, Nation was published fortnightly by the Nation Review Company, privately owned by its founder Tom Fitzgerald. Uncomfortable with the degree of editorial control exerted by proprietors of largecirculation Australian newspapers, and critical of their standard of journalism, Fitzgerald sought to establish an alternative source of information combining superior journalism with comprehensive coverage of politics, business, economics and the arts. Its format allowed Nation to respond to developing news, and to investigate and analyse topical issues more thoroughly than was usual in daily newspapers. With a background as financial editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, Fitzgerald established trusted business credentials for Nation. For the first issue he secured articles from William Macmahon Ball, Geoffrey Sawer, (Sir) Richard Kirby, Cyril Pearl, Walter Stone and Selwyn Speight, with arts reviews by himself, A.A. Phillips, K.S. Inglis, John Passmore and Sylvia Lawson. A significant recruitment was George Munster, initially as Nation’s business manager,

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national film and sound archive of australia

and subsequently as a contributor of incisive articles. Fitzgerald and Munster established a close and effective partnership that directed the style and tenor of Nation through to its demise. The George Munster Independent Journalism Award, instituted on his death in 1984, recognises and celebrates the pursuit of highquality independent journalism exemplified by Nation. Nation accepted articles by both emerging and established journalists and writers, who were attracted by the journal’s high literary standards and independence. Mungo MacCallum, Bob Ellis, Robert Hughes, Manning Clark and Max Harris were among a lengthy list of esteemed contributors. Through these writers, the influence of Nation on journalism and on the politics and culture of Australia exceeds the bounds of its circulation figures. Confident in the rigorous research routinely conducted by George Munster, Nation successfully withstood many threatened libel actions. Most editions of Nation were printed by Francis James, who lent his own sense of swashbuckling dissidence to the venture. In an amicable arrangement, Nation was purchased by Gordon Barton in 1972 and incorporated into Nation Review. Barton was a colourful, eccentric and successful entrepreneur. Politically galvanised by his opposition to Australian military involvement in the Vietnam War, he determined to influence public opinion through a new anti-war political party, the Australia Party, and—on Richard Walsh’s advice —by inaugurating an independent Melbourne newspaper, the Sunday Observer. He went on to launch a national newspaper, initially titled the Sunday Review, first published on 11 October 1970 and edited by Michael Cannon. In January 1971, Walsh assumed the editorship. From 16 July 1971, the banner was reduced to Review, reflecting differing national publication schedules. With the demise of Nation, the banner was again changed, appearing as Nation Review from 29 July 1972. The short-lived sibling Living Daylights was briefly incorporated in May 1974. In June 1978, Geoffrey Gold bought Nation Review from Barton, but falling circulation figures compelled its discontinuation on 11 October 1979. In January 1980, Nation Review was resurrected in monthly magazine format, a strategy that failed to prevent its demise in September 1981. Nation Review was infused with an irreverent larrikinism, derived in part from Walsh’s editorial experiences with university student newspapers, and from the recruitment of Owen Webster, Michael Leunig and others from the defunct Broadside magazine. Contributors recruited from Nation, including Cyril Pearl, Sol Encel and George Munster as co-editor, brought a balancing sense of professional gravitas. Mungo MacCallum wrote searching political analyses and John Hepworth provided

whimsical social commentary. Leunig created the cartoon character with which the newspaper became identified—the Ferret, immortalised by the newspaper’s slogan, ‘Lean and nosey like a ferret’. The newspaper gave equal scrutiny to the perceived faults of both Labor and Coalition governments. Outrage at the Dismissal of Gough Whitlam’s Labor government in 1975 was continued well into Malcolm Fraser’s prime ministership. Scrutiny of state-based issues was comprehensive, while broader social and cultural causes were a recurring theme. Circulation was estimated to have exceeded 54,000. Readers identified themselves as ‘Ferret types’: well-educated, politically and socially engaged, and with a taste for sometimes acerbic wit. REFs: K.S. Inglis (ed.), Nation (1989); R. Walsh, Ferretabilia (1993). DAVID OLDS

NAT IONA L A BORIGINA L A ND IS L A NDE R BROA DCA S T ING A S S OCIAT ION see Australian

Indigenous Communications Association

N ATIO N AL FILM AN D SO U N D AR C H IVE O F AU STR ALIA This institution—a vital repository of Australia’s moving image and recorded sound history—began as the National Historical Film and Speaking Record Library, established by Cabinet in 1935 under the joint aegis of the Commonwealth National Library (forerunner of the National Library of Australia) and the Cinema Branch of the Department of Commerce, the government film production unit. Probably only the second formal entity in the world established to preserve both films and sound recordings, it lapsed during World War II. The search and rescue of early films was revived in the mid-1950s by the National Library’s Film Division, as an activity secondary to its main distribution library operation. Surviving prints of classics like The Sentimental Bloke (1919) and On Our Selection (1920), as well as the film record of the Federation ceremonies on 1 January 1901, were tracked down. (Australia was the first country to be born in front of a movie camera.) A moribund production industry, only gradually stimulated by the arrival of television in 1956, and general disregard for the cultural, artistic and historical value of film, created an unpromising climate for archiving. This changed in the 1970s, with the revival of the film industry and the advent of new institutions like the Australia Council for the Arts and the Australian Film and Television School. In 1972, the National Film Archive became a separate staff unit within the National Library, which also established a parallel archive for sound

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national indigenous news service recordings soon afterwards. In both, collections and user demand grew rapidly. In the 1980s, initiatives like The Last Film Search heightened public awareness of Australia’s vanishing film heritage, and also affirmed a long-felt need for an autonomous institution to take charge of the nation’s audio-visual heritage. Although opposed by the National Library, the government detached its film and sound archives, and reconstituted them as a new agency, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), in 1984. Headquartered in Canberra, in the landmark building that had formerly housed the Institute of Anatomy, the NFSA also promptly opened offices in Melbourne and Sydney. It remains a multilocational operation. In 1985, its first Advisory Committee produced the globally influential report Time in Our Hands, a grand vision for the institution that has (finally) been fulfilled. Enabling legislation failed to arrive as expected in 1986, and the NFSA remained an outrider of a succession of government departments, with its independence gradually eroding. Its situation was complicated by an unpopular name change to ScreenSound Australia in 1999, marking the opening of its building extension; the name change was reversed in 2004. Meanwhile in 2003, for reasons never made clear, the Howard Coalition government merged the NFSA with the Australian Film Commission, a funding and promotional body. It proved a disastrous marriage of incompatible partners, with the Commission attempting to dismantle the institution while advocacy groups fought to save it. The groups won: in 2008, the new Rudd Labor government passed the National Film and Sound Archive Act, which provides the Archive’s present mandate and its security. It has a staff of around 240 and an annual government subvention of about $23 million. Throughout its history, the NFSA and its predecessors have survived and grown through grass-roots activism, which has counteracted institutional indifference and unwise government policy decisions. Prior to 1984, the film and sound archives had essentially been anachronisms inside a book-oriented research library. A low priority, they grew slowly. After 1984, the NFSA expanded rapidly but, lacking a legislative base and independent governance, was vulnerable to bureaucratic and political whim. In the 1970s, the Association for a National Film and Television Archive campaigned for its independence, assisted in the 1980s by the Australian branch of the International Association of Sound Archives (IASA). In the 1990s and beyond, this drive was led by the Friends of the National Film and Sound Archive, the Archive Forum (a self-appointed group of prominent individuals knowledgeable about the NFSA), the Australian Society of Archivists and the Australian Historical Association. The NFSA was instrumental in establishing the South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archive

Association in 1996. The NFSA remains the largest, best equipped and best developed audio-visual archive in the region, and serves as a mentor and teacher: a postgraduate distance learning course in the profession is run in conjunction with Charles Sturt University. Both the institution and several of its staff have international reputations, and some of its collection icons have been inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World registers. Every year, its Sounds of Australia register brings 10 new audio items of significance to the forefront of the national memory. The NFSA’s website offers a taste of what is now a vast collection of images and sounds. To the traditional challenges of preserving deteriorating film, audiotape and videotape are now added the tasks of digital preservation and access. The Friends of the NFSA has transformed itself into a more traditional support society, and the group now operates a website with its own window into the NFSA and its constituency. Visitors to the NFSA’s Canberra headquarters will find exhibitions, a library, shop, cafe, and the sophisticated Arc—the nation’s only fully equipped archival cinema. REF: R. Edmondson, ‘National Film and Sound Archive: The Quest for Identity’ (PhD thesis, 2011). RAY EDMONDSON

NAT IONA L INDIGE NOUS ME DIA A S S OCIAT ION OF A US T RA L IA see Australian Indigenous

Communications Association

N ATIO N AL IN D IG EN O U S N EW S SER VIC E Five years after the launch of the National Indigenous Radio Service (NIRS) in 1996, Australia’s first National Indigenous News Service (NINS) went to air. Operating on a tight budget out of the NIRS studios in Brisbane, the NINS provides a general, independent, national news service, which features Indigenous perspectives on local, national and international events. NINS relies on Indigenous communities across Australia to provide both sources for news and news stories themselves. It employs three full-time journalists and reaches around 150 community radio stations in urban, regional and remote Australia. The service emerged amidst turmoil in the Indigenous broadcasting sector. In 2000, the Productivity Commission handed down its report on Australian broadcasting, for the first time acknowledging the existence of an Indigenous media sector. While news was mentioned, it was not a focus. In August the following year, moves to set up a national Indigenous broadcasting service emerged from the besieged Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). One month later, the peak body representing Indigenous media across the country—the National Indigenous Media Association of

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national indigenous radio service Australia (NIMAA)—was disbanded after endorsing a national Indigenous broadcasting proposal. By September, bush broadcasters had set up their own representative organisation (the Indigenous Remote Communications Association), and quickly moved to launch what became the innovative Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) using a spare Imparja Television channel. Despite the very foundations of the Indigenous broadcasting sector coming under challenge, the NINS emerged without fuss as a result of the strong position held by the NIRS, its strong Brisbane-based support, and the need across Australia for an Indigenous perspective on events in the public sphere. REF: M. Meadows and H. Molnar, ‘Bridging the Gaps: Towards a History of Indigenous Media in Australia’, Media History, 8(1) (2002). MICHAEL MEADOWS

N AT IONAL I NDI GENOUS RADIO SERVICE The first test broadcast for the National Indigenous Radio Service (NIRS) was in July 1994 at an annual general meeting of the National Indigenous Media Association of Australia (NIMAA), with the official launch on 25 January 1996. The idea for a national Indigenous broadcasting service was discussed in Indigenous circles for decades before finally coming to fruition following recommendations in the 1988 government-commissioned Digital Dreaming report on Indigenous broadcasting. Despite broad federal government acceptance of the report’s recommendations, the political will to fund a national Indigenous broadcasting service lagged well behind Indigenous expectations. However, with strong support from Labor Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Minister Robert Tickner, the first Indigenous national broadcasting service in Australia emerged almost unheralded. With technical advice from the ABC, the national network was designed to use several major satellite uplink sites from which Indigenous-produced programming could be sent to Indigenous communities around the country that had the appropriate reception equipment. The original aim was that the NIRS would provide programming to community radio broadcasters who had no resources to produce their own material. The 24-hour-a-day service allows communities to switch it off when desired to enable them to broadcast their own local radio programs. However, because of limited resources in most remote Indigenous communities, the NIRS is often the only available Indigenous radio service. The Brisbane-based network uses a wide variety of music and talk produced by Indigenous media associations around the country. The NIRS reaches around 300 community radio stations across Australia, forming a network that rivals the ABC in terms of its reach and diversity.

This includes around 120 Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) communities, 23 dedicated Indigenous radio stations and an additional 120 community radio stations that include Indigenous programming in their formats. REFs: M. Meadows and H. Molnar, ‘Bridging the Gaps: Towards a History of Indigenous Media in Australia’, Media History, 8(1) (2002) and Songlines to Satellites (2001). MICHAEL MEADOWS

N ATIO N AL IN D IG EN O U S TELEVISIO N National Indigenous Television (NITV) commenced broadcasting in Sydney in July 2007. The NITV charter stated that the service would inform, educate and entertain ‘Indigenous and other audiences about Australia’s Indigenous people and customs and issues of interest to Indigenous Australians’. The original vision for NITV, as put forward by the Indigenous broadcasting sector during the scoping period, was that it be a third public broadcaster—a statutory authority to sit alongside the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), available to a national audience. The result was closer to a content aggregator model than a national broadcaster. NITV was nonetheless a significant initiative in the history of Australian media, representing the largest single investment in Indigenous television. Under the Howard Coalition government, NITV was originally funded for $48.5  million over four years, which was extended in 2010–11 by another $15.2 million (half the annual budgets for Canada’s Aboriginal People’s Television Network (A$36  million) and Maori Television in New Zealand (A$32 million)). Unfortunately, the government did not make free-to-air spectrum available for NITV to commence as a truly national channel. NITV was instead distributed using existing Indigenous broadcasting infrastructure, including Imparja Television’s second satellite channel and Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) transmitters in remote areas. A remote Indigenous television service, Indigenous Community Television (ICTV), which had been using Imparja’s satellite channel since 2001, was forced to vacate the satellite channel to make way for NITV. The displacement of ICTV for NITV caused significant tension within the Indigenous broadcasting sector. A review of NITV in 2009, known as the Watson Review, found that NITV had not adequately provided for remote Indigenous programming. ICTV relaunched as an independent entity late that year, using the internet (Indigitube) and the Westlink satellite service at weekends. NITV managed to extend its own potential audience reach through negotiations with satellite and pay television networks, as well as a digital television test transmission in Sydney

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national press club from 2008 to 2010. The station was also rebroadcast on analogue in Alice Springs, Mount Isa and Bourke. Aside from NITV News, the station’s only in-house production, NITV relied on the acquisition of existing content, as well as commissioned programming from independent producers. The long-term future of NITV was considered in the 2010 Indigenous Media and Broadcasting Review (the Stevens Review). The report recommended that NITV needed to better meet the expectations of its stakeholders—a veiled criticism of its failure to provide access for RIBS-produced programming. In 2012, Labor Senator Stephen Conroy announced that NITV would become part of SBS’s suite of channels, and that there would be Indigenous representation on the SBS board. Funding was then made available to Imparja to enable it to again host the ICTV channel on the VAST (Viewer Access Satellite Television) platform. Since moving to SBS, NITV has made significant efforts to increase remote programming. REF: E. Rennie and D. Featherstone, ‘The Potential Diversity of Things We Call TV: Indigenous Community Television, Self-determination and NITV’, MIA, 129 (2008). ELLIE RENNIE

NAT I ONA L I NDIGENOUS TIM ES Australia’s second national Indigenous newspaper, the National Indigenous Times (NIT), was launched in Batemans Bay, New South Wales on 27 February 2002. Aboriginal campaigner and Koori Mail founder Owen Carriage was a key figure in the conception of the NIT. He wanted the NIT to be a publication that was not intimidated by Indigenous organisations, state or federal governments, or individuals. The NIT has proved itself to be a strong political voice and advocate for Indigenous rights. In 2004, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) whistleblowers leaked information to NIT journalists about government plans to abolish ATSIC. The story’s broad public interest led NIT staff to ask the Australian Financial Review to break the story. As a consequence, and acting on a complaint from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on 11 November 2004, Australian Federal Police raided the NIT office and editor Chris Graham’s home. The Australian Financial Review offices were not raided, and no charges were laid against any NIT employees. The raid received international condemnation from organisations such as Reporters Without Borders. Graham and colleague Brian Johnstone, together with AAP, were highly commended in the 2004 Walkley Awards for their coverage of the ‘stolen wages’ issue. Graham and Johnstone were awarded a 2005 Walkley Award for their work on the ‘Cabinet leaks’ story.

The NIT was published fortnightly until 2011, when it moved to weekly publication. It receives no government funding and survives on sales (around 14,000) and advertising revenue. REFs: E. Burrows, ‘Writing to Be Heard: The Indigenous Print Media’s Role in Establishing and Developing an Indigenous Public Sphere’ (PhD thesis, 2009); http://www.nit.com.au. ELIZABETH BURROWS

N ATIO N AL P R ESS C LU B In late 1962, a small group of Canberra-based journalists and public relations professionals began planning the formation of the National Press Club. They held lofty ambitions. Prominent speakers from Australia and abroad would be invited to speak and answer questions over lunch. Annual membership was set at 10 shillings per annum. This was a different era: the pre-internet age, a time of relative political civility. John Fairfax & Sons was thriving, while the Australian was still on the drawing board. (Sir) Robert Menzies was still prime minister and the male-dominated Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery was led by such lions as Alan Reid and Ian Fitchett. In the tight confines of ‘old’ Parliament House, Press Gallery reporters had privileged access to the political titans of the day. The concept of a press club as a forum where journalists could listen to and question political leaders was met with scepticism by many. Tony Eggleton, then in public relations for the Royal Australian Navy and later to become a key figure in the Liberal Party, was instrumental in establishing the National Press Luncheon Club, as it was initially called. He was appointed inaugural chairman in November 1962, while Harry Keen was elected vice-chairman. It would be another two years before John Bennetts of the Melbourne Age would be appointed as the club’s first ‘working press’ chairman. The fledgling club’s leadership knew they had to cut through Press Gallery cynicism. They invited Menzies to launch the club as its inaugural speaker. However, circumstances conspired against this, and the club’s first address, on 17 June 1963, was delivered by Sir Garfield Barwick, Minister of External Affairs and Attorney-General, who spoke to around 80 guests, including journalists, public relations professionals, diplomatic staff and interstate visitors. Some 50 years later, the National Press Club has become the premium arena in Australia for political and public debate on matters of national and global significance. During the early years, the rotation of speakers was kept to around one a month. It was only after the club attracted the likes of Menzies and Labor leader Gough Whitlam, and international heavy hitters such as Richard Nixon and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, that the Press Gallery started to take it seriously.

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From a base of 55 financial members, the club was able to maintain a steady growth path until it opened its own building in Barton, a few kilometres from Parliament House, on 27 May 1976. Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser delivered a gracious speech. Since then, the National Press Club has undergone significant refurbishment—most recently in 2013. The club went through tough financial times in the mid-1990s, when it was forced to sell off a number of units in order to pay down its bank debts. And there plenty of drama and protest has occurred regarding many of the club’s speakers— an estimated 1500 protesters for One Nation leader Pauline Hanson in 1997 holds the record. But the list of speakers, stretching over more than 50 years, is unequalled in Australia. They include political leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Kofi Anna, Indira Ghandi, Pierre Trudeau and Vaclav Havel, as well as celebrities like Peter Ustinov and Shirley MacLaine. Microsoft founder and global philanthropist Bill Gates holds the record for the biggest crowd (around 1200) for his address in February 1994. The lunch was moved to the National Convention Centre to cope with the unprecedented demand for tickets. Every Australian prime minister from Menzies (with the exception of John McEwen, who addressed the club as acting prime minister) has used the pulpit to launch landmark reforms or to appeal to hardened voters. Hunter S. Thompson’s celebrated 1976 appearance is remembered fondly, as much for his inebriated state as for the Gonzo journalist’s invitation to the audience to join him post-address in his hotel room. Over the last several decades, the National Press Club has become an important part of the federal election landscape. The leaders’ debate has become a regular fixture, at times creating controversy in its own right. An address to the National Press Club is now an integral part of the campaign, although opposition leader John Hewson withdrew from his scheduled appearance days before the 1993 election. That decision provided Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating with a golden opportunity to accuse his rival of running scared. Another leader who fell foul of the National Press Club was Tony Abbott. As Minister for Health in 2007, he turned up 30 minutes late for a debate with Labor’s Nicola Roxon, and was later heard uttering a profanity on camera—a scene replayed on the television news. He has not been late to a Press Club event since. STEVE LEWIS

N AT IONAL T I MES The National Times was launched in February 1971, with the aim of reaching an audience in search of a Sunday newspaper with more serious and analytical content than existing mastheads.

Although the National Times never made a profit for John Fairfax & Sons, in its 17-year life the paper achieved a substantial impact through its narrative and investigative journalism written by some of Australia’s most acclaimed journalists who were unafraid to expose corruption at the highest levels, often upsetting powerful leaders in politics and business. The paper was initiated by Vic Carroll, managing editor of the Australian Financial Review, who believed that a new, nationally distributed Sunday newspaper would appeal to an affluent and educated demographic. The first issue, on 7 February 1971, came three weeks before the launch of News Limited’s short-lived Sunday Australian. The first editor was Trevor Kennedy, a former London correspondent for the Financial Review. By November 1972, when Kennedy resigned to join the Bulletin as editor, the paper’s circulation had risen to over 50,000, and it climbed even further when 33-year-old Max Suich, a former Tokyo correspondent for the Financial Review, became editor (1972–78). He built the quality of the newspaper with the help of a talented and determined editorial staff, and introduced a monthly colour magazine. By early 1974, circulation was 100,000. Staff included the deputy editor Evan Whitton, journalists Glenys Bell, Fred Brenchley, Andrew Clark, John Edwards, Bruce Hanford, Adele Horin, John Jost, Paul Kelly, David Marr, Jon Powis, Yvonne Preston, Bruce Stannard, Anne Summers and Elisabeth Wynhausen, contributors P.P. McGuiness and Alan Wood, wine writer Kevon Kemp, chief sub-editor Bob Dempsey, designer Peter Burden, cartoonists Larry Pickering and Patrick Cook, artists Jenny Coopes, Michael Fitzjames and Neil Moore, and photographers Lorrie Graham and Peter Solness. In 1975, Whitton’s three articles on how Australian entered the Vietnam War represented a landmark in Australian journalism and incurred not the first instance of angst with the management. Circulation peaked at 107,670 the following year and remained over 100,000 until late 1981, despite competition from the Weekend Australian and the ongoing hurdle that Melbourne newsagents refused to open on Sundays. As editor (1978–81), Whitton brought long, narrative, New Journalism to the National Times. David Marr briefly followed Whitton as editor, but following an article linking the former NSW Premier, Sir Robert Askin, to organised crime, he stepped down from the job. In 1981, during Marr’s editorship, the National Times carried the insert Business Review, a title that became a stand-alone magazine later that year as Business Review Weekly. Circulation began to fall, and never again rose over 100,000 despite the decision to move publication to Fridays from March 1983.

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Brian Toohey became editor in April 1982, and worked closely with Marian Wilkinson on investigative stories, focusing on corruption in both NSW and federal politics. In 1984, Jefferson Penberthy was appointed managing editor, triggering a 48-hour strike by editorial staff. Soon after Penberthy’s appointment, the paper published two articles based on leaked documents from the 1984 Costigan Royal Commission, including a person (‘Goanna’) later identified as Kerry Packer by Packer himself. Packer sued Fairfax, but the matter was settled by an apology. By 1986, with circulation falling to just under 74,000, Fairfax rebranded the paper as a broadsheet titled the National Times on Sunday, changed four months later to the Times on Sunday. Robert Haupt was the editor. In April 1987, Haupt resigned and was replaced by Valerie Lawson, foundation editor of the Sydney Morning Herald colour magazine, Good Weekend. Following the proposed takeover of John Fairfax & Sons by Sir Warwick Fairfax’s son, ‘young Warwick’, in August 1987, the paper was to be sold to the Perth entrepreneur Robert Holmes à Court, but the stockmarket crash two months later meant the deal fell through. The Times on Sunday closed on 13 March 1988. The last recorded circulation figure was just over 88,000. Two weeks after the closure, Chris Anderson, the last managing editor of the National Times, wrote to Lawson: ‘I think with an indulgent management and long resources, it would have been a marvellous enterprise.’ In 2009, Fairfax Media relaunched the National Times as an opinion and editorial website. REFs: G. Souter, Heralds and Angels (1991); V. Lawson, interviews with V.J. Carroll and M. Suich; personal papers. VALERIE LAWSON

NEI GHBOURS A soap opera set in Ramsay Street within the fictional Melbourne suburb of Erinsborough, Neighbours is the longest-running serial in Australian television history. It debuted on 18 March 1985, originally on the Seven Network. The creative force behind the show was television executive Reg Watson, who had enjoyed prior television success with Sons and Daughters. However, initial ratings were poor and Neighbours was bought by rival network Ten, which started screening the show on 20 January 1986. In January 2011, Neighbours moved to Ten’s new digital channel, Eleven. The show initially attracted high audiences domestically (with 20 million viewers tuning in for the wedding of characters Scott and Charlene) and overseas, as one of Australia’s most successful media exports (being exported to over 50 countries). It made stars of its actors, including Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and

Guy Pearce, and attracted a high level of press interest and publicity. Neighbours’ popularity was attributed to a range of factors, including its ‘feel-good’ factor. It was also perceived to emphasise ‘Australian-ness’ via the representation of a closeknit community, relatable ‘Aussie’ characters and good weather, although it was famously critiqued by expatriate Australian academic Germaine Greer in 1989 for its lack of diversity and its depiction of Australia as a ‘WhiteAnglo-Saxon-Protestant paradise’. While no longer attracting the audience figures of its 1980s heyday, the show has shaped the Australian media landscape through its longevity, its export success and its positive portrayal of Australians as community-minded and upbeat. REF: S. Crofts, ‘Global Neighbours?’, in R.C. Allen (ed.), To Be Continued … (1995). REBECCA WILLIAMS

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N EW ID EA New Idea is the oldest continuously published women’s magazine in Australia. The New Idea: A Women’s Home Journal for Australasia was founded by Thomas Shaw Fitchett (1874–1949) in Melbourne’s Swanston Street in 1902. Originally a monthly, it was similar in style to overseas magazines such as the English the Girl’s Own Paper and Woman’s Magazine, featuring free paper patterns for dressmaking, as well as a blend of local and syndicated content including serialised fiction and poetry, advice columns and articles on parenting, beauty, needlework, gardening and cooking. Thomas Shaw Fitchett edited the magazine, while his father, Methodist clergyman, editor and author William Henry Fitchett, contributed occasional articles. The cover price was sixpence. Advertisers included the Methodist Ladies’ College (with which the Fitchett family was closely affiliated), Helena Rubenstein beauty products, Arnotts’ Milk Arrowroot biscuits and a variety of patent medicines. In 1911, the magazine was renamed the Everylady’s Journal which was published as such until 1938, and from 1928 in tandem with a weekly edition of a re-launched The New Idea. By 1934, the editorial offices had moved to Stanley Street, West Melbourne and Thomas King Fitchett, Thomas Shaw Fitchett’s son, had become editor. Thomas passed this role on to his younger brother, John Campbell Fitchett, in 1937. Shortly afterwards, The New Idea again became a monthly and the Everylady’s Journal ceased publication.

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In 1945, Southdown Press bought out the Fitchett Brothers’ publishing business, although the premises remained at Stanley Street. In 1951 News Limited bought Southdown Press, boasting at a company meeting in 1954 that it had also improved The New Idea’s circulation so that it was well ahead of its competition. In 1956 the Audit Bureau of Circulations estimated circulation to be at 203,789. The following year, the magazine became a weekly publication again, which it has remained ever since. The editor at the time was E.M.  Webb, a journalist formerly on the staff of the Melbourne Herald. It was Webb who introduced one of the most enduring features of The New Idea—the ‘Mere Male’ column—in 1950. Inspired by readers’ letters containing humorous anecdotes of husbandly misadventures, Webb decided to offer a fee for any paragraph on this subject that was published in the magazine, and was inundated with stories. An anthology of the ‘Mere Male’ ‘pars’ was produced in 1955 and sold as the Women’s Report on the Mere Male from the Famous Feature in The New Idea. The popularity of this feature continues to the present day. By the early 1960s, the magazine’s name had been simplified to just New Idea, and the magazine had moved to Rosslyn Street, West Melbourne, where its first female editor, Joy Hayes, was appointed. Content included the ever-popular pattern service (featuring designs by Enid Gilchrist), serialised fiction by Barbara Cartland, recipes by Ethel Brice, Slimming with the Stars, Baby Clinic, crochet and knitting patterns, and beauty and gardening advice. This formula continued into the 1970s, with slightly more controversial content such as discussions about the birth control pill, as well as coverage of famous personalities such as Jackie Onassis. The offices moved to Walsh Street, Melbourne and, with a cover price of 15 cents, circulation was reported at a new peak of 505,000. Dulcie Boling succeeded Hayes as editor, and introduced new columnists such as Margaret Fulton and Peter Russell Clarke to the cooking pages, while still retaining the pattern service—now sponsored by Butterick—as well as knitting patterns, serial fiction, star gossip, Money Matters, and a Tarot and Psychic section. Circulation hit an all-time high of 1,003,516 in 1989. In 1999, a separate New Zealand edition was launched with an initial circulation of 65,603. In 1991, Rupert Murdoch separated his magazine holdings into a new company, Pacific Publications. In 2002, Pacific Magazines was acquired by the Seven Media Group, which since 2011 has been known as Seven West Media after a takeover by Kerry Stokes’ West Australian Newspapers Holdings Limited. New Idea continues to be a key player on the Australian media scene, and in 2013 was one of three top selling weekly titles in Australia, reaching

19% of the total Australian female population every week, with a circulation of 283,132 and an estimated readership of 2,032,000. KAREN HUTCHINGS

N EW C ASTLE H ER ALD The Newcastle Herald is the ‘Voice of the Hunter’, the premier newspaper for Newcastle and the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, the only six-day-a-week local newspaper in the area and the largest-circulating regional daily in Australia. Its publisher, Newcastle Newspapers Pty Ltd, is the region’s largest media organisation. The Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News, the newspaper to which the Newcastle Herald traces its roots, first appeared on 28 August 1858, four pages with a sixpenny price. The brainchild of a Newcastle Customs agent, George Tully, the Newcastle Chronicle succeeded and moved from weekly to tri-weekly, consigning to the scrap heap competitors the Newcastle Free Press (1861–62), Newcastle Telegraph (1863–66), Newcastle Standard (1866–67), Northumberland Herald (c. 1867) and Newcastle Pilot (1867–79). The Newcastle Herald’s other ‘parent’ was the Miners’ Advocate and Northumberland Recorder, launched from Wallsend on 21 February 1873 by publisher John Sweet, who successfully targeted miners with a newspaper that defended the rights of the working class. In 1876 Sweet and his father-in-law, James Fletcher, a Scottish-born coal miner, and later Member for Newcastle in the NSW Legislative Assembly, moved the newspaper to Newcastle and made it a daily. The first Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate appearing on 3 April. Within three months, the Newcastle Chronicle merged with the Newcastle Herald under the masthead of the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate (incorporating Newcastle Chronicle). An advocate of improving miners’ wages and working conditions, the Herald got offside with businessmen, who refused to advertise. In 1884, the paper was struggling and Fletcher was in debt for £4500, but the public rallied and raised money to save their paper. Fletcher sold the Herald in 1889 to local businessman Hudson Berkeley (1859–1923) and the Palmer and Johnson families. Palmer moved on, and Johnson died in 1905, leaving his 45 per cent share to his family, while Berkeley held 55 per cent. In 1908, the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate Pty Ltd was formed, with Berkeley governing director. Since the Chronicle, which covered the 1866 wreck of the Cawarra steamship, the Herald has covered all the Hunter’s major stories: the opening of BHP steelworks in 1915 (and its closure in 1999), the Bellbird mine disaster of 1923, the 1955 Maitland flood, the 1942 shelling of Newcastle by a Japanese submarine, and, more

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news recently, the 1979 Star Hotel riot and 1989 Newcastle earthquake. After being appointed general manager in 1928, William Edward Lingard embarked on a much-needed modernisation of buildings, plant and editorial outlook. Photographs were published daily from 1933, and news replaced classified advertising on the front page from 28 June 1941. The popular Newcastle Sun (est. 1918) was acquired as an afternoon stablemate in 1936. Newcastle Newspapers Pty Ltd was formed as a holding company in 1958. In 1960, Sir Frank Packer’s Australian Consolidated Press and Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited made tentative but unsuccessful offers to buy the Herald and the Sun. The following year, John Fairfax & Sons bought the Johnson shares. Control passed to Sydney Wansey, the adopted son of Hudson Berkeley, until Fairfax achieved outright ownership in 1977. The Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate became the Newcastle Herald in 1980 (the year the Newcastle Sun was closed). In 2003, its name was shortened again, to the Herald; ‘Newcastle’ returned to the title in 2010. In 1979, the Newcastle Herald became the most technologically advanced newspaper in Australia with computer production, in 1986 full-colour printing arrived and in 1994 the Newcastle Herald moved to electronic page layout. In 1998, it switched successfully from broadsheet to tabloid, with a 20 per cent circulation increase. The Newcastle Herald has won numerous Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley in 1981 for a series of articles by John Lewis about a coup on the board of television station NBN3. In 2013, Joanne McCarthy, whose reporting since 2007 has been pivotal in creating a Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, was awarded the Gold Walkley. The Newcastle Herald sponsors more than 50 community and charitable events each year. In 2013, the Herald recorded a circulation of 34,968 on weekdays and 54,297 on Saturdays. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000). CHRIS WATSON

NEW FONG, J OH N ARCHIBALD (1943–99) John Newfong is widely recognised as the first Aboriginal Australian to work as a mainstream journalist. While intrinsically involved with the Indigenous activist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, Newfong worked as a specialist and general reporter for the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Bulletin. He was a campaign secretary in the 1967 referendum campaign after becoming a cadet journalist in the mid-1960s. Soon after the campaign, the editor of the Australian, Adrian Deamer, hired Newfong to report on the increasingly news-

worthy land rights and civil rights movements, a round Newfong covered as a general reporter for the Australian and then for the Herald. He also reported on international affairs, including the 1971 French election and the coup by General Idi Amin in Uganda. Newfong coupled his work as a journalist with his activism in Indigenous affairs, and became heavily involved in the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972. He was often seen briefing journalists in his role as media spokesperson, then shifting his focus to defend the tents against the McMahon Coalition government’s efforts to dismantle the Embassy. Newfong wrote in the Aboriginal publication Identity, which he edited in 1972–73 and 1979–80, that the Tent Embassy was ‘one of the most successful press and parliamentary lobbies in Australian political history’. Those who knew Newfong recall his broad knowledge and his ability to captivate an audience with stories and anecdotes gathered while reporting foreign affairs. He used his encyclopaedic knowledge of international affairs to full effect in his later position as a lecturer at James Cook University. There is acknowledgement that Newfong felt torn between his role as an Aboriginal campaigner at a time of great hostility towards this cause from the mainstream media and his career as a journalist. He was strongly connected to the Aboriginal community of North Stradbroke Island, where he was born and spent much of his childhood. He attempted to walk in both worlds, and did so successfully—as a journalist on mainstream major dailies where he tried to convince a broader (primarily white) audience of the reasons for the Aboriginal movement, and then as a media spokesperson and editor of Aboriginal publications such as Identity. Gary Foley calls Newfong an ‘unsung hero of the 60s and 70s’, saying that ‘he trod new ground for Aboriginal people’ and ‘shouldered the burden of being “the first”’. The Centre for Aboriginal Independence and Enterprise launched the John Newfong Media Prize in 2008, to recognise outstanding journalism by an Indigenous journalist. REFs: Australian, 15 June 1999; G. Foley, ‘Black power in Redfern, 1968–72’, in K. de Souza and Z. Begg (eds), There Goes the Neighbourhood (2001). SUSAN FORDE

N EW S Australia’s colonists loved news from the beginning, bringing British newspapers and magazines with them and longing for ship-borne updates. Growth of the colonies sparked strong interest in local news and information, met at first by the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser from 1803 and the Derwent Star in 1810, then in successive decades by dozens of publications as government controls lifted. 297

news Although it was the central function of newspapers, news remained book-ended by advertising for well over a century, not emerging on the front pages of most papers until the 1920s. The Melbourne Herald was the first daily to publish news on its front page in 1889, but the Sydney Morning Herald waited until 1944 and the West Australian until 1949. Nineteenth-century news was a mixture of brief factual reports of such incidents as crimes, accidents and ship arrivals, and lengthy reports of parliamentary speeches, public meetings and official announcements, as well as foreign reports from overseas papers (quite dated until the advent of the Overland Telegraph in the 1872). Leavening the mix in some newspapers were witty observations and unstructured commentary. The on-the-record interview as a research technique was unknown, as was sourcing of information. News layout was drab, but multi-deck headings emerged in the 1880s and lasted more than half a century. For example, the Melbourne Argus’s story of 29 June 1880 on bushranger Ned Kelly was headed: ‘DESTRUCTION OF THE KELLY GANG/DESPERATE ENCOUNTER/NED KELLY CAPTURED/DAN KELLY, HART AND BYRNE DEAD/CHILDREN AND CIVILIANS KILLED AND WOUNDED’. The hijacking of the Sydney Harbour Bridge opening ceremony was labelled by the Sydney Sun with ‘New Guardsman Severs Bridge Ribbon/ SWORD SLASH DRAMA/‘In Name Of Common Decency And Decent Politics’/SEIZED BY POLICE’ (19 March 1932). In the early 20th century, in keeping with British and US trends, news became more objective in tone, with attempts at balance and comprehensive coverage of events through development of a rounds system. News developed into such forms as ‘hard’, ‘soft’ and ‘breaking’, with long-form journalism as ‘features’. Photos began to appear in 1908, and helped drive the Sun News-Pictorial’s runaway success from 1922. The introduction of radio broadcasting in the 1920s at first added little to news. Pressure from print media limited ABC and commercial radio stations to broadcasting shortened versions of newspaper articles, and there was not much original news-gathering until World War II. The post-war years saw recruitment of specialist radio journalists and the development of a news writing genre more suited to the ear than the eye. Recording of voices and other live sounds (‘actuality’) allowed radio journalism to be more than simply announcer-read bulletins, although the ABC long resisted this practice. Government restrictions on recording of phone conversations also acted as a restraint, while recording of parliament was prohibited until the 1980s. The licensing of television broadcasting from 1956 added moving pictures to the news, although the official view of the ABC initially was that television news should be radio news with

pictures. Visually centred news-telling became the norm, despite the technical challenges posed by processing and editing film against tight deadlines. Long debate within the ABC over the nature of facts and the extent to which journalists should provide a commentary on events—or even adopt a subjective approach—resulted in the separation of news and current affairs, a distinction also applied in commercial television. While news in any country focuses first on the nation’s interests, Australia’s international news coverage is better than most—albeit with a bias towards the Anglosphere and in particular the United States and Britain. Nevertheless, content studies show considerable interest in Asia and the Middle East. Relatively under-reported are nearby Pacific Island nations as well as Latin America and most of Africa. Foreign news coverage has fluctuated wildly over two centuries—less than 8  per cent for much of the 19th century but now around 20 per cent, about the same level as sport—while politics has generally been the largest news category. Priorities vary over time and between titles: furious tabloid warfare between Sydney’s afternoon dailies in the 1960s and 1970s led to boosting of police rounds news, echoed in other capitals. The demise of the afternoon tabloids resulted partly from commercial television’s greater immediacy in telling dramatic local stories. But a strong entertainment element has been established in newspapers of various types. SBS set its news service apart by emphasising international news, based especially on feeds from partners in Europe and Asia. A recipe of 75  per cent overseas news was established, together with coverage of immigrant-related news. In newspapers and broadcasting, commitment to serious investigative journalism reporting emerged in the second half of the century, strengthening the news media’s ‘fourth estate’ role within society—the first investigative unit was the Age’s ‘Insight’ team in 1967, with other newspapers, the ABC and commercial television following suit. An opposing trend became the influence of public relations, with more than half of all published news stories demonstrated to have a PR origin. Another challenge for newspaper journalism has been proprietorial involvement in the editorial role. For much of the 20th century the major metropolitan broadsheet newspapers styled themselves as ‘papers of record’, in the same tradition as the London Times and the New York Times, with for example all political and judicial appointments duly recorded as well as obituaries. The diminishing size of newspapers and their staffs has seen the fading of this tradition. In the 21st century, internet news has involved the convergence of the older media together with such innovations as hyperlinks and instant

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news agencies audience feedback. New online-only titles have emerged, together with local versions of overseas newspapers such as the Guardian. Ironically, the financial travails of print newspapers have seen advertising emerging prominently on—and sometimes taking over— the front and back pages, as the press has tried desperately to retain its traditional revenue source. REFs: H. Mayer, The Press in Australia (1964); N. Petersen, News Not Views (1993); G. Souter, Heralds and Angels (1991). JOHN HENNINGHAM

NEW S ( A DE LAI DE) The Adelaide News was founded by James Edward Davidson (1870–1930), who began his career in journalism at the Port Augusta Dispatch. He joined the Melbourne Argus in 1897, covering the conventions that led to Federation in 1901, and was a central figure in the establishment of the Australian Journalists’ Association in 1911. Davidson became the editor-in-chief and general manager of the Melbourne Herald in 1907, increasing circulation by 80 per cent. He left in 1918 after a disagreement with the Herald’s board and in 1919 acquired the Port Pirie Recorder and the Barrier Miner in Broken Hill. He became a controversial figure during the ‘Big Strike’ of 1919–20 when he encouraged his reporters to expose the sharp practices of some union organisers. In 1922, Davidson moved to Adelaide and negotiated the purchase of two under-performing afternoon newspapers, the Adelaide Express and the Journal, along with the Sunday Mail. In 1923 he floated a public company, News Limited, to publish the News and the Sunday Mail. He sold his papers to the new company, acquired the Daily News in Perth and survived a costly failed attempt to start an afternoon newspaper in Hobart. In March 1930, Davidson left Australia as a delegate to the Imperial Press Conference in London. The day before it opened on 1 June he died of pneumonia. Davidson’s death provided an opportunity for the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), which was establishing a chain of newspapers throughout Australia under the management of Sir Keith Murdoch. By his death in 1952, Murdoch controlled 50 per cent of News Limited, with his son, Rupert, inheriting the shares. Relationships between Rupert Murdoch and his father’s former company soured quickly when Harold Giddy, one of the trustees of his estate, advised Sir Keith’s widow, (Dame) Elisabeth, that the newspaper shares should be sold to pay probate and retire other debts. Since the Brisbane Courier-Mail shares were sold to HWT, where Giddy was also chairman, Rupert Murdoch believed he was the victim of a blatant

conflict of interest. His concerns about the intentions of the HWT group were confirmed when the Advertiser announced it would start a Sunday newspaper against the Mail in an attempt to force the young Murdoch to sell out of News Limited. Rupert Murdoch was at the University of Oxford when he learned of the threat. His reaction was to fight—and he was determined to win. In the end, it was a draw—after two years, the Sunday Advertiser (1953–55) was closed in return for a half-share in the Sunday Mail. But Murdoch declared victory. In 1959, under Murdoch’s energetic control and the editorship of Rohan Rivett, the News attracted international attention as it faced charges of seditious libel arising from a crusade to save the illiterate Aborigine Rupert Max Stuart from the gallows following his conviction for the murder of a girl in the outback town of Ceduna. Rivett’s campaign against the death sentence led to a Royal Commission, and his criticism of the commissioners provoked the charges of seditious libel. Stuart’s sentence was commuted and the News won the libel case, but Rivett was dismissed as editor in 1960. Visiting from the United States that year, W. Sprague Holden wrote: ‘The News can’t wait for Utopia. It is brash and sometimes brassy, but it is as alert and forthright about injustices as any newspaper in Australia.’ From the start, the News printed four editions a day, six days a week. Its circulation in 1923 was 30,000 but by the time Murdoch became publisher and managing director it had risen to 105,000. It peaked at more than 150,000 in the mid-1970s. The newspaper became a tabloid in 1948. The Saturday edition was closed in 1976. When Rupert Murdoch purchased the HWT in 1987, he was obliged by competition laws to dispose of one title in Adelaide and Brisbane. He sold the News and the Brisbane Sun to Northern Star Holdings, but when that arrangement imploded, the titles were sold on to private companies. The News became the last surviving metropolitan afternoon daily in Australia; it was closed on 27 March 1992. REFs: Sixty-Nine Years of Events from the Pages of the News (1997); http://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/ page.cfm?c=2627. MARK DAY

N EW S AG EN C IES The first news agencies were set up to provide foreign news for newspapers that couldn’t afford their own correspondents. They were part of the 19th-century move towards greater commercialisation of news and were able to exploit the new technologies of the telegraph and underwater cabling. The agencies were the main sources of international news, and heralded the era of news as a globalised commodity. In 1859, the main

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news limited agencies of the time—Havas in France, Wolff in Germany and Reuters in Britain—signed an agreement that divided the regions of the world among them. Reuters got Australia and the other countries of imperial Britain. It opened an office in Melbourne in 1878 and set up agreements with local newspapers for the supply of international news. At this time Australia had a powerful domestic news market, with strong internal rivalries— most notably between the Melbourne-based Argus and Age. Each built up its own grouping of Melbourne/Sydney/Adelaide newspapers with sufficient resources to set up London bureaux to supplement Reuters’ service, in addition to selling domestic news in Australia. As it was more cost-effective to pool resources, domestic news agencies began to emerge. In 1895, the Argus and Age groups came together to form the Australian Press Association (APA). In 1912, the Melbourne Herald broke with the APA and joined with the Sydney Sun to form the United Cable Service (also known as United Services Limited, or USL). In 1935, the two services merged to create Australian Associated Press (AAP), which became Australia’s first and to date its only national domestic news agency. It was set up and run by the press barons as a vehicle for marketing their product to smaller news operations across the country as well as to New Zealand, and it held the Australian rights to Reuters. After the advent of radio in the 1920s, the fledgling ABC began a basic news service for its own stations in the 1930s, which it also contracted out to commercial radio stations. News was mainly sourced from the press, with AAP providing limited access to international material via its links with Reuters. After World War II, the ABC began a concerted campaign to establish its own independent news service, finally succeeding in 1947. While it could still rely on Reuters and other international news agencies for international news, it was required to generate its own domestic content. With the ABC effectively a domestic broadcast news agency, the small size of the local market restricted the growth of AAP, which until the 1970s mainly functioned as a distributor of overseas news to the Australian press. Its role expanded in the 1970s when it took over statebased regional agencies such as Australian United Press (NSW) and Vicpress. AAP then began its own operations as a domestic news-gathering agency within Australia, and signed agreements with the commercial television stations to provide them with an AAP-Reuters service. It established its own Canberra bureau in 1971. Since then, it has grown alongside its international counterparts, as all media have increasingly come to depend on news agency material. Even the ABC has expanded its reliance on agency news, now being permitted to use AAP material in addition to that of the international agencies.

The 2001 Sources of News and Current Affairs study showed that in Australia AAP is at the very least a safety net, and sometimes the sole source of news across all media. Subsequent global studies indicate that reliance on agency news is increasing with the advent of 24/7 radio, television and online news. News agencies are diversifying into other activities, filling gaps that are left as conventional news outlets seek to trim their costs. AAP, now the major news agency for Oceania, has links to the main news agencies from the region as well as the rest of the world. It sifts through the material from the global agencies in order to funnel it through to its domestic news clients. It has its own staff of reporters around the country so it is also a centralised provider of local and national news as well as specialist news in areas such as business, finance and digital technology. In addition to providing print, video and audio content, it continues to diversify into other areas such as media monitoring and sub-editing services. REFs: P. Putnis, ‘How the International News Agency Business Model Failed—Reuters in Australia, 1877– 1895’, Media History, 12(1) (2006); T. Rantanen, ‘The Globalization of Electronic News in the 19th Century’, Media, Culture and Society, 19 (1997). GAIL PHILLIPS

NE W S CORP see News Limited NE W S CORP A US T RA L IA see News Limited NE W S CORPORAT ION see News Limited

N EW S LIM ITED From relatively modest beginnings in 1923, News Limited has grown to become a founding element of one of the world’s largest and most influential global media organisations, News Corporation, itself formed in 1979. In 2013, News Corporation was divided into 21st Century Fox and News Corp (with News Limited, renamed News Corp Australia, a subsidiary). The new News Corp’s primary interests are in publishing, including newspapers, some digital services and pay television in Australia, while 21st Century Fox holds most of the global film and television interests of the former News Corporation, including cable programming and satellite television. Rupert Murdoch is the executive chair of News Corp and the chair and CEO of 21st Century Fox. Robert Thomson is chief executive of News Corp and Chase Carey is president and chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox. In 2014, Lachlan Murdoch was named as non-executive co-chair of News Corp and 21st Century Fox, and James Murdoch was named as co-chief operating officer of 21st Century Fox. Julian Clarke replaced Kim Williams as CEO of News Corp Australia in 2013. Originally incorporated in Adelaide, from 2004,

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news limited News Corporation and its successors have been incorporated in Delaware in the United States and headquartered in New York. According to its 2013 annual report, News Corp Australia owns more than 120 newspapers, and accounts for more than 59 per cent of total circulation of newspapers in Australia. Among its major titles are the Australian and the Weekend Australian (national); the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph (Sydney); the Herald Sun and the Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne); the Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail (Brisbane); the Sunday Mail and Advertiser (Adelaide); the Sunday Times (Perth); the Mercury and Sunday Tasmanian (Hobart); and the Northern Territory News and Sunday Territorian (Darwin). It also has a free commuter title, mX, distributed in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, and extensive interests in community, regional and rural newspapers, such as Leader Community Newspapers in Melbourne. In addition to its extensive newspaper interests, News Corp Australia owns 100 per cent of Fox Sports and 50 per cent of Foxtel, with Telstra owning the other 50 per cent. News Corp Australia also owns the popular residential property website, Realestate.com.au, and has investments in businesses including CarsGuide, CareerOne and Fox Sports Pulse (formerly SportingPulse). It is also a major shareholder in Australian Associated Press, Australia’s largest news agency service. Related to these interests, News Corp Australia has extensive digital products. The history of News Limited is intimately connected with both the global rise of Rupert Murdoch and with newspapers. Rupert Murdoch’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch, and the Melbourne Herald bought into News Limited—originally founded by journalist James Edward Davidson (1870–1930)—in the 1930s. On Sir Keith’s death in 1952, Rupert Murdoch inherited the Adelaide afternoon newspaper, the News. Murdoch soon expanded his ownership of newspapers within Australia and internationally. In Australia, Murdoch’s newspaper ownership ultimately encompassed all capital cities and beyond. One of the key developments for News Limited was the creation of the Australian in 1964, based in Canberra—it was a bold step to create a national newspaper, which has since become a politically significant media outlet. Internationally, News moved overseas, including into the United Kingdom and United States. At the level of ownership and control, News Limited and now News Corp are inseparable from the Murdoch family, connected in part to a specific share ownership structure. Over many years, News Limited has been involved in numerous public and political debates, while the company provokes sharp divisions of opinion, both in Australia and internationally. In the early 1970s, for example, Murdoch took an active role in Australian politics, actively supporting the Labor opposition’s bid to win

the 1972 federal election. By 1975, however, Murdoch and his newspapers were campaigning strongly for the Dismissal of the Whitlam government. Indeed, News Limited has been a constant presence on the Australian political landscape, including in the context of debates around regulation of media ownership and content, and also in the context of technologically influenced workplace reorganisation—in particular, after the move of the newspapers of News International from Fleet Street to Wapping in Britain. Further to this, News Limited and News Corporation have had long-term and extensive interests in sport. A highly controversial and divisive event arose in 1997, when News established the Super League as a competitor to the Australian Rugby League, with the prize focused on lucrative television rights. Two more recent events show the continuing polarising impact of the company. First, in 2012, the Finkelstein Inquiry’s report to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy was released, recommending the establishment of a News Media Council to set journalistic standards for news media in consultation with industry and to handle public complaints. Along with many other media companies, the response of News Limited was swift, sharp and public, with concerns being raised about the potential for such a Council to unjustly curtail the freedom of the press. Second, News came under extensive criticism for its newspaper coverage of the 2013 federal election in Australian, with many critics making claims of anti-Labor bias on the part of the company. Extending beyond News Limited and Australia, News Corporation has been highly influential in media and politics internationally. While often creating strong links with conservative political leaders, including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, News Corporation has also established strong links with Labour leaders, notably British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In more recent times, News Corporation has become embroiled in a range of highly controversial events, in particular the UK phone hacking scandal, focused on the now defunct News of the World. Following these events, in June 2013, the company developed and introduced an organisational Code of Ethics. Throughout these times, News Corporation has continued to innovate in a range of media contexts, including with its coverage of sport and with its news media coverage—perhaps most notably with the Fox Network in the United States. Among many questions relating to the future of News Corp Australia, three are of particular interest. The first concerns succession plans, with Rupert Murdoch now in his eighties. The second concerns the long-term future of newspapers in the company. While Rupert Murdoch remains at the helm, it would appear that newspapers will continue to figure prominently, as Murdoch is very

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news reporting much a newspaper person. Whether other members of the company have the same view is open to debate. The third question relates to the long-term political influence of the company, in particular when considering scenarios in the post-Murdoch era and in the digital news media age. News Limited and/or Rupert Murdoch have been the subject of several major book-length publications, from George Munster’s Rupert Murdoch (1985) and William Shawcross’s Murdoch (1992) to Timothy Marjoribanks’ News Corporation, Technology and the Workplace (2000) and David McKnight’s Rupert Murdoch (2012). Given the prominence of the company and the media industry, News Corp Australia will continue to attract ongoing interest from politicians, industry analysts, academic researchers and the general public. TIMOTHY MARJORIBANKS

N E W S REPORT I NG The digital revolution has had a dramatic impact on news reporting. Yet the form of reporting has remained much the same over the past 80 years. By contrast, the first century of news reporting in Australia was quite different in form, reflecting norms in English-language journalism of the time. Reporters and most of their sources were anonymous during and beyond the 19th century, with information presented as a potpourri of observations and comments of uncertain origin, not distinguishing between eyewitness reports and informants’ accounts. The notion of the interview, which came from the United States, was slow to take root, as was the form of a news story with quotes and verifiable sources, but interviews and the later innovation of press conferences were to become more common from the 1920s. In contrast to subsequent developments, journalists involved in interviews and press conferences were often quite deferential and not very probing, with press conferences in particular likely to be under the control of the interviewee. Most 19th-century journalists appear to have been generalists, but there is evidence of specialisation in reporting roles from the latter part of the century, especially in coverage of parliaments and courts. Sydney and Melbourne newspapers had specialists in other areas by 1888. There were small press galleries in the colonial parliaments, and some parliamentary reporters doubled as court reporters. Reporters were at first banned from the early colonial legislatures, echoing the restrictions in access to Britain’s parliament until the late 18th century. Parliamentary reports were more akin to Hansard than the form of political observation and multiple sourcing that was to develop in the next century. In Melbourne, the Argus was renowned for providing a quasi-official record of local parliamentary proceedings, a reputation

shared with other colonies’ newspapers. On the launch of the NSW parliament in 1856, the Sydney Morning Herald carried an article headed ‘Parliamentary Reporting’ emphasising the importance of full and accurate parliamentary reporting ‘for the preservation of constitutional freedom’, and mentioning that during many speeches ‘the eyes, ears and fingers of the reporters are incessantly occupied’. By late in the century, and with the development of colonial Hansards, summaries of proceedings became more common in daily newspapers. By the early 20th century, a rounds system was in place, with deployment of reporters to cover specific areas. Key rounds in metropolitan newspapers included state (the state parliament), civic (the city, suburban and regional councils), trades hall (industrial relations), police (crime, accidents and fires) and shipping. Journalists appointed to these rounds would typically operate from a small office or press room attached to the institution being covered, and might be seen in the newspaper office only rarely. Police rounds reporters were generally on the road with a photographer and driver, covering events in response to news tips or monitoring of police radio scanners, or attending police news conferences. A Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery was established in Melbourne in 1901 in parallel with the Victorian parliament; it moved to Canberra at the opening of the national Parliament House in 1927. Such areas as sport, business and social (women’s) rounds had their own sections, and did not usually contribute to the core news pages. Additional areas of specialisation emerged as the century progressed, reflecting changing concerns and emphases in society—aviation, defence, education, science, the environment, health, technology, lifestyle and even media. In most areas, reporters mastered their brief through on-the-job experience and contacts, rather than through prior specialist education, and have often become authorities in their fields. With the exception of war coverage, most foreign news was sourced from overseas newspapers—chiefly London dailies—until well into the 20th century (although after World War II, journalists responsible for the reports were often Australian, given the large contingent of Australians working in Fleet Street). Permanent full-time overseas bureaux were eventually established by major newspaper groups and the ABC, and later the television networks, with an emphasis on Britain, the United States, and East and South-East Asia. In the area of domestic news-gathering, reporters have been organised under the control of a chief-of-staff, described by American observer W. Sprague Holden in 1961 as the ‘boss of the reporters’ and, according to him, far more powerful than US equivalent roles—especially in having authority to deploy staff beyond city boundaries.

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news reporting The growth in staff numbers resulted in the establishment within all large news organisations of news conferences (known also as editorial conferences), attended by section editors and other news heads, and held several times during the day. These were conceived as a means of coordinating news-gathering and production activities, as well as keeping everyone informed of breaking developments (and also, at the first meeting, evaluating the previous day’s coverage). The chief of staff’s tabling of a news list and summary of assigned reporters’ progress in news-gathering (based on regular phone contact with general reporters and roundspeople) formed the basis of evolving decisions about placement of stories in the newspaper—especially the prized front-page lead. For many decades until computerisation made it unnecessary, reporters would type their stories on thick wads of half-sheet copy paper stapled into multiple carbon copies, permitting distribution of stories to the chief of staff, editor, and interstate bureaux and radio stations. The original sheet was distributed by copy boys or girls to the sub-editors, for allocation by the chief sub-editor to a down-table sub for processing (including cutting to the designated size, rewriting if required, error and style correction and heading writing). Reporters in the field would phone in stories to a pool of copy-takers, either from a public phone, a car radio-phone or their bureau office—for example, at Parliament House or the courts. As deadline pressures mounted, stories could be in the process of being subbed while further paragraphs (or ‘pars’) were being typed. Cable subs would process a stream of copy from overseas, both from the organisation’s own correspondents and from news agencies. Until after World War II, recruits to newsrooms often began at age 17 after completing senior secondary studies (or earlier in the century, at age 15) and, as established in the first journalists’ industrial agreement of 1911, served a four-year cadetship, consisting of on-the-job training under the supervision of senior reporters, with rotation between differing rounds and departments plus lectures and shorthand training as well as one-to-one mentoring from a cadet counsellor (traditionally a middle-aged former reporter or sub). Cadet lectures were a mixture of senior reporters’ war stories and advice on pitfalls facing reporters (especially defamation and contempt of court), or advice on writing and grammar. Little attention was given to ethical issues, except where law and ethics clashed—particularly in relation to protection of confidential sources. Most reporters were members of the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, now the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance) (for much of the 20th century until the 1970s, newspapers were effectively ‘closed shops’ in relation to union membership), and were pledged to abide by the AJA Code of Ethics (adopted in

1944). In some newsrooms, such as Sydney’s Daily Telegraph under the editorship of Brian Penton, cadets were encouraged to compensate for their limited formal education by reading works of literature. Although not embraced by the industry with any particular enthusiasm, tertiary journalism education developed from the 1970s and gradually provided an increasing supply of graduate recruits to newsrooms, together with graduates of specialist disciplines such as economics. By the early 21st century, recruitment of school leavers to newsrooms had become rare. However, a more recent development adopted by Fairfax Media and News Limited, as well as the ABC, has been one-year graduate traineeships to replace the cadetship system, providing advanced and site-specific practical training to supplement the learning disseminated in tertiary courses. Cadet reporters were taught news values in terms of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘six honest serving-men’—who, what, when, where, why and how—with later university theorising about news values discerning proximity, conflict, impact, novelty and celebrity as key elements. Such mid-20th century presentational attributes as the running of introductory paragraphs (‘intros’) over two or more columns or setting them in bold type were discarded by the 1980s when modular design became dominant. Similarly, the ‘summary lead’, whereby all the essential facts were encompassed in the intro, quietly evolved into more economical intros. However, the ‘inverted pyramid’ format (with the most important facts at the top of a story) remains the standard in hard news reports, enabling stories to be cut more easily from the bottom by sub-editors to meet space constraints. A more significant change was the rebellion against the straitjacket of objectivity, with reporters becoming emboldened to express their opinions. This change was linked to the more liberal allocation of by-lines from the 1970s. Previously bestowed only to senior correspondents, or as a signal of great honour, by-lines became more generally used in the Australian—perhaps as a trade-off for lower levels of pay. More recently, with the advent of online news, the decreasing space dictated by screen size has reduced many news stories to two or three sentences, increasing the pressure to maximise news angles and attract ‘clicks’. While the basic ‘inverted pyramid’ style is still commonly used, often readers only glance at the first paragraph, without clicking through to the rest of the story. While digital platforms require additions such as interactive elements and moving images, the emphasis in all news reporting is still on the writing. Journalists are always conscious of the need to maximise their audience, so readability is critical, with the language level designed to be as accessible as possible. A neutral and balanced tone is also desirable, with all sides of the story presented objectively.

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newsagencies However, news has become more interactive, and the role of opinion/comment within news reporting has been transformed through user-generated comment. While authoritative sources remain important, news organisations today are conscious of the need for interactivity, uploading consumer comments and encouraging active community participation in the way news is presented. Consumers not only need to identify with the news, but are encouraged to connect with it. So journalists now need to consider how each platform will determine the content of a story, and take into account the audio and visual components of their report. Reporting the news is now a fluid and ongoing process. A story is no longer simply written or produced once and filed. The same report will have many variations over different platforms during a 24-hour cycle. In addition to the traditional skills required by a news reporter, such as researching, interviewing and writing skills, today’s news reporter knows how to record good-quality audio, present well on camera, upload and edit the video, and use desktop software to present a full multimedia package of the report. Newsrooms have also been significantly restructured. Reduced revenue with the flight of advertising to social media has forced considerable economies in editorial costs, including reductions in staff numbers and more syndication of content between sister newspapers. Moreover, costs of news production have been cut, with both News Limited and Fairfax Media moving to centralised news processing, involving sub-editors handling stories from designated ‘sub hubs’—often far removed from the reporters. Most recently, the ‘hub and spokes’ layout of newsrooms has been transformed again with the dominance of the ‘digital first’ imperative in modern news reporting. An example of this change can be seen in the Methode software now used throughout all News Limited newsrooms in Australia, where journalists open digital templates on their computer screens to find they have been assigned news topics. They then fill in the template to produce web-ready copy, which can then be uploaded with minimal or no subbing at all for digital platforms. REFs: W.S. Holden, Australia Goes to Press (1961); R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000); C.J. Lloyd, Parliament and the Press (1985); L. Revill and C. Roderick (eds), The Journalist’s Craft (1965). JOHN HENNINGHAM and MANDY OAKHAM

NEWS, O N LI N E , see online news and magazines

N E W S A GE NCI ES The first organised newsagency in Australia was created in the 1800s to distribute publications to the Victorian goldfields.

The delivery newsagents soon found themselves delivering multiple publications along particular routes, creating the beginnings of the first newsagency businesses. Over time, delivery routes were organised, providing the newsagent covering a defined route with exclusivity by arrangement with publishers. In the latter part of the 1800s, some newsagents opened retail shops from which to run their distribution businesses. In addition to selling newspapers and magazines, these early retail newsagency businesses also offered stationery. A traditional newsagency business model evolved, consisting of a retail outlet, distribution of newspapers and magazines to homes and businesses in a defined territory, and the supply of newspapers and magazines on a wholesale basis to other retail outlets. This model was not national: in South Australia and to a certain extent in Western Australia, the distribution and retail businesses evolved separately, making it rare for one business to operate both a retail shop and a distribution business. The supply of newspapers and magazines to other retailers, called sub-agents, on a wholesale basis was contentious almost from the outset. Early in the 20th century, newspaper publishers took the lead in controlling who could purchase a newsagency and where one could be opened, opening hours, service levels and even what products could be sold. The lever of control was the Newsagency Council, established in each state and made up of publisher representatives. Central to the newsagency model was that newsagents were—and are today for some suppliers—agents. This meant that they could exert little control over key aspects of their businesses, such as products supplied, quantity of supply and selling price. Newspaper publishers micro-managed all aspects of their products in a newsagency business, from the time by which they had to be delivered to homes to their placement in the shops. Newsagents accepted this as a cost of having a monopoly. It was not uncommon, even as late as the 1980s and early 1990s, for publishers to restrict access to ownership of a newsagency based on race. Magazine distributors exerted similar control on the granting of a trading account. Newsagents were selected as the preferred retail outlet for lottery products and held this position almost exclusively until the 1980s. A typical newsagency shop for much of the 20th century would have around 30 per cent of floorspace given over to magazines, 30 per cent to greeting cards, 30 per cent to stationery and 10 per cent to newspapers. As shopping centres evolved in Australia, more newsagents opened retail newsagency businesses inside them. In 1999, through a process overseen by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, newsagents lost their

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newsletters monopoly over the distribution of newspapers and magazines. This resulted in other businesses being able to access direct supply of newspapers and magazines. While some publishers maintained newsagents as the last-mile distributor of products, they no longer controlled the relationship. No compensation was offered or paid to newsagents for the loss of the monopoly. While the distribution of newspapers and magazines was deregulated, pre-deregulation rules and processes have remained for newsagents in relation to the supply of magazines. This has disadvantaged newsagents. In the years since deregulation, the relationship between newsagents and magazine distributors has prevented newsagents from breaking free of the monopoly-protected business model. Since 1999, distribution and retail newsagency businesses have evolved. The number of newsagencies with a combined retail, home delivery and sub-agent business has significantly fallen as a result. Whereas up to 1990 newsagencies carried a reasonably consistent range of products across a limited number of core categories, in the 1990s some newsagents branched into new areas. The pace of change in the newsagency channel increased in the mid-2000s, with many newsagents either selling or giving up their newspaper home delivery and sub-agent distribution businesses. This came about because newspaper publishers refused to allow newsagents to charge a commercial rate for distribution services. Coupled with a static cover price for newspapers, from which newsagents made a margin, this meant the majority of newspaper distribution businesses were loss-making. A limited number of newsagents purchased these businesses, combining them into bigger specialist distribution businesses by leveraging leverage critical mass to make newspaper and magazine distribution profitable. Since 2011, the pace of change in retail newsagency businesses has increased considerably, driven by declining sales of print media products, increased retail real estate and labour costs, a higher cost of capital and a greater penetration of franchise groups providing newsagents with management and marketing advice. By 2012, there was a growing separation between distribution newsagencies and retail newsagencies, as well as a growing gulf among retail newsagencies. This was encouraged by News Limited with a trial project called T2020, intended to force newspaper distribution consolidation among newsagents. While T2020 failed to go beyond trial, newspaper publishers continued to encourage newsagents to consolidate to drive operational efficiency. In 2013, around 7 per cent of retail newsagencies closed, due to a lack of newspaper home delivery revenue and falling newspaper and magazine retail income. Today, while a typical

high street newsagency has a floor space similar to that of 30 years ago, the average shopping centre newsagency has a more diverse product offering. Whereas in 1999 newsagents did not sell printer cartridges, by 2014 they accounted for around 40 per cent of stationery sales. Some product categories, such as toys, have come full circle. Decades ago, newsagents used to dominate in the toys category. This faded from the 1980s; however, since 2013, newsagents have clawed back toy sales and are now a soughtafter channel among toy manufacturers. Market forces are driving newsagents to pursue greater change and develop businesses that are more competitive and with a broader appeal to shoppers. While some suppliers continue to resist this, newsagents expect to finally unshackle their businesses from pre-deregulation anti-competitive practices. Nowhere is the change confronted by newsagents more evident than in industry representation. In 2003, close to 3000 newsagents were members of the national Australian Newsagents’ Federation industry association or one of its affiliated state associations. By 2014, that number was estimated to be less than 2000, with newsagents relying less on national representation. REF: Australian Newsagents’ Federation, Newsagents Year Book (2014). MARK FLETCHER

N EW SLETTER S A newsletter can be defined as something between a magazine and a circular letter to members or subscribers of a special-interest group, be it a church congregation, sporting club, or a political party or lobby group. Newsletters contain current information and news about forthcoming events relating to the subscriber or membership group. They are also found in a form known as ‘news digests’. Before the digital age, they were usually roneoed or duplicated, occasionally printed and, in recent times, desktop published and laser printed. Most are now produced as online versions only. The first Australian newsletter of any consequence was the News Letter of Australasia: Or Narrative of Events: A Letter to Send to Friends, which was published monthly in Melbourne from July 1856 to December 1862, just before the regular mail steamer left for England. Printed on rice paper, it contained a digest of the local news extracted from the Illustrated Journal of Australasia, a cover illustration of a local view and blank space at the end to allow the sender to add personal news. As clubs, societies and church groups developed throughout Australia in the second half of the 19th century, the more esteemed ones such as the various Royal or Colonial Societies published a journal, while some of the smaller and/

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newspaper formats and design or local ones produced a newsletter. These were usually printed, so only those with some revenue base could afford to publish them. An example was the Monthly Church News (1898–99), published by the Anglican St Saviour’s Church in Redfern. It was probably fairly typical of its type: short-lived, limited circulation and relying on the goodwill of a volunteer editor. The introduction of the typewriter in Australia in the last two decades of the 19th century greatly facilitated the production of newsletters for sports, social clubs and church groups, as did the subsequent invention of the roneo machine and later the photocopier. A Trove search for ‘newsletters’ with ‘Australian content’ in the period 1900–2000 reveals 34,970 citations. Many would be duplicate entries but the high number gives an indication of the proliferation and wide circulation of newsletters. In the 20th century, one of the major political newsletters of influence was controversial Sydney journalist Frank Browne’s Things I Hear (1946–77). It was initially issued fortnightly but from 1952 to 1972 it came out weekly; after that, its frequency varied from fortnightly to monthly. It rightly claimed to be ‘Australia’s oldest established news digest’, and it would have been read by most federal politicians and political journalists. (Sir) John Gorton once described it as ‘Things I Smear’. Labour historian and champion of civil liberties Brian Fitzpatrick wrote and published the Melbourne monthlies Australian News-Review (‘Brian Fitzpatrick’s Monthly Digest of Australian, UN, World Events’) from 1951 to 1953 and Brian Fitzpatrick’s Labor News Letter from 1958 until his death in 1965. Journalist, publisher, economist and one-time editor of the Australian, Max Newton, published a number of newsletters in the 1960s and early 1970s; a later commentator has claimed that these ‘were required reading around Parliament House’ in Canberra. Newton’s newsletter included Incentive (‘a weekly report on business trends and economic policy’, 1965–72), which at its peak had 800 subscribers. With a tendency to muckrake, its critics labelled it ‘Invective’. Its success encouraged Newton, in 1966, to acquire Management Newsletter: Analysing News and Trends for Australia Business Executives, which had been published since 1948, with distribution ‘confidential and restricted to director and management levels’; it continued until 1970. He also founded Tariff Week (1967–71), Australian Parliamentary and Legislative Review (1967–70) and Minerals Week (1967–71). Other public affairs-related newsletters include the Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration, the newsletter of the ACT branch of the Australian Institute of Public Administration, published in print from 1982 until 2004 and then online, and In Touch (1996–2007), the newsletter of the conservative Institute of

Public Affairs, published in Melbourne. Recent media-related newsletters include Communications Update: The Newsletter of the Media and Communications Council, published in print from 1985 until 2005 and then online, and Telemedia: The Monthly Newsletter on Australian Telecommunications and Media Law (1997–2003), both published in Sydney. In 1984, Rev. Dr Tony Nancarrow, a Uniting Church minister and publisher, and founder of MediaCom, published The Australian Newsletter Editor’s Reference Manual: A Guide to Production, Design and Pasteup. It was followed by Nick Renton’s Public Relations, Newsletters and Internet Usage for Organisations (1997). Public relations firms regularly issue current affairs-type newsletters to their clients. Affairs of State, a Melbourne PR firm, has published Letter from Melbourne since 1995, and Letter from Canberra since 2007. Both are now published only online. Recorder, the official organ of the Melbourne branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, is a good example of a special interest newsletter that owes its longevity (nearing 280 issues) to a loyal group of subscribers and volunteer editors and contributors. But even Recorder is now (since March 2006) also published online. It may follow the pattern of most other newsletters in being available only in digital format rather than traditional hard copy. But, like previous technological developments, digital publishing has given newsletters the potential for wider circulation. And, through blogging, one could argue that individuals rather than special-interest groups now publish a new hybrid form of the newsletter. JOHN ARNOLD

N EW SP AP ER FO R M ATS AN D D ESIG N Sydney was under authoritarian rule when the first Australian newspaper was published there in 1803. Only 15 per cent of Sydney’s population of 7000 were free citizens and the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser was published ‘by authority’. It carried government standing orders and commercial advertising, with some news, all subject to the governor’s veto. The pages were printed on an old screw press, the hand-set type was worn, and the paper was scarce and varied in size. To produce a legible newspaper was an achievement; design was an afterthought. Technological challenges often limited the Gazette to two pages, as it did effectively from 1806 until 1812. Most colonial newspapers began with four pages—even the Sydney Herald (est. 1831, later the Sydney Morning Herald), the Melbourne Argus (1846) and the Hobart Mercury (1854)— with the front and back pages generally devoted to advertisements and public notices. Some advertisements were booked for three months, so their type could be left standing. It was

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newspaper formats and design simpler to print pages 1 and 4 first, and the inside news pages later. The single-column headings were often labels, such as ‘Local and General’, ‘Country News’ or ‘English News’, above a series of items, often divided only by white space. In January 1901, Sydney’s Herald was still using only single-column headings when it reported Federation and the death of Queen Victoria. The long, narrow news columns generally began with an editorial, or ‘leading article’. Newspapers were generally differentiated by their views rather than news. Many Australian newspapers made only minimal changes to format and design during the 19th century, generally through changing typefaces or sizes. In the decade or so before World War I, the Herald increased its range of heading types and allowed more white space above and below its headings. The Herald stuck largely to single-column headings until World War I, although when the Boer War ended in June 1902 it ran a four-column headline with seven decks. Even when the Herald began regular use of double-column headlines and introductory paragraphs, most stories still appeared with single-column headings. As many as 30 stories appeared on the one page. Other dailies clung to single-column headlines into the 20th century too, although the West Australian accorded a double-column heading to a J. Brunton Stephens poem published on 2 January 1901 to mark Federation. Newspapers gradually grew in page size as press capacity allowed it. The Herald was generally four pages until the 1850s, although its pages were enlarged, as in 1832, 1834, 1842 and 1854, and its publication frequency increased: it went bi-weekly (1832), tri-weekly (1838), then daily (1841). At times—like most serious papers—it published extra sheets to cope with a sudden influx of news, often with the arrival of the European mails. In the 1860s and 1870s, it was generally eight pages, and 10–12 in the 1880s. It grew gradually in the first half of the 20th century to carry anywhere from 12 to 36 pages a day in 1951, although during World War II the average number fell from 22 in 1939 to 10 in 1943. The Saturday issue of the Herald grew progressively: 92 pages in 1964, 104 in 1967, 112 in 1968, 128 in 1972 and 144 in 1973. In 2000, the Herald was publishing the equivalent of about 330 broadsheet pages of content each Saturday. The first daily to regularly devote page one to editorial matter was the Sydney Echo (1875–93), which carried the editorial, plus short comments and light paragraphs. The first daily to devote its front page to general news regularly was the Melbourne Herald (1840–1990), from 17 October 1889. Some dailies made page one their main news page from the start. Examples are the Sydney Sun (1910–88), the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial (1922– ) and the Adelaide News (1923–92). Progressively during the first half of the 20th century, all capital-city dailies converted page one from

advertising to news. The last, in 1944, was the Sydney Morning Herald, which had been filling the first column of page one with one-sentence summaries of the major news since January 1903. In early newspapers, illustration was usually confined to the small ‘trade’ blocks used in advertisements, such as the shipping company’s tiny three-masted barque. Illustrated journals began appearing in the 1850s, including the Illustrated Australian Magazine (Melbourne, 1850–52). The Illustrated Sydney News (1853–55) featured portraits and colonial scenes, not news events. Revived in 1864 as a monthly, it presented carefully executed engravings and lithographs of colonial scenes, or sometimes a news event such as bushranger Frank Gardiner’s trial. The Herald began publishing daily weather maps on 5 February 1877. What is believed to have been the earliest half-tone photographic image published in Australia appeared in the Melbourne weekly, Table Talk, on 6 January 1888—a stock photo of a visiting American phrenologist, Jessie Allen Fowler. Half-tone photographs appeared in weeklies such as the Sydney Mail, Illustrated Sydney News, the Bulletin and the Sydney Dead Bird in 1888–89. In the final two or three decades of the 19th century, the weekly newspapers published by dailies included excellent illustrated sections featuring both line drawings and, by 1900, photographs. The Bulletin (1880–2008) and Smith’s Weekly (1919–50) were known as much for their skilled artists and cartoonists as their journalists and writers. Most of the dailies began to make occasional use of half-tone pictures in the early 1900s. On 21 May 1901, the Brisbane Courier inserted colour portraits of the Duke and Duchess of York during their visit to Australia. In 1906, the Daily Telegraph ventured into half-tone for small portraits. The Melbourne Argus and Age first used half-tone images on 22 April 1908, of the Sunshine train crash that killed 43 people. The Argus on 5 November 1952 was the first daily to use colour printed with the run-of-thenews pages when it published a colour photo of Dalray’s Melbourne Cup win. The Sydney Sunday News (1919–30) claimed to have printed the first three-colour advertisement in a daily or Sunday newspaper on 25 November 1923. Until the beginning of World War II, most Australian newspapers appeared as broadsheets. From the 1940s, the trend was to tabloid, with papers such as the Argus, the Sydney Sunday Telegraph and the Hobart Mercury changing during the war years. Sydney’s Sun, Perth’s West Australian, Brisbane’s Telegraph, Adelaide’s News and several regional dailies joined the converts before 1950. There was another spate of changes in the late 1990s. The Sydney Morning Herald and Age both changed on weekdays in March 2013 and on weekends in March 2014, leaving the Australian and the Canberra Times as the only broadsheet capital-city dailies.

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newspaper illustration The advent in 1964 of the national daily, the Australian, looking ‘so clean and professional’ in the view of those at the Canberra Times, prompted others to rethink their design. Sydney Morning Herald editor J.D. Pringle hired Guy Morrison, who had helped design the Australian, to improve layout and typography. Morrison cleared the Herald’s news pages of their old-fashioned types, limited headlines to Century Bold or Century Expanded, and employed wider columns and better layout on the leader page. In the 1980s, the major broadsheet newspapers introduced weekend magazines. Needing to find room for more advertising in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald, John Fairfax & Sons introduced Good Weekend in October 1984. Also appearing in the Age, it was the first attempt by an Australian newspaper at the kind of high-gloss colour magazine pioneered in London during the 1960s. The Weekend Australian followed suit in September 1988 with what is now the Weekend Australian Magazine. The other major dailies have also introduced Saturday magazines. All major dailies have inserted tabloid lifestyle lift-outs since the 1980s. Colour television, introduced in 1975, had a big impact on newspaper design. Newspapers came under pressure to provide colour advertisements and ultimately colour photography, and they soon transformed their pages from the old vertical emphasis to a horizontal emphasis through the use of modular layout. This was facilitated by computers, which soon became revolutionary tools in the newspaper design kit. Improved technology enabled designs to become increasingly sophisticated, especially with the evolution of software such as QuarkXPress and the Adobe Creative Suite. Once newsrooms became comfortable with this style of working, graphic designers soon replaced layout sub-editors. The internet has impacted hugely on newspaper design, creating a 24-hour news cycle and an audience that devours information from computers, tablets and smartphones. Newspapers, no longer first or even second with the news, now provide information graphics and long-form articles to combat the deficiencies of other media. Social media have allowed people to circulate information informally at speeds that leave a daily newspaper in their wake. To stay in the race, newspapers have developed a library of page templates so articles and pictures can be fed quickly on to their websites. The page templates may apply from paper to paper within a group, such as News Limited, Fairfax Media or APN News and Media. For instance, APN dailies have common national and international news and business pages. REFs: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981); R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (1976). ROD KIRKPATRICK

N EW SP AP ER ILLU STR ATIO N There is a long and rich tradition of different forms of illustration in Australian newspapers and magazines, which has shifted in kind and content in response to technological change, commercial imperatives and the broad political climate. This tradition began before the nucleus of a European society was established in 1788, and the Botany Bay venture was already the subject of scathingly satirical graphic commentary by Hogarth, Gillray and Rowlandson back in Great Britain. An anonymous stand-alone engraving depicting the arrest of Governor William Bligh in 1808 was possibly Australia’s first political cartoon. Unlike European societies of the same period, there is limited graphic material to flavour our understanding of the new colony, but early evidence of newspaper illustration comes in one image from the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser. It depicts the Irish convict uprising at Castle Hill in 1804, and hovers between illustration and political cartoon, in the sense that it is both a description of events and a commentary upon them. It was not until later, when censorship was less of an issue, that freer publishing was possible. An image such as ‘A Chain Gang’ (1842) is an example of a drawing that includes descriptive and illustrative power because it makes an implicit comment on penal servitude. The discovery of gold in the 1850s and the growth of the wool industry had the effect of transforming the Australian colonies from a harsh penal culture to a more complex, diverse and wealthier society. This new prosperity created demands for the accoutrements of a growing European civilisation in the southern hemisphere. The market and demand for newspapers and magazines grew rapidly, with the likes of the Illustrated Sydney News (1853–55, 1864–94), the Sydney Guardian (1848–50), the Sydney Mail (1860–1938) and the Melbourne Punch (1855–1925) vying with each other to provide news, gossip and entertainment to a prosperous and literate middle class. Improvements to engraving and lithographic technology, coupled with improved distribution courtesy of the growing railway networks, helped satisfy the demand for extravagant and complex illustrations that depicted lord mayoral dinners, soirees and balls attended by visiting dignitaries. These illustrations faithfully recorded the hundreds of people present, and notified the general population of their social standing. Their intent was primarily social reportage. The Victorian gold rushes were the spur for a vigorous newspaper market that possibly exceeded Sydney. These publications included the Newsletter of Australasia (1856–62), the Illustrated Melbourne Post (1862–68) and the Australasian Sketcher (1872–89). The introduction of photography in 1888 brought to a close the illustrated dramatic

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newspaper illustration recreations of both social occasions and news events such as the Siege of Glenrowan and Ned Kelly’s trial and execution. Photographs had been the graphic reference for wood engraved images, but now half-tone photographic images—originally poor in quality—became a cheaper and quicker way of illustrating news and events. Now shorn of its utilitarian function, illustration became freer and more imaginative. By 1880, new publications that carried illustration of a different purpose began to appear. A notable example is J.F. Archibald’s the Bulletin, which didn’t seek to flatter the social prowess of its readers. The Bulletin, nationalist in political sentiment, was dominated by political cartoons, caricatures and illustrations. It established the reputations of Phil May and ‘Hop’ (Livingston Hopkins), and later David Low and Norman Lindsay, effectively establishing a tradition. Unlike previous generations of illustrators, these names were well-known to the general public. The newspapers and magazines of the early to mid-20th century were the dominant advertising medium of the period. A powerful element in the competition for readers was a strong contingent of an able and varied group of artists. The decades after World War I introduced to newspaper and magazine readers diversely talented artists whose illustrative formats widened further. Stan Cross, Jimmy Bancks and Syd Nicholls, originally illustrators, became famous as comic strip creators, then a relatively new mode of expression for newspaper artists. Newspaper sales rose and fell as editors retained or lost their artistic services. Most prominent artists began as illustrators, but subsequently alternated between illustration, political cartoons and comic strips. The brothers Ambrose and Will Dyson, who drew between the early 20th century and the 1930s, were examples of this. Will went on to a career in England and became a war artist of great distinction. Syd Nicholls, another from this period, began his career drawing ferocious anti-war illustrations and cartoons. After World War I, he devised and executed the comic strip ‘Fatty Finn’, depicting the adventures of a working-class boy; it endured and remained popular until the 1960s. George Finey was a New Zealander who made his reputation in Australia. He was skilled in all aspects of newspaper art—a genuine all-rounder and a superb caricaturist who playfully mimicked many of the 20th century’s art movements in his illustrations. By the 1950s, the use of photo colour gravure printing had become widespread. A form of reproduction technologically superior to earlier methods, it enhanced the publications in which illustrations appeared. Beneficiaries included artists of the calibre of Arthur Boothroyd, Charles Altmann, Bruce Begg, Ron Laski, Astra Dick,

W.E. Pidgeon (‘WEP’), Donald Friend, George Haddon and many other talented individuals contributing different types of illustrations to newspapers and magazines. This was also the period of the introduction of television to Australia, and both television and radio made strong inroads into an advertising market previously dominated by print. The demand for illustration—particularly in magazines such as the Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ) and Australasian Post (1946– 2002)—remained, but a slow decline began and, as the temper of the times changed in the 1960s, the successful and prolific artists of an earlier generation were ill-matched to a growing and sometimes rebellious youth culture. The beginnings of change were first noticeable outside the mainstream press. University and alternative publications took advantage of cheaper offset printing, and younger artists began producing scandalous illustrations and cartoons. These drawings were more rough-hewn and less artistically accomplished than their more mature predecessors, but they were vigorous, confronting and attuned to their times. Offset printing eliminated expensive block-making for artwork and photographs, and was thus a boon to the smaller, independent press. Alternative publications such as OZ (1963– 69), Lot’s Wife (1964– ) and Broadside (1969) accepted work from a new band of artists of a libertarian and anti-establishment bent. John Spooner, now and for several decades with the Age, began as a young law student doing caricatures for the Monash University paper Lot’s Wife. Martin Sharp was a feature of OZ magazine; Michael Leunig was with Broadside, Nation Review (1970–81) and Newsday (1959– 70); Michael Fitzjames did illustrations for the Digger (1972–75); Peter Nicholson contributed to the University of Melbourne’s Farrago; and Patrick Cook was a freelance contributor to Nation Review. All graduated successfully to the mainstream press. They were joined by artists such as New Zealander Alan Moir, now with the Sydney Morning Herald, and Philip Burgoyne, the art director of News Limited and a fine illustrator contributing to the Australian. More recently, the Australian has carried Bill Leak’s work. The National Times (1971–88), the Australian, the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the Bulletin all became home to a band of illustrators, caricaturists and cartoonists, this writer included. Many are still working, but have been complemented over recent years by others such as Simon Letch and John Shakespeare on the Sydney Morning Herald, David Rowe on the Australian Financial Review and Sturt Krygsman and Eric Lobbecke on the Australian, as well as many other artists of great skill and diverse abilities. The current transition to digital news media publication, with its attendant pressures of

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newspaper libraries technological formats, commercial imperatives and shifting aesthetics, will necessarily transform the role and style of media illustration into the future. REFs: P. Coleman and L. Tanner, Cartoons of Australian History (1967); P. Hogarth, The Artist as Reporter (1967); J. King, The Other Side of the Coin (1976). WARD O’NEILL

N E W SPAPER L I BRA RIES Most Australian daily capital city newspapers have had newspaper libraries for many decades—some for close to 50 years. Newspapers have traditionally had two different sections for collating material: editorial libraries for books, clippings and so on; and pictorial libraries for picture files and negatives, often with few links between the two departments. Newspaper libraries maintained their records in various clippings files, organised by subject. The daily routine involved ‘marking’ the paper, then clipping, pasting and filing. Clippings files were indispensable to a reporter when researching a story, because they provided an overview on an issue or personality. Even now, the system’s utility is evident when old files are required—for instance, during the annual release of 30-year-old Cabinet documents by the National Archives of Australia. The librarians became skilled at very quickly flipping through files when attempting to locate a particular story. The disadvantage, especially when a large story was breaking, was that files could only be borrowed by one person at a time. Worse still was the problem of a file going missing altogether. For this reason, most libraries had a policy of not allowing files to be removed from the office. Before faxes and email, stories from files would need to be read aloud over the phone to reporters in interstate offices—often the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery—or a reporter filing from a hotel room during an election campaign. Public libraries have played an important role in indexing Australian newspapers; for instance, the State Library of Victoria indexed them from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Before digitisation, the bound indexes (1927–61) published by John Fairfax & Sons to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sydney Mail and the Sun-Herald meant that these newspapers were used heavily by researchers. The Melbourne Age library’s general and sports clippings collection dates back to the late 1950s, although some personal files go back to the 1930s. When the Argus ceased publication in 1957, the collection was divided, with the clipping files going to the Age and the photo files going to the Herald and Weekly Times. Some in-house newspaper indexes found their way to public libraries; for instance, the 1890–1958

ledgers for Truth are held by the State Library of New South Wales. Other resources held in newspaper libraries have included book collections, reference and biography, Hansard, Acts of Parliament, Australian Bureau of Statistics information and magazines, with electoral rolls on microfiche. An invaluable resource for many years in Melbourne was the Sands and McDougall directory, listing streets with name of the residents at each house number. Most newspapers had their papers compiled into bound volumes by outside companies, a practice continued into the 1970s. These took up considerable space, and older issues were stored in archives. State libraries kept these bound volumes as well. This practice was discontinued by newspaper companies due to storage requirement, and the advent of microfilm, PDF and digital technologies. Microfilm has been in constant use in newspaper libraries for many decades. Whereas in the early years it was utilised mainly by a reporter taking notes and perhaps taking a roll of 35 mm film to the imaging department for a frame to be photographed for a tear-out, now a page or article can be scanned and emailed anywhere rather than having to be printed and faxed. Microfilm has been an efficient way to hold the records of a newspaper’s collection in a compact space. PDFs of each day’s paper are also a welcome addition, but browsing through pages on a microfilm gives a picture of the layout and priority of placement for an article. Most libraries ceased clipping articles for files in the 1990s. All the major media organisations retain all stories and pictures in their own databases, with articles commencing in the mid-1980s and photos being introduced a few years later. However, older photos are added to pictorial databases whenever they are needed for a story. The process of information collection and storage was originally quite labour intensive. The Brisbane Courier-Mail library had just over 30 staff members in the 1960s after it was merged with that of the Telegraph. The West Australian library, which started in 1959, had 23 staff members by the late 1980s. The Age library had about 14 staff members, and the Sydney Morning Herald about 25. Staff came from a variety of backgrounds; the winner of the first Miss Australia contest (a 1926 newspaper stunt), Beryl Mills, became an early Consolidated Press librarian. With digitisation, most libraries now operate with only a handful of staff—perhaps three to six people. Data and stories move on from the sub-editor’s desk, ending up in an internal database with classification headings added. There has been a move in recent years to have this role outsourced, which means newspaper libraries and media researchers today deal more with reference and research queries.

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newspaper supplements Many journalists use the database, and may do a lot of research themselves, but will often contact the library if they need more thorough research, problem-solving or faster results. The library also does research for journalists and contributors who work elsewhere, for overseas and interstate offices, and in some instances, for a fee, for outside researchers. The library may also do supplementary work on a story—such as panels and timelines. Libraries in Australia can be in contact with overseas newspaper libraries and media researchers through listservs, the main one being Newslib, originating in the United States. This can be used for discussing ideas and issues that may arise, and for seeking assistance or information. International databases such as Factiva and Lexis are widely used, as are searches of ASIC documents, electoral rolls, inter-library loans, and the purchasing of photographs from picture agencies. The future will show whether management wishes to continue with specialised library and research staff or cut costs and have journalists do all research themselves. The Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program aims to make as many Australian newspapers published prior to 1955 as possible available via Trove, hosted by the National Library of Australia. JOHN LANGDON

NEW SPAPER SUPPLEM ENTS Newspaper supplements are self-contained sections, additional to normal content, inserted into a regular issue of a newspaper. Early Australian newspapers usually had a fixed number of pages; hence surplus material—whether advertising or editorial—was often handled by the insertion of supplements of two or four pages. Australia’s first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, founded on 5 March 1803, soon adopted this practice. It issued its first supplement on 27 November 1803. This mainly comprised news about the resumption of war with France. Thereafter, supplements were issued irregularly, but fairly often. The venerable Sydney Morning Herald, Australia’s longest surviving newspaper, issued its first supplement with the issue of 19 September 1831, six months after the newspaper launched as the Sydney Herald. It was one page with a mixture of advertisements and news. Supplements were also popular in the 19th century to summarise news to send ‘home’, covering the events of the past few weeks. These appeared regularly and were timed to coincide with the departure of mail ships to Britain. Supplements were also often issued with the latest news from Europe when arriving ships brought newspapers—especially from Britain. Supplements were also used in metropolitan newspapers to commemorate major events—for

example, exhibitions, the deaths of monarchs and Federation. Until illustrations became common in newspapers, supplements—which usually had longer production lead times—were often a means to provide pictures and diagrams. In the late 19th century, advertising agencies produced supplements that were distributed to country newspapers. These contained features, such as serials and popular articles, as well as the all-important advertisements. Pressure was applied by the agencies on rural newspapers to carry these. However, these supplements were commonly regarded by newspaper proprietors as threats to their own revenue, as they competed for advertising. Countering these supplements was one of the early aims of the country press associations in some states. The Victorian CPA even pre-emptively produced its own supplement for members in the early 1900s. In the 20th and 21st centuries, most newspapers included supplements. These were not designed as news, but rather as a means to attract advertising dollars. Indeed, their subjects range very widely. In 1927, the Sydney Morning Herald commenced its long-running and well-regarded annual economic review (from 1957 entitled ‘Australia Unlimited’). Being well supported by advertising, it was large. Today, supplements in metropolitan newspapers cover a wide range of topics, such as defence, motoring, the railway industry, travel, banking, cooking, restaurant guides—anything that will attract advertising. In fact, the editorial content of such supplements is usually written mainly to complement the advertising. Also common are supplements on major but predictable news events, such as election guides, election results, annual budgets, major horse racing carnivals, sporting, entertainment and cultural events. Some supplements—such as turf guides, food and real estate—appear weekly. Some magazines, such as Fairfax Media’s the(sydney) magazine (2003–13) and the(melbourne)magazine (2004–13), have been designed to attract high-end advertising. The Good Weekend colour magazine was introduced into the Sydney Morning Herald in October 1984 (and the Age in 1985). Since then, glossy colour magazines have become a feature of all major newspapers at weekends. Rural newspapers—especially those in New South Wales and Queensland owned by Fairfax Media and by APN News and Media—commonly include supplements. These are inserted into all titles owned by the group within a defined area. These add a wider range of news, features and, of course, advertising, to supplement that carried in the host titles. They add bulk and therefore are seen to add value to the host paper. Examples are Southern Weekly and Town and Country (Fairfax) and Rural Weekly (APN). Occasionally, these supplements are also carried by neighbouring titles owned by other

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newsprint companies. Similar supplements are produced in Victoria under the Farmer title by North East Newspapers. VICTOR ISAACS

N E W SPRI NT The Hobart Town Courier of August 1826 reported that a ‘small paper mill’ in Sydney had folded, and urged ‘some person of capital’ to embark on a ‘Paper Mill’ to serve the ‘five newspapers and three almanacks in the 2 colonies’. However, the need for an Australian newsprint industry was not realised for another century. Australia’s complete reliance on imported paper was highlighted by severe newsprint rationing during World War I. Melbourne journalist Gerald Mussen saw potential in Tasmanian forests, and formed a group that in 1927 funded successful research in the Huon Valley, led by chemist L.R. (Lou) Benjamin. A breakaway syndicate led by (Sir) Keith Murdoch of the Herald and Weekly Times and (Sir) Warwick Fairfax of John Fairfax & Sons formed the Derwent Valley Paper Co. in 1932, with the aim of producing Australian newsprint. Following successful full-scale trials using Swamp Gum at Ocean Falls, British Colombia, in 1934, in July and August 1935, the Hobart Mercury and the Adelaide News printed trial editions of their papers using newsprint made from Tasmanian eucalypts. Following this success, a new company headed by Benjamin, Australian Newsprint Mills (ANM) Pty Ltd, negotiated the Florentine Valley Paper Industry Act 1937, which included extensive forest concessions. Construction of Boyer Mill beside the Derwent River began in 1939, along with a settlement for workers at New Norfolk. The mill opened in 1941. Guided initially by Canadian technicians, the mill averted serious wartime newsprint rationing among Australia’s 10 daily newspapers. Logs were extracted via rail spur lines from Kallista, Nichol’s Hill and Risbys Basin (near Fitzgerald), connected to Boyer Mill via Tasmanian Government Railways. A small settlement at Karanja supported the Styx Valley operation. Workforce camps provided comfortable but basic accommodation. Bushmen used crosscut saws and axes to fell giant trees, while imported tracked Caterpillar tractors dragged logs to sidings, where steam haulers with cables attached to tall trees winched logs on to rail trucks. After the war, rail spur lines were replaced by logging roads as heavy vehicles carried logs to the railhead in the Florentine Valley to be carried by train to Boyer Mill. In 1947, ANM constructed the ‘Model Township’ of Maydena, Tasmania’s last planned private ‘New Town’. Homes at New Norfolk and Maydena were erected from sections prefabricated in the Hobart suburb of Lenah Valley by Paine P/L.

In December 1947, ANM was converted into a public company, Australian Newsprint Mills Ltd, with Murdoch appointed chairman (1938–49), and a former conservator of forests in Western Australia, S.L. Kessell, managing director (1938–62). Tasmania’s first conservation controversy occurred in 1948, when the Tasmanian Labor government annexed 2000 acres (around 810 hectares) from the adjacent Mt Field National Park (1916), extending ANM’s Florentine Valley concession. By 1960, the chainsaw had replaced the crosscut saw, increasing the timber extraction rate and making fellers wealthy in the process. ANM’s progressive safety policy saw bushmen wearing helmets and ear-muffs. Lacking a Tasmanian forestry school, imported experts ‘colonised’ the Tyenna Valley, directing the self-taught skills of local bushmen. Forest operations centred at the Maydena Depot and Railhead were directed by Dan Kitchener. The workforce consisted of many single men, including British, Baltic and Yugoslav migrants. Thriving communities developed at New Norfolk and Maydena, with company-built amenities including halls, football grounds and swimming pools. Kessell, the foundation president of the Institute of Foresters (Australia), instigated research aimed at reforestation. Max Gilbert was awarded ANM’s first PhD scholarship, a ground-breaking study of wet temperate forests in the concession, while entomologist Ron Greaves studied beetle defoliation and Bill Mollison researched animal browsing. Bill Jackson and Tony Mount engaged in debate over the use of fire in forests, attracting industry interest and community criticism. Maydena became known nationally as the ‘cradle of Australian wet forest silviculture’. However, these approaches were coming into conflict with urban-based views on wilderness and recreational use of forests. Meanwhile, Boyer Mill expanded, with new machines increasing newsprint production. From 1955 it had a new competitor, the New Zealand Tasman Pulp and Paper Co. Ltd. By 1958, annual production at Boyer had risen to 81,000 tons, or 30 per cent of Australia’s total newsprint consumption. That year, Australian Newsprint Mills Holdings Ltd was formed. In 1962, ANM and Tasman were joined together by a share exchange, rationalising the industry in Australia and New Zealand. In 1981, a new ANM mill commenced production at Albury, New South Wales, reliant on plantation timbers; this more than doubled Australian production. In the Derwent Valley, contracting out became common practice. Mechanised forest operations had gradually reduced the once unionised workforce, as timber sourced from plantation forests lower down the Derwent Valley was transported by road.

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newsreels With the 1968 declaration of the adjacent South West World Heritage Area, the Boyer Mill and the logging industry became increasingly involved in the growing forestry controversy. With out-dated machinery and global competition, Boyer Mill nearly closed. Taken over in 1988 by New Zealand paper giant Fletcher Challenge, the workforce was reduced from 3000 to 600. The Florentine Depot at Maydena was closed in 1990. The once-united forest industry, formerly led by ANM’s chairman, (later Senator) Brian Gibson, and supported by Liberal Premier Robin Gray, was divided by the new Fletcher Challenge appointee, Graham Ogilvie. He argued for the adoption of environmental values, negotiated with the Wilderness Society and completed full treatment of Boyer Mill’s liquid effluent, previously piped into the Derwent River. In 1997, Fletcher Challenge rescinded its former concession rights with the Tasmanian government, in exchange for guaranteed timber supply. In 2002, the company was taken over by Norwegian paper giant Norske Skog, with an international reputation for industry professionalism that has continued the high environmental standards initiated by the previous owner. For more than 15 years, both mills have been entirely reliant on plantation-based radiata pine, although the Albury Mill additionally uses recycled fibre and newspaper. In recent years, the Boyer and Albury newsprint mills each produce 40 per cent of Australian newsprint requirements. REFs: P. MacFie, ‘The Australian Newsprint Mills’, in A. Alexander (ed.), The Companion to Tasmanian History (2005) and ‘Maydena, a Logging Town in a Colonised Valley’, in J. Dargavel, J. (ed.), P&P Fourth Australian Forestry History Conference (1999); Newsprint Log (Australian Newsprint Mills, Boyer, 1945–90). PETER MacFIE

NEW SREEL S From 1910 until 1975, newsreels produced in Australia captured the most consistent moving image representation of the day-to-day life of the nation. With a duration of about 10 minutes, each edition presented between one and five segments carefully structured to keep viewers absorbed with a blend of information and entertainment. In 1910, two years after Pathé Frères had produced the world’s first regular newsreel in France, the earliest regular Australian news film items appeared alongside overseas stories in West’s Journal of Daily Events. From 28 November 1910, the first newsreel with entirely Australian content was Pathé’s Animated Gazette (Australasian Edition), renamed Australian Gazette in 1914 and Australasian Gazette in 1916. Australian newspapers like the Sydney Sun and Melbourne Argus often supplied Pathé

and Australasian Gazette with story ideas, and newsreels generally dealt with events that allowed coverage to be pre-planned. Cameramen mostly worked alone, determining a story’s approach through its shooting style. Each story was constructed like a mini-feature. Following the segment title, inter-titles between the visual coverage would explain each story’s events, locations and personalities. Early Australian cameramen who filmed newsreels included Alf J. Moulton, Bert Cross, Maurice Bertel, Lacey Percival, Al Burne and Walter Sully. During World War I, cartoonist and caricaturist Harry Julius produced a series of popular propaganda segments called Cartoons of the Moment for Australasian Gazette. Australian Gazette and Australasian Gazette were produced by the Sydney-based Australasian Films, and they screened nationally on the same programs as newsreels imported from the United States and United Kingdom. By the 1920s, the Gazette’s rivals included the Australian editions of the US-based Fox News and Paramount Gazette as well as regionally made newsreels. But where Australian newsreels from Fox and MGM combined local items with mostly overseas material, Paramount’s Australian Gazette (1918–30) featured exclusively Australian stories. The ‘talkie’ revolution of the late 1920s was as profound for newsreels as it was for the rest of the film industry. In the United States, the Fox-produced sound-on-film (as distinct from sound-on-disc) Movietone News premiered in October 1927, first screening in Australia in January 1929. The silent Australasian Gazette finished in March 1929, and Australia’s first Movietone truck arrived in Sydney in August. The first edition of an occasional Fox Movietone News (Australian Edition) appeared in November, and was screened weekly from January 1931. Between 1930 and 1932, the Melbourne branch of Australasian Films combined with Vocalion Records to produce a sound-on-disc Australian Talkies Newsreel. Keen to see Australasian Films embark on sound-on-film newsreels, the company’s Sydney laboratory manager and veteran cameraman Bert Cross encouraged radio engineer Arthur Smith to develop a soundon-film system that would sidestep the high cost of imported recording technology. Smith’s system was used on Australasian Films’ (soon to be Cinesound Productions’) newsreel Cinesound Review, which premiered on 7 November 1931. From 21 September 1931, Cinesound Review had a Melbourne competitor, the Herald Newsreel, produced with imported sound-on-film gear by Herschells Pty Ltd in association with the Melbourne Herald. In September 1932, Cinesound Review absorbed the Herald Newsreel, and for some years the Cinesound newsreel in Victoria was called the Herald Cinesound News Review.

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newton, bert (1938– ) Sound brought greater prominence to newsreels. The Cinesound and Movietone newsreels developed flagship narrators who specialised in comedy—Charles Lawrence at Cinesound and Jack Davey at Movietone—and others (such as Jack Lumsdaine, Ernest Walsh and Harry Guinness) who handled the serious topics. Cinesound and Movietone were friendly competitors. Paramount (which still filmed occasional Australian sound items), Movietone, Cinesound and the Herald Newsreel covered the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932, but only Cinesound’s Bert Cross captured the moment when Captain Frank de Groot prematurely slashed the ceremonial ribbon. The newsreels’ political items included newly elected Prime Minister Joseph Lyons introducing his Cabinet in 1932, and a story from 1933 in which Burraga, an Indigenous leader from Thirroul, called on the Indigenous people of New South Wales to petition King George V for representation in federal parliament. ‘Novelties’ included the 1937 item Meet the Girl Who Became a Man, featuring transsexual Peter Alexander. From 1939 to 1945, newsreels made little attempt to hide the realities of World War II. Taking advantage of lighter cameras, they intimately captured the war’s drama and desperation. While audiences at home could share a sense of what loved ones endured overseas, Australian newsreels reinforced the message that people at home needed to take the war more seriously. Some of the Cinesound and Movietone staff joined the wartime Department of Information (DOI) to film Australia’s war effort overseas. The DOI made its footage available to both companies, which occasionally used the material in very different ways. In 1942 Movietone used footage shot by combat cameraman Damien Parer to edit a routine newsreel called The Road to Kokoda. Meanwhile, at Cinesound, producer Ken G. Hall and editor Terry Banks blended the same and similar footage with a riveting to-camera report by Parer to produce a 10-minute special, Kokoda Front Line!, which in 1943 won Australia’s first Academy Award, for documentary. Other newsreel combat cameramen included Roy Driver, Frank Bagnall, Frank Hurley and Bill Carty. As audiences queued to see war news, capital city newsreel theatres (which had opened in the 1930s) experienced a boom. In the late 1930s, the maverick filmmaker Rupert Kathner launched an independent newsreel, Australia Today, whose stories included true crime, poverty and drug smuggling. In 2006, his exploits formed the basis of the feature film Hunt Angels. A strong editorial viewpoint, especially as articulated by Cinesound Review, continued into Australian newsreels’ post-war years. In the 10 years before the arrival of television, Cinesound covered such topical issues as Australia’s surge in immigration, housing shortages, slum clearance,

health, Aboriginal welfare and land conservation. In the early to mid-1950s, anti-communist propaganda seeped into the newsreels, culminating in coverage of Soviet diplomat Vladimir Petrov’s defection to Australia, the attempted abduction of his wife Evdokia and the ensuing Royal Commission into Espionage in 1954. Over the years, the Australian government also produced newsreel-like series for cinema exhibition—for example, Know Your Own Country in the 1920s and the Australian Diary (1946–70) and Australian Colour Diary (1954–73) series. With the start of Australian television in September 1956, Cinesound shot, edited and delivered news film for the first station to go to air, Sydney’s TCN9. After Ken G. Hall became chief executive of that station in December 1956, he instigated the format for television news bulletins that drew on his 25 years of experience with Cinesound Review. Former newsreel cameramen, writers and editors joined news staff of the public and commercial television stations around Australia, bringing decades of expertise to the new medium and training younger colleagues. For some years, Australian television stations ran stand-alone newsreel segments after their main bulletins, the most durable being the ABC’s Weekend Magazine (1958–85). Despite the fact that television’s popularity caused many cinemas to close, Cinesound and Movietone kept producing newsreels until 1970, also making sponsored documentaries and commercials. Both reels now placed more of an emphasis on magazine stories than news, and some issues—such as Bill Carty’s award-winning Symphony in Steel (1970)—were in fact documentaries rather than traditional newsreels. In October 1970, Cinesound and Movietone merged as Cinesound Movietone Productions, continuing with the weekly Australian Movie Magazine until 27 November 1975, when the last issue appeared nine months after the introduction of colour television in Australia. REFs: T. FitzSimons, P. Laughren and D. Williamson, Australian Documentary (2007); B. McFarlane, G. Mayer and I. Bertrand (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Film (1999); G. Shirley and B. Adams, Australian Cinema (1989). GRAHAM SHIRLEY

N EW TO N , B ER T (1938– ) Bert Newton, Australia’s consummate television host, presenter, interviewer and personality, is the last great survivor of the medium’s beginnings in Australia, when television was joyfully makeshift, impromptu and live. He once described himself as ‘second-stringer, second-banana, feedman, stooge’, but he is also an eloquent and witty speaker and a consummate interviewer. Born in Melbourne, Newton became the youngest announcer in Melbourne’s radio

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history when he joined 3XY after finishing school in 1954, aged 15. He handled every shift on the station at some stage during the 1950s, including the prestigious evening programs, and was Melbourne’s self-labelled ‘Number One Bachelor Boy’ when he conducted 3XY’s Bachelor Club on Tuesday nights. Newton began his television career at HSV7 in Melbourne, hosting The Late Show. However, at the age of 19 he joined GTV9 and soon became an announcer and Graham Kennedy’s offsider on the hugely successful In Melbourne Tonight. Their double act took Melbourne by storm, with Newton bringing unparalleled experience in ad libbing with him from his radio days. He and Kennedy performed cross-talk comedy with the immediacy of reminiscing brothers. From 1975 until 1983, Newton worked with Don Lane on his long-running, highly successful The Don Lane Show, an inspired mix of celebrity interviews, stunts and buffoonery. In 1976, he also replaced long-running compere Frank Wilson on the successful talent show New Faces and in 1981, with singer wife Patti, hosted Ford Superquiz. An unhappy spell as general manager of 3DB Melbourne followed (1986–87). In 1992, Newton moved to Network Ten and daytime television, where for the next 14 years he compered Good Morning Australia, an inventive, largely ad-libbed mix of interviews, music and cooking segments. He returned to the Nine Network in 2006, hosting Bert’s Family Feud and 20 to 1, a show composed of video clips and brief interviews with celebrities held together by Newton’s resonant voice. Newton wrote Bert! Bert Newton’s Own Story in 1979. He was appointed MBE that year, and AM in 2006. He was compere of the Logie Awards for many years from the time they started in 1959, and won four Gold Logies for his roles in The Don Lane Show and New Faces. Newton is recognised as Australian television’s great talker, able to conversationally seize any moment of spontaneity like no other local compere, but gravely, impeccably diplomatic, with a veteran’s sense of what is appropriate. REF: G. Blundell, King: The Life and Comedy of Graham Kennedy (2003). GRAEME BLUNDELL

NEW T ON, MA X WELL (1929–90) Max Newton was a brilliant, colourful financial journalist. Before becoming unpredictable and manic, he was an abrasive, controversial pioneer in criticising long-standing economic policies. An economics graduate from the University of Western Australia and Clare College, Cambridge, he was employed briefly by the Treasury before joining the editorial staff of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1957. As political correspondent in Canberra, he claimed to be ‘one of the first journalists to penetrate the civil service’. From 1960, as editor of the Australian

Financial Review, he transformed interpretative and analytical financial reporting. In 1964, he became founding editor of the Australian, but less than a year later he fell out with Rupert Murdoch. Newton became correspondent for the London Economist and the Financial Times. In June 1965, in Canberra, he began a weekly subscription newsletter, Incentive, followed by Tariff Week and other specialist subscription newsletters that soon became ‘required reading around Parliament House’. Newton’s promotion of free trade and deregulation of the economy brought him into conflict with the powerful leader of the Country Party, (Sir) John McEwen, a feud that brought increasing notoriety, culminating in a 1969 police raid on Newton’s premises. The raid coincided with a time of expansion, with the lease of a factory, purchase of a large printing press and the acquisition of several regional and trade publications and a Sydney shipping newspaper, the Daily Commercial News. Newton believed he ‘would get much better’ when he had newspapers, but he later admitted he had ‘much more influence’ when he only had newsletters. In 1969, he launched the Perth Sunday Independent, financed by mining magnates Lang Hancock and Peter Wright, and two years later the Melbourne Observer, which closed after Newton’s bankruptcy following failed attempts to make money running brothels and publishing pornography. By then he was suffering increasing instability and lack of judgement, attributed to a manic depressive illness and fuelled by alcohol and drug-induced psychosis. In the 1980s, Newton re-established his career as a right-wing economic journalist as financial editor of Murdoch’s New York Post. His columns were syndicated in the Murdoch press and he became a widely read economics and financial commentator. In 1983, he published a book on the American monetary system. He died in the United States on 23 July 1990, aged 61. REFs: P. Clarke, ‘On a Roller-coaster with Maxwell Newton Publications’, Canberra Historical Jnl (July 2006); S. Newton, Maxwell Newton (1993). PATRICIA CLARKE

N O R TH ER N STAR The Northern Star and Richmond and Tweed Rivers Advocate was launched in Lismore, New South Wales on 13 May 1876 by William Kelleway, a former editor of the Clarence and Richmond Examiner in nearby Grafton. The Northern Star advocated for the advancement of Lismore’s residents, arguing that ‘we shall at the same time be forwarding our own’. But in two years Kelleway took no more than £5 in job printing, and survived largely because of his agricultural work. In 1877 he advocated the formation of a country press association, and the following year a direct competitor emerged: the Lismore Chronicle.

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The Northern Star switched from weekly to bi-weekly publication in 1882. The paper’s premises burned down in 1883, and the newspaper relocated to the corner of Market and Molesworth Streets. In 1885, Kelleway finally made a profit from the Northern Star. In 1889, Kelleway and his son, Cyril, sold the plant and goodwill of the Northern Star to Thomas George Hewitt, another former editor of the Examiner. (The two papers supplied each other with local news from their respective towns.) The Northern Star went tri-weekly in 1901, and became a daily in 1907. In 1921, Northern Star Limited was formed to acquire the newspaper from the estate of Hewitt, who had died in 1915. The new corporate structure allowed the establishment of a significant chain of newspapers, with the company acquiring part or full control of the Kyogle Examiner, the Richmond River Express (Casino), the Daily News (Murwillumbah) and the Daily Examiner (Grafton). The Northern Star missed publication for the first time when the plant was flooded on 11–13  June 1948. Following another flood in February 1954, a new site was developed at Goonellabah. Douglas Clifford (Cliff) Murray, editor from 1949 to 1977, placed ‘total emphasis’ on district and area news. The various newspapers, together with radio and television interests held at that time, were brought together under the umbrella of Northern Star Holdings Limited in 1964. Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd bought the company for $80 million on 22 October 1987. The Northern Star has won two Walkley Awards, including for Best Story in a Provincial Newspaper in 1982 by Peter Ellem, a first-year cadet writing about the sinking of Japanese submarines off the NSW north coast during World War II. In 2013, the paper recorded a circulation of 9723 on weekdays and 16,438 on Saturdays. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000); J.E. McNaught (comp.), Lismore City (2011). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY and JANET E. McNAUGHT

N O R T HE RN TERRI TORY NEWS The Northern Territory News is a morning tabloid published in Darwin and distributed throughout the Northern Territory. It is known for its garish covers, often featuring photomontages of rampaging crocodiles, and its tongue-in-cheek headlines about UFO sightings and public nudity—sometimes all on the same front page. The Northern Territory News was founded in 1952 to counter the Northern Standard trade union newspaper, the only other paper being produced in post-war Darwin. Initial efforts by the federal government to diminish the Standard’s influence were shelved with the newspaper’s suspension after the

bombing of Darwin in February 1942 and the imposition of military rule in the Territory. The Standard was re-established in May 1946, but by 1949 the Chifley Labor government had asked Canberra journalist Don Whitington to look into the establishment of a more conservative newspaper in Darwin. He solicited the help of his business partner, former Liberal Party public relations officer Eric White, and they chose John Coleman as their publisher. He was allocated £1000 worth of shares, but Whitington and White retained a controlling interest in the paper. The first issue was published on 8 February 1952. After appearing as a weekly for its first two years, it moved to twice-weekly afternoon publication, then tri-weekly in 1960, and became an afternoon daily (Monday to Friday) in 1964. It published its first Saturday edition on 20 April 1968. In the days following Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve 1974, staff produced an information sheet from a small press in the Darwin Police Station. The first four-page post-cyclone edition appeared from the repaired press on 31  December 1974, listing the dead and injured, and providing advice on evacuation. The Northern Territory News then recommenced as an afternoon daily, published Monday to Friday, from February 1975. In 1977, a new web off-set press was installed, bringing a long overdue shift to modern photo-composition. A Saturday edition was reintroduced in July 1979 and the paper reverted to morning publication in 1991, a schedule it has since retained. A sister paper, the Sunday Territorian, was launched on 7 October 1984, edited by Gary Shipway. The NT News, as it was renamed in 2010, celebrated its 60th anniversary on 8 February 2012 by publishing its first full-colour edition. In 2013, the NT News had a circulation of 16,508 on weekdays and 25,375 on Saturdays. The first editor was Mac Jeffries, who declared that the newspaper’s intention was to ‘fight for North Australia’ and ‘work for the progress and prosperity of everyone in the Northern Territory’. Jim Bowditch was appointed editor in 1955. He was to head the newspaper for 18 years, win a Walkley Award and become well known for crusading on many issues, from Aboriginal human rights to the treatment of the Territory by the federal government. Swan Breweries bought John Coleman’s shares in the paper in 1960. Around the same time, Whitington and White sold their controlling interest in the paper to News Limited, which took full control of the paper in 1964. News Limited appears to have confidence in the paper’s editorial staff and its future profitability, as evidenced by its investment in a new $18 million printing press in 2012. Although the NT News began life with an avowedly anti-communist stance, over the years

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norton family it has often adopted liberal causes, particularly during Bowditch’s editorial reign. In more recent decades, it has taken a more neutral political line, even though it remains highly parochial and a staunch supporter of statehood for the Territory. Along with much of the Australian mainstream media, the News has been subject to criticism for its representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, but it is probably also correct to say that it is just as likely to expose institutional and casual racism in the Territory as to perpetuate it. From its earliest days, the NT News was central to the life of Darwin and the wider Territory. It remains one of the main sources of information about events in the city, from social gossip and sporting results to cyclone warnings and the Territory’s often-fraught relationship with the Commonwealth government. It is unconcerned by criticism of its tabloid editorial style, seeing itself as an expression of Territorians’ unique view of the world, epitomised by its website slogan, ‘Only in the Territory’. In covering its 50th anniversary in February 2011, ABC Television’s 7.30 described it as ‘Australia’s most outrageous newspaper’: ‘It’s bizarre and offbeat and a little bit wild and I think that is great,’ senior NT News journalist Nigel Adlam remarked. Territory Member of the federal House of Representatives Warren Snowdon, however, contended in his interview that the paper ought to make greater efforts ‘in terms of providing informed discussion’. Many born-and-bred Territorians bristle at criticism of their paper, and the Territory’s isolation means that other national dailies usually arrive a day or even two after publication and typically cost twice their masthead price. REFs: Northern Territory News, Doing the Impossible (1985); D. Whitington, Strive to be Fair (1977). STEPHEN HAMILTON

NORT ON FAMI LY For many years, the Nortons were one of the most powerful media families in Australia. Their influence was first established in 1890 with the notorious John Norton’s takeover of the weekly tabloid Truth. Norton quickly turned the paper into a success with a mixture of crime, sex, politics and his particular brand of polemical journalism. Born in England in 1858, he travelled extensively in Europe and became involved in radical politics in London before his arrival in Sydney in 1884. He quickly plunged into the city’s lively political scene, eventually gravitating towards Truth, which had just been set up by a group of political controversialists. As well as investing money in the paper, he joined its staff, but the disputes among its management—exacerbated by Norton’s drinking—quickly became so acrimonious that the battles ended up in court. In

1896, a deal was finally struck, allowing Norton to take over the paper’s ownership. His editorial style frequently saw him in court again, charged with defamation and invariably representing himself. He went on to establish another weekly, the Sydney Sportsman, in 1900. Norton’s marriage to 25-year-old Ada McGrath was stormy from the very beginning. Son Ezra was already three weeks old when Norton decided they should marry. When Norton drank, he and Ada fought and when he was sober, they made up again. At the centre of it all was Ezra, adored by his father one moment, terrorised the next. But the most bizarre thing about their matrimonial rows was Norton’s practice of reporting on them in Truth. In 1907, their union produced a daughter, Joan. But it finally ended in 1915 with a lengthy divorce hearing featuring lurid allegations of adultery on both sides. As usual, Norton initially represented himself. And, true to form, he had the case comprehensively covered in Truth. With her own and her children’s inheritance in mind, Ada changed her plea from divorce to judicial separation, which was granted. Six months later, in 1916, Norton died from kidney failure, leaving Ada and Ezra out of his will. The bulk of his considerable fortune was to go to nine-year-old Joan until the NSW Legislative Council conveniently decided to speed up the introduction of its Testator’s Family Maintenance and Education of Infants Bill, expressly designed to help families in Ada and Ezra’s position. After John’s death, 23-year-old Ezra took over the management of Truth, retaining the paper’s enthusiastic coverage of crime, sex and the divorce courts and introducing some causes of his own. His preoccupation with health and hygiene led to the paper’s exposés of medical malpractice. An animal-lover, he crusaded against animal cruelty. On an uglier note, he endorsed the paper’s racism, initiating its fulminations on ‘the white Australian ideal’. Ezra expanded the family company, Truth & Sportsman Ltd, increasing the paper’s circulation and starting a new tabloid afternoon newspaper, the Daily Mirror. He was a hard drinker with a gruff manner and a volatile temper, which was often directed at his editors. His feuds were notorious, including with rival Sydney newspaper proprietor (Sir) Frank Packer, with whom he had a legendary fist fight at Royal Randwick on Derby Day in 1939. Even so, Norton deftly cultivated political influence. As a result, he was able to obtain enough newsprint to launch the Daily Mirror in 1941 despite wartime rationing and the protests of competing press barons. While he didn’t baulk at his papers’ invasions of other people’s privacy, he was obsessed with his own. In 1958, Cyril Pearl, one of Packer’s most brilliant editors, wrote Wild Men of Sydney, a scathing attack on the character and conduct of John Norton and his confederates. The book outraged both Ada and Ezra, and they

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norton family attempted to have it banned. The row reached the NSW parliament, prompting a heated debate over proposed changes to the state’s Defamation Act 1912. In the end, Norton took a more direct approach: he had several of his employees buy as many copies of the book as possible so they could be burnt. Norton’s retirement in 1958 indirectly paved the way for Rupert Murdoch’s entry into the Sydney newspaper market. Although Norton’s interests initially were bought by a shelf company set up by his rivals, John Fairfax & Sons, they were sold on to Murdoch in 1960. Ezra Norton had two happy marriages. His first, in 1924—to Mollie Willoughby, a young English war widow—lasted until her sudden death from a heart attack 30 years later. In 1953, he wed Emma (Peggy) Morrison, who had worked as his secretary; in 1955, they had a daughter, Mary.

Joan Norton was not so lucky. At 22, she married a man in London; six months later, he was convicted of being a swindler. She returned with Ada to Sydney, where her drinking accelerated into alcoholism, and she died aged just 32. Ada lived until the grand old age of 89, dying in 1960. Six years later, Ezra was diagnosed with cancer. He died in 1967 at 69 after converting to Catholicism. But the shrill, muck-raking brand of tabloid journalism he and his father had pioneered would survive in the media empire forged by Rupert Murdoch. REF: S. Hall, Tabloid Man (2008).

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O O’BRI E N, K E RRY (1945– ) Kerry O’Brien made a major contribution over more than four decades to the public understanding and accountability of Australian politicians and politics. Born in Brisbane, his first experience with the media was organising furniture removals for ABC journalists. He joined QTQ9 as a cadet journalist in 1966, before working for the Queensland Times, Australian Associated Press (for which he was a correspondent in Vietnam and Papua New Guinea) and the Sydney Sun. O’Brien reported for Four Corners (1975–77; 1985–86), covered politics and North America for ATN7, and served as Network Ten’s political editor and a national affairs columnist for Time magazine. He was also a press secretary, first to Gough Whitlam (1977) and then to Lionel Bowen (1978–79). This association with Labor, and O’Brien’s high profile, contributed to a belief held by many conservatives that the ABC—in particular, its staff—was left-leaning. O’Brien was appointed the host of Lateline (1989–95) and then of The 7.30 Report (1995–2010) on ABC Television. He was widely recognised as one of the best and most formidable television interviewers, particularly of politicians—and, on one notable occasion, of the ABC’s controversial managing director, Jonathan Shier. In 2010, he semi-retired to anchor the ABC’s Four Corners on a part-time basis, and to conduct special interviews, including with Clive James and Paul Keating. He has also moderated federal election leaders’ debates, and from 1990 to 2013 anchored the tally-room coverage of elections for the ABC. O’Brien received six Walkley Awards, including the Gold Walkley in 1982 for an ATN7 documentary on how commonly used chemicals adversely affect the health of Australians. He was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Queensland in 2011. REFs: K. O’Brien, Telling It the Way It Is (2003); SMH, the(sydney)magazine, 30 November 2010. MICHAEL BROMLEY

O’CAL L AGHAN, GARY (1933– ) Gary O’Callaghan joined Sydney’s 2SM at the age of 17, progressing quickly from office boy

to newsreader and reporter. In 1954, he scored a worldwide radio scoop, describing the dramatic departure of Evdokia Petrov, the wife of Russian spy Vladimir Petrov, from Mascot Airport. Within a year, O’Callaghan was hosting the breakfast show on 2UE Sydney. Over the next 30 years, he topped the Sydney breakfast ratings for an extraordinary 138 surveys. He pioneered the breakfast format, delivering an invariably cheerful mix of chat, news and information centred on Sydney that included live on-the-spot coverage, traffic reports and beach patrols from the air, and the status of ferry, train, bus and airline services, including chats with Qantas captains over Sydney. He covered three royal tours and the 1966 tour of US President Lyndon B. Johnson. Generations of listeners came to love O’Callaghan’s sidekick, ‘Sammy Sparrow’, the fictional bird that flew into the studio every morning just before children headed off to school, although it was parodied by Mike Carlton’s ‘Victor Vulture’ on rival station 2GB. In 1979, O’Callaghan was appointed MBE for services to radio and the community. His passions were radio, news and his family; he was not motivated by money or celebrity, and his word was his bond. Leaving 2UE due to Kerry Packer’s failed Consolidated Broadcasting Corporation experiment, O’Callaghan hosted the 2KY Sydney breakfast program in 1987–88. He then returned to 2UE to present a weekend morning show. After a metropolitan radio career spanning more than 50 years, O’Callaghan retired in 2003; he was inducted into the Commercial Radio Hall of Fame the following year. In 2002–07, his familiar breezy voice could be heard co-presenting a Sunday morning program on 2MC-FM Port Macquarie with his third son Nicholas, the station’s news director. REFs: Greater Port Macquarie Focus, September 2011; Nicholas O’Callaghan. BRUCE CARTY

O ’ KAN E, TH AD EU S (1820–90) Timothy Joseph O’Kane, born in Dingle, County Kerry, Ireland, changed his name to Thadeus when he arrived in Melbourne in June 1864. The 44-year-old left behind a failed attempt to enter the priesthood, a failed marriage that produced a 319

oakes, laurie (1943– ) son and four daughters, and a failed newspaper (the Kerry Star, 1861–63). In Australia, he became a forthright, independent editor who wrote a distinguished chapter in newspaper history. After nine years as the sub-editor of a Brisbane newspaper and then two separate tri-weeklies in Rockhampton, O’Kane became the editor and joint proprietor of the fledgling weekly the Northern Miner in Charters Towers (August 1873) and sole proprietor five months later. In fashioning the Miner into a weapon to fight for the miners, ‘the oppressed and the injured’, O’Kane avoided the corruptions that were part of the town’s culture, but he sometimes strayed, in his own words, ‘beyond the bounds of rose-water speech’, and numerous libel actions followed. The miners stood by him, even paying his court costs in two libel cases in 1878 and 1879, and in the unusual case in 1882 when a stacked bench of magistrates on the Police Court gagged him for 12 months for writing articles critical of a lawyer. Outside of court, the establishment shunned O’Kane: Charters Towers Council shut him out and later boycotted him by withholding advertising; the Charters Towers Divisional Board also boycotted him, as did Cobb and Co.; the town’s race club expelled him for exposing corruption in its ranks; and the Caxton Club refused to admit him to membership. Yet his paper prospered, becoming a bi-weekly (August 1875); tri-weekly (August 1878); afternoon daily (July 1883); and morning daily (November 1886). He was the editor from 1873 until 1889. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, The Life and Times of Thadeus O’Kane (2003). ROD KIRKPATRICK

O A K ES, L AURI E (1943– ) Laurie Oakes is one of the longest-serving and most powerful political reporters and commentators in Australian history. According to an Australian Public Essential Research survey in 2012, his ‘public recognition’ and ‘trust’ surpass those of all his colleagues. Oakes obtained a BA from the University of Sydney, where he also edited Honi Soit. He joined the Sydney Daily Mirror in 1964, becoming state political roundsman the following year. At 25, Oakes was appointed chief of the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial’s Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery bureau; he also provided political commentaries for the Seven Network’s Willesee at Seven. He joined Network Ten in 1979, famously obtaining a copy of the 1980 budget before it was tabled in federal parliament. From 1978–80, he published his own political journal, The Laurie Oakes Report. In 1984, Oakes moved to the Nine Network. His forensic questioning of politicians on Sunday mornings (1984–2011), principally for Sunday, frequently set an agenda for the week to come. This power was reinforced by his weekly

column in the Packer-owned Bulletin (1985– 2008). Oakes remains Nine’s political editor, and he also contributes to weekly columns in the Herald Sun and the Daily Telegraph as well as to blogs, and has embraced Twitter. Oakes has received several Walkley Awards, including the Walkley for Journalistic Leadership in 1998 and the Gold Walkley for his reporting of Labor leaks during the 2010 election campaign. In 2011, he was named Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year and inducted into the Logie Hall of Fame for, as he put it, ‘maintaining my drug of choice for 47 years and doing it for more than 30 years in full view of the television camera’. He delivered the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in 2011, followed by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance Centenary Lecture in 2012, and is the author of numerous books, including two about Gough Whitlam. Oakes became a political reporter because ‘it mattered. It served a public good’. He is feared and revered by politicians, and his domination of political reporting rests on his willingness to both use politicians and allow himself to be used by them where the story warrants. Oakes’ doyen status, which has persisted through radical technological changes in political journalism, is built on the veracity and impact of ‘scoops’ over 40 years. The epitome of the insider, Oakes has delicately balanced his role as political player and reporter. REF: L. Oakes, On The Record (2010). TRISH PAYNE

O B ITU ARY The art of obituary writing has been evident since the earliest days of Australian journalism. In the 200 years since, however, obituaries have experienced a haphazard history, have been irregular in appearance and have lacked authority in rendition. They enjoyed a sustained prominence from the late 1860s to the early 1920s, then fell into general neglect before some measure of revival in the mid-1990s. According to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory (2005), a legitimate obituary—rather than a simple report of death—offers an assessment of the subject’s achievements in the form of a biographical account illustrated by anecdotes and a character sketch. Under this definition, the first obituary published in Australia was that of Samuel McDonald, a sergeant of the 93rd Regiment, who was ‘six feet ten inches in height, four feet round the chest … and always disliked being stared at’. This biography in miniature, purloined from an unidentified British newspaper, appeared in the second edition of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on 12 March 1803. The Gazette’s original obituary debut would follow in the 56th edition, on 25  March 1804. Reporting the life and death of a former convict, James

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olle, andrew (1947–95) Bloodworth, it omitted any reference to his 1788 transportation (for stealing a sheep), concentrating instead on his service as the colony’s building superintendent. An improved technique, offering a more complete portraiture, became apparent much later in the Melbourne obituaries of two explorers. In 1869, the Argus acknowledged the discoveries of Captain Charles Sturt, applauding his courage when assailed by ‘hunger, thirst and disease … scurvy and ophthalmia’. A similar talent for blending colour with fact is found in the 1872 Age obituary of John King, a survivor of the ill-starred Burke and Wills expedition of 1860–61. The Age told its readers: ‘King, soon after the expedition left Melbourne, saw that Burke was not the man to have charge of such an enterprise. He was too brave and too rash … [yet] King venerated the memory of Burke and for some years after his return to the settled districts he could not hear his name mentioned without shedding tears.’ This willingness to capture character and mood in measured delivery would last until the trauma of World War I changed the news agenda. From that time, the obituary gradually lost standing; lengthy casualty lists from the battlefields and their accompanying brief tributes rendered pre-war practice both impracticable and unfashionable. The obituary rallied briefly in the immediate post-war years, then faded again as newspapers underwent further remodelling. Pictorial content and display advertising grew spectacularly, gossip columns emerged and sports coverage flourished. The obituary atrophied in terms of its allocated space and influence. There would be no recovery for another 70 years. It followed the introduction of computerised typesetting, with supplements that increased page numbers significantly and inspired a greater engagement with opinion pieces and feature writing. The new newspapers, confronted by the challenge of filling those pages and intent upon offering a contrast to radio and television’s advantages in breaking news, turned once more to the obituary. From 1993, led by Melbourne’s Herald Sun and the Australian, eight newspapers would initiate a dedicated obituary section over a 10-year period. There were early signs that it might be more than an exercise in broad-acreage. The Australian adopted a candid approach from the start, in 1993 dispatching a corrupt ex-magistrate with these words: ‘Murray Frederick Farquhar … epitomised the unfortunate nexus between Sydney’s notorious underworld and its so-called upper world.’ The Canberra Times also demonstrated candour, passing this unfettered posthumous judgement on one of its own journalists, Bruce Juddery, in 2003: ‘Nearly everything he touched outside of mainstream journalism … was a disaster for him, as, increasingly, was the chaos put on his life by his abuse of alcohol’.

After the first decade of the 21st century, obituary publication in Australia again showed evidence of a decline. Column space in the Australian was reduced drastically, with the appearance of an obituary occasioned only by celebrity death; the Herald Sun—the erstwhile pioneer of the modern revival—dropped its dedicated page entirely. Elsewhere—notably at the Adelaide Advertiser—homilies submitted by relatives of the deceased became commonplace; the line between obituary and eulogy in such circumstances was too often blurred. Consequently, prevailing standards and credentials remain compromised: daily publication is not always assured; offerings from amateur contributors are in some instances printed with minimal editing; and there is a significant reliance on material syndicated by overseas sources. Those misfortunes can be attributed largely to an absence of investment. With the exception of the Sydney Morning Herald, Australia’s newspapers are reluctant to devote significant staffing and budgetary resources to obituary composition. The potential for obituaries to serve as valid instruments of Australia’s historical record has been circumscribed accordingly. REF: N. Starck, Life After Death (2006). NIGEL STARCK

O LLE, AN D R EW (1947–95) For more than 20 years from the mid-1970s to 1995, Andrew Olle represented the best tradition of quality broadcast journalism in Australia. He was a reporter/producer on the ABC’s rural documentary program A Big Country, a reporter on the nightly Nationwide, the first reporter on the Nine Network’s Sunday and the studio presenter of Four Corners from 1985 until 1994. In Sydney, he was also the familiar voice of morning radio on 2BL (now 702 ABC Sydney) from 1987 to the day he collapsed from a massive stroke caused by a brain tumour. He began his journalism career as an ABC News cadet in Brisbane in 1967. During his teenage years, he developed a strong sympathy for the battler and the underdog. When he graduated from the ABC News to This Day Tonight in 1973, his colleagues included Kerry O’Brien and Paul Murphy. In 1974, Olle had his first taste of studio presentation as host of the Brisbane edition of This Day Tonight. He wrote a book, On Interviewing, in 1992. Throughout his life, Olle was known for his gentleness, humour, charisma, humility and open-mindedness. His mellow voice, empathy for the ordinary person, inquiring mind and high standards of professionalism meant he was particularly suited to the more intimate medium of radio. In television, his special touch for the human story saw him become a superb documentary-maker. And in both media, his commitment to the ethic of fairness and balance saw him always able to represent both sides of

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online audiences the story. Olle told Mode magazine in 1991: ‘If I have an opinion I’m only too pleased to share it with my listeners but I hope I am not shoving it down their throats … it’s one thing to make a simple clear statement and then run with it and be provocative about it, but if, like I am, you are burdened with the ability to see the other side, it’s not that easy to do.’ Olle died within a week of his stroke, never regaining consciousness. His death was widely mourned not only by his family and colleagues, but by a wide cross-section of Australians who had experienced his work on both Four Corners and 2BL. At his memorial service, Peter Sculthorpe composed a special piece for cello and piano. Since his death, the ABC’s yearly journalism lecture has been named the Andrew Olle Media Lecture. REF: A. Olle and P. Lyneham, Andrew Olle, 1947– 1995 (1996). PETER MANNING

O N L INE A UDI ENCES Early in the web’s history, the term ‘audience’ was adopted by the emerging online advertising industry to refer to website visitors, with numbers of views and unique visitors per week used to determine advertising rates. In the Web 2.0 era of the mid-2000s, users were reimagined as both the producers of and audiences for user-created content platforms like YouTube, prompting a reconception of the relationship between advertisers and audiences. Audiences for traditional media such as radio and television have gradually integrated their media consumption practices with the internet, and now with social and mobile platforms. Fans of media franchises like Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings and Buffy have long extended their ‘offline’ activities through online forums, virtual worlds and fan fiction—especially through platforms like LiveJournal—while fans and critics review and discuss films, television shows and music online on newsgroups and Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). More mainstream audience engagement has moved progressively online too, via the official websites of newspapers and the commentary in topical blogs, internet radio and, more recently, via ‘catch-up’ streaming or on-demand television services such as ABC iView (est. 2008). Such sites of audience engagement have progressively blurred the boundaries between the traditional media audience and the ‘internet audience’. Audience practice offline is converging with social media use and social networking online via ‘second-screen’ activity, like live-blogging a television show from a mobile device while watching it on television in a traditional domestic setting. As Twitter was increasingly being taken up by Australian news and current affairs audiences in 2010, the collective live-tweeting of the ABC’s panel-style current affairs show

Q&A (2008– ) via the Twitter hashtag #qanda became popular. The show responded by incorporating a curated on-screen feed of tweets containing the #qanda hashtag, as well as taking audience questions via video blog. Many ABC Local radio stations have equally active social media presences, with audience interaction flowing seamlessly between the talkback phone lines and the Twitter feed. The media, advertising and audience research industries are now focusing on the revenue-generating opportunities of this convergent audience behaviour, labelling the phenomenon ‘social TV’ and pushing new mobile apps to facilitate it. Transmedia appeals to audiences have become common, with webonly mini-episodes (‘webisodes’), YouTube vlogs and social media-enabled smartphone apps like FANGO and zeebox all attempting to maintain and track audience attention beyond the timeslots of individual television shows. Hashtags, live tweets and SMS messages are now routinely built into the production logics of television and radio, and companies like Nielsen have integrated social media analytics into their regimes of audience measurement, while new players are entering the market in the bid to define, capture and monetise audience engagement. The desires and practices of internet-enabled audiences have challenged industry and policy-driven temporal and national boundaries. In recognition of the audience’s desire to engage with content anywhere at any time, most television networks now offer their most popular programs not only via broadcast but also on iTunes, a catch-up website, a smartphone app or all of these. A combination of real-time social audience engagement and peer-to-peer filesharing has made it particularly difficult for the Australian television industry to continue to delay the Australian broadcast of highly popular shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones, pushing both free-to-air and pay television networks to go to great lengths to make such shows available with minimal delay to an audience willing to download the latest episodes illegally rather than wait. The rise of global social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter has also dramatically expanded audience engagement with user-created Australian content. Australian YouTube channels have been consistently popular. As well as generating huge audiences for home-grown video bloggers such as Natalie Tran, YouTube has provided the means for audiences to collectively memorialise and revisit old television and music favourites. YouTube is the biggest museum of popular media culture the world has ever seen, with the most heartfelt moments from popular dramas like Neighbours and A Country Practice, gotcha moments and bloopers from news and current affairs shows like 60 Minutes and A Current Affair, and

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online news and magazines almost every performance from the ABC’s music show Countdown available there. REFs: S. Harrington. ‘Tweeting About the Telly: Live TV, Audiences, and Social Media’, in K. Weller et al. (eds), Twitter and Society (2014); S. Turnbull, ‘Imagining the audience’, in S. Cunningham and S. Turnbull (eds), The Media and Communications in Australia (4th ed.) (2014). JEAN BURGESS

ONL I NE NE W S AND M AGAZINES Since the internet’s commercialisation in the mid1990s, traditional media websites—ninemsn, smh.com.au, ABC Online and later news.com. au—have been Australia’s most trafficked news domains. Yet from the 1980s online entrepreneurs also developed many ‘native-born’ digital news and information publications, including email lists, news groups, search engines, websites, blogs and apps. These have shaped a flourishing independent internet mediascape, although one slow to generate conventional advertising returns or alternative business models. Online media development spans three phases, defined by the openness of the communications protocols used and public accessibility of the content: dial-up information services, the World Wide Web and cross-media platforms. In the dial-up era, information services (corporate databases, bulletin board systems, email newsletters and news groups) and closed proprietary or open subscriber networks (for example, Bulletin Board Systems (BBS), FidoNet, Usenet) were used to exchange specialist information. The pre-2000 World Wide Web, based on open standard protocols, hypertextuality, multimediality and interactive functionality, offered relatively free access to information, while Web 2.0 dynamic update tools have enabled publishers to incorporate real-time, user-generated content and gather detailed audience data. Cross-media platforms (integrating web, smartphone, tablet) emerged from the widespread uptake of internetconnected mobile devices and social media services. These employ forms of commercial enclosure including subscriber registration, proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs), content paywalls and freemium apps. While the majority of home-grown online news media emerged during the web phase, forerunners included ‘value added networks’, subscription information services such as AUSINET (1977– ), which provided database access, and IBIS Business Information (1988– ), which sold corporate data, news and analysis. In the 1980s, with the wider use of internet TCP/ IP protocols, BBS-supported news publishing, messaging, discussion and gaming communities. Some hard-copy technology magazines, such as Your Computer (1981–97) and Internet Australasia (1994–97), also maintained BBS as a means of interacting with their readerships.

From May 1994, the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) opened up internet access to commercial internet service providers, signalling the web’s rapid domestic uptake and commercialisation. A few eclectic magazine-style sites, such as Rosie Cross’s cyberfeminist site Geekgirl (1993– ), appeared, but Australians were largely consuming international sites and services. Australian search engine/aggregators, such as Web Wombat (1995– ), founded by Michael Tancredi, and Peter Garriga’s World Wide Whoopee, later Beyond the Black Stump (1995– ), appealed to cultural nationalism. Early mainstream media sites included the Age (January 1995), the Sydney Morning Herald, ABC Online (August 1995) and the Australian (April 1996). These services were initially promotional, replicating existing hard-copy and broadcast content. ABC Online and ninemsn were early adopters of participatory technologies: ABC Radio National held its first ‘web chat’ with Antarctic scientists in mid-1997, leading to extensive use of program-related forums into the mid-2000s, while ninemsn assumed market dominance with its portal strategy, providing personalised Hotmail, profile pages, photo hosting and file storage, chat rooms and DIY ‘web communities’. At the turn of the century, two Liberal entrepreneurs, Graham Young and Stephen Mayne, led the growth of an independent online news and opinion sector. In April 1999, Young co-founded On Line Opinion (OLO) with Brisbane journalist and lawyer Lionel Hogg. OLO was designed to be a ‘shopping centre of ideas’ for politicians, government, NGOs, lobby groups, and researchers to discuss new policy ideas. The OLO portal has published expert op-ed articles by more than 4000 authors, hosts a discussion forum and a blog about polling, What the People Want. Young’s willingness to run highly controversial views with little editorial intervention has sparked considerable public debate but attracted criticism from sponsors. The Global Financial Crisis undermined its move to a fully advertising-led model. Crikey had a markedly different fate. The creation of Stephen Mayne and his wife Paula Piccinini, Crikey also offered a provocative news, feature and commentary service—but with more conventional editorial control, a hybrid web/email newsletter delivery strategy and compelling insider information. It was sold to Eric Beecher and Diana Gribble’s Private Media Partners in 2005. Beecher later consolidated Crikey’s success. In a more deliberative move, journalist Margo Kingston pioneered mainstream news blogging in July 2000 with Webdiary, a personal political commentary that became an ‘open conversation’ with her readers, a site for debate about online media ethics, and later an independent news discussion community.

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online news and magazines Specialist news services appeared throughout the mid- to late 2000s, creating niche online advertising and subscription markets. The Thousands (2005– ) evolved from Sydney- and Melbourne-based pop culture event blogs into ‘city guides’. Music sites FasterLouder, Mess+Noise and inthemix became the new street press (and later part of youth publishing company Sound Alliance). Finance journalist Alan Kohler’s Eureka Report investment newsletter (2005– ) and Business Spectator website (2007– ) were later sold to News Limited. Sports opinion site The Roar (August 2007– ) capitalised on fan contributions, building a pro-am community that attracted investment from the Ten Network. In response to the participatory journalism moment and interest in opinion writing, media mainstream media organisations launched their own opinion editorial sites. The ABC’s Unleashed published a mix of commissioned and contributed editorials, and later as The Drum included in-house analysis. News Limited followed with The Punch (2009–13) and Fairfax Media re-launched the National Times (2009– ). Free generalist online news services have also increased media source diversity, often launching new voices, but with mixed financial fortunes. The longest running, New Matilda (NM) (2004– ), has almost folded twice. Founder John Menadue AO, a former News Limited general manager, set up NM to ‘improve the nature of public discussion in Australia’. Inspired by Crikey, Menadue saw NM as a ‘progressive’ magazine of political ideas and policy development forum that would have some influence on the Labor Party. With high-profile shareholders such as Lowitja O’Donoghue, Morry Schwartz and Graham Freudenberg, a board including Rod Cameron and Susie Carleton, and a paid subscription model, NM had a strong business foundation, but struggled to satisfy both its distinct audiences. In 2007, Menadue hived off the policy initiative, which became the Centre for Policy Development. He sold the magazine for $10 to investor Duncan Turpie. After a brief closure in June 2010, editor Marni Cordell bought the company and, prompted by reader requests, ran a successful crowd-funding drive to re-launch it in October. NM now publishes news, feature articles, investigative journalism, commentary and satire with a social justice focus, supported by a community media-like subscription model and some advertising. By early 2014, it had around 1500 subscribers, most paying between $80 to $100 per year, and 150,000 unique visitors per month. Also describing itself as a ‘progressive journal’ investigative and citizen journalism site, Independent Australia (IA) was founded in June 2010 by David Donovan, former vice-chair of the Australian Republican Movement. IA is owned by the Donovan Family Trust and focuses on exposing legal and political corruption. While it has sought crowd-funding, IA normally

runs on a mix of donations, advertising and merchandising. Donovan reports breaking even in mid-2013 and in early 2014 IA was attracting over 300,000 unique visitors a month. Philanthropy proved a less successful basis for the international ambitions of The Global Mail (TGM), an innovative long-form feature and investigative journalism service, launched with a splash in February 2012 after being underwritten by online booking entrepreneur Graeme Wood. He promised staff a free editorial hand to produce quality, ‘open’ journalism that would promote reader engagement. Edited by ex-ABC foreign correspondent and Media Watch presenter Monica Attard, and then by journalist Lauren Martin, TGM attracted many awards including three Walkley Awards for its photojournalism. With 140,000 unique visitors a month by 2014, Martin argues it performed well against comparable US non-profit site metrics. However, after Wood’s market value plunged he withdrew his support and TGM closed in early 2014. He then invested in the UK Guardian’s Australian website. In contrast, Australia’s fastest-growing international feature and analysis service, the not-forprofit The Conversation, has developed from a more diverse base of government and corporate sponsorship. Launched in March 2010, The Conversation was the vision of former Fairfax editor Andrew Jaspan, with the support of political scientist Glyn Davis, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne. It publishes articles pitched and written by academics, with professional editorial support. Building on seed funding from five universities, government, the CSIRO and Commonwealth Bank, and legal advice from Corrs Chambers Westgarth, by late 2013 The Conversation had 28 Australian university sponsors and had begun a global push, launching a UK site and establishing a Jakarta-based editor. The local presence received 1.5 million unique visitors a month in March 2014, 35 per cent from overseas. Its adoption of Creative Commons licensing has seen 87 per cent of articles republished elsewhere—an effective promotional strategy. By 2014, Private Media owner Eric Beecher was Australia’s most successful commercial independent online news publisher, with Crikey and five other niche titles—Leading Company, Property Observer, Smart Company, StartUp Smart and Women’s Agenda—targeting high-income users. Women’s titles such as Mia Freedman’s Mamamia and Wendy Harmer’s The Hoopla have also built strong followings around blogging and user commenting. As competition for domestic advertising has increased, digital news entrepreneurs have sought local and international partnerships to sustain new ventures. In 2013, Beecher and veteran print editor Bruce Guthrie launched The New Daily, a news aggregation site, with funding from three major superannuation funds.

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organisational communication The investment led the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to monitor the site’s coverage of super issues for bias. In mid-2014, the Nine Entertainment Co.’s digital publishing company Mi9 partnered Britain’s most popular web news service, the Mail Online, to launch an Australian-badged site that aggregates lifestyle and celebrity content from both publishers. REFs: G. Goggin, Virtual Nation (2004); M. Kingston, ‘Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online’, in C. Lumby and E. Probyn (eds), Remote Control: New Media, New Ethics (2004); M. Van Heekeren ‘News in “New Media”: An Historical Comparison Between the Arrival of Television and Online News in Australia’, MIA, 134 (2010). FIONA MARTIN

ONL I NE V I DEO When dial-up was the main form of internet access, widespread online viewing of video was impractical. As access speeds improved through the early 2000s, the numbers of people who could easily watch and upload video grew. The practice was popularised and transformed, especially by YouTube, established in 2005 and acquired by search giant Google the following year, and by a range of peer-to-peer (P2P) sites that allowed video and other files to be exchanged using the BitTorrent protocol. ‘Co-created’ by users uploading content, audiences engaging with it and the site itself, YouTube became a place of ‘participatory culture’, and by far the most popular video site for Australian users. Between 2007 and 2010, Australia’s television broadcasters launched catch-up television sites that allowed viewers to watch programs online for a limited time after broadcast. This expanded and simplified access to programs available via their websites. ABC iView was launched in 2008, the year after Apple’s iPhone, and the same year the online iTunes store first offered video to Australian users. All these sites, devices and activities spurred demand for even faster internet access speeds. By 2010, the year Apple’s iPad tablet was launched, one in five Australians aged 14 years and over, and around two in five people aged 18–29, reported viewing online video via a PC ‘in the last four weeks’, according to Roy Morgan. As smartphone and tablet penetration grew and mobile network and wi-fi access speeds improved, users increasingly engaged with ‘online’ video via mobile devices. The term ‘online video’ now encompasses a wide range of services, applications and devices. Early taxonomies distinguished IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) or ‘managed IPTV’, generally offered as a subscription service, from ‘internet TV/video’ (freely accessible broadcaster catch-up sites) and ‘web TV/video’ (video content available from sites like YouTube). Subsequent developments required new categories

and blurred already fuzzy distinctions between existing ones. A 2012 study of online video in Australia identified 94 websites ‘offering video content for download, streaming or physical purchase directly on the home page’ within the 500 web domains most visited by Australians. It categorised them as video sharing (including YouTube), cinema and video (including iTunes, Telstra’s BigPond Movies and Quickflix), P2P BitTorrent (including The Pirate Bay), broadcaster, games, pornography, video search and newspaper/ magazine sites. That taxonomy did not include social media platforms like Facebook—where a large amount of video activity was occurring though not from the home page—nor the growing number of smartphone and tablet ‘apps’ that offer video though not from websites. As still more devices—like games consoles and television sets—have been connected to the internet, the practices of online video consumption and creation, the business models that support it and the mechanisms for measuring it have become increasingly complex. REF: J. Given et al., Online Video in Australia (2012). JOCK GIVEN

OPINION POL L S see public opinion and

opinion polls

O R G AN ISATIO N AL C O M M U N IC ATIO N This field developed as a specific area of study in the 1970s and early 1980s during the specialisation, expansion and diversification of the wider discipline of communication studies that began in the 1960s. It is largely derived from US traditions, initially based on functionalist and mechanistic systems theory, followed by overlays of psychology, anthropology and, more recently, cultural and critical perspectives. Today, organisational communication includes studies of organisational culture, organisational leadership, internal organisational communication, organisational networks, change management and organisational learning. The term sometimes is used generically to refer to all internal and external communication by an organisation—that is, as a synonym for corporate communication or public relations. The development and convergence of new media and information technologies during the 1980s and early 1990s significantly influenced organisational communication and its networks and today the field of practice utilises intranets, wikis and internal blogging and microblogging tools such as Yammer, as well as publications, events and other traditional communication materials. Organisational communication is an international field, with a continuing North American focus. Australian practitioners are part of a global network, represented through practitioner

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outdoor magazines bodies such as the International Association of Business Communicators, which has branches in each Australian state, and to some extent the Australian Human Resources Institute—although the HR field largely focuses on industrial and workplace issues. Academics in the field are most likely members of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association and/or the International Communication Association. ‘Organisational communication’ does not appear in the list of occupations published by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, so it is hard to identify the number of practitioners or size of the industry, and to separate it from HR or public relations. In Australia, many organisational communication practitioners are located within an organisation’s corporate communication or public relations function. However, a number of Australian universities, including Charles Sturt University, the University of Queensland and the University of South Australia, offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in organisational communication. Organisational communication helps an organisation and its members to define goals, allocate roles and responsibilities, coordinate operations, establish information networks and develop the organisation’s culture and climate. The four main approaches to organisational communication commonly used in the past defined it variously as: information transfer; a transactional process; strategic control; and a balance between creativity and constraint (of achieving what you want within the constraints of the situation). Later, when studying organisational communication relative to management within an organisation, scholars used existing views of human nature, which relate to principles and assumptions about human behaviour that include early perspectives of scientific management by Fredrick W. Taylor (1911); administrative science by Henri Fayol (1949); human relations developed after the Hawthorne studies of Elton Mayo and Chester Barnard; and the human resources approach to organising used by Robert Blake and Jane Moulton (1964) as well as Rensis Likert (1961), with each new theory building on previous work. The general systems theory—developed by Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968) and originating from biology and engineering—was the next approach adapted. It defined an organisation using the metaphor of a complex open ‘system’, which requires interaction (or communication) between its component parts and its environment. The more recently applied cultural studies approach defines organisations as ‘cultures’, each with its own unique values, rituals and behaviours. Authors such as Terrance Deal and Allan Kennedy (1982) and Tom Peters and Robert Waterman (1982) have argued that successful companies can be identified through their cultures. This approach also sees an organisation’s

communication system or ‘cultural network’ as setting up and reinforcing its cultural values via formal organisational communication channels such as newsletters and informal channels such as employee interactions. Critical theorist Stanley Deetz examined how communication systems and practices within organisations favour specific dominant interests, leading to external consequences for society at large. Deetz sees organisations and their communication systems and practices as political sites that carry the interests of those in power, where some values dominate over others. It uses concepts such as ideology, hegemony, emancipation and resistance to describe how power within organisations is represented through organisational discourse—or how something is ‘talked about’, either in everyday conversations of its members or through media representations. An important issue within organisational communication relates to member assimilation and socialisation processes. These processes begin with the job interview and continue through the roles members play throughout their employment within an organisation. Organisational communication examines how these roles are developed and negotiated over time. Organisational communication also involves conflict resolution. Conflicts occur at various levels within an organisation and require effective processes of conflict negotiation, mediation and arbitration to be set in place, implemented and maintained to fit the cultural diversity and everyday realities of the workforce, such as family responsibilities and disability. Contemporary challenges for organisational communication include new forms of work and workplaces such as teleworking, outsourcing and virtual work groups. REF: N. Weerakkody, Research Methods for Media and Communication (2009). NIRANJALA WEERAKKODY

O U TD O O R M AG AZIN ES Outdoor magazines have played an important role in Australia as sources of knowledge about outdoor leisure activities. They have helped shape how the Australian bush is imagined and used, been an important tool in the commercialisation of the outdoors and, towards the end of the 20th century, acted as a mouthpiece for the protection of the interests of wilderness. Among the first outdoor magazines published in Australia was the Hiker: and Hiking, a Melbourne-based publication issued in October 1932. Its arrival coincided with a boom in the popularity of bushwalking and hiking as weekend pastimes for urban dwellers. Drawing on a long-standing discourse of nature as a tonic for the ills of urban living, the Hiker aimed to promote ‘walking, hiking and camping as clean, health-giving recreations’. Despite its

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outdoor media association title, the magazine also catered for a broad range of outdoor pursuits, including angling, boating, cycling, horse-riding, photography, rock-climbing and skiing. The publication was designed so it could be ‘slipped into the pocket or rucksack’, providing information about routes and interesting articles to read while travelling. After just three issues, the Hiker quietly folded. In the 1930s, bushwalking clubs including the Sydney Bushwalkers and the Coast and Mountain Walkers began to publish their own magazines, the monthly Sydney Bushwalker (1931– ) and Into the Blue (1935– ). Most club magazines were amateur, in-house publications that focused on club activities, including walk reports and notices of future trips. Editors frequently struggled to fill the pages. In contrast, both the Melbourne Amateur Walking and Touring Club (MAWTC), one of Melbourne’s first walking clubs, and the Hobart Walking Club opted for more substantial, professional, outward-looking publications, funded by advertising revenue. The Melbourne Walker (1929–91) and the Tasmanian Tramp (1933– ), both annual publications, sought readers further afield. Both magazines included histories and geographies of significant locations in their respective states. From the 1940s, the MAWTC explicitly aimed to bypass material about walks that might not interest nonmembers. The subtitle of the Melbourne Walker was ‘Victoria’s Geographical Magazine’. As conservation emerged as a popular issue in the 1970s, both magazines also began to promote an environmental ethos. A wide range of other significant bushwalking club magazines emerged after the war, including Skyline (Launceston Walking Club, 1952–81), Heybob (University of Queensland Bushwalking Club, 1959–83), and the Brisbane Bushwalker (Brisbane Bush Walkers, 1965– ). Australia’s first successful commercial outdoor magazine was Outdoors and Fishing, first issued in 1948 and published monthly. It billed itself as the ‘Southern Hemisphere’s Journal of the Great Outdoors’. The policy of the journal was to ‘encourage and foster an appreciation of our great outdoors’. The magazine’s focus was fishing, hunting and bushcraft, and it occasionally published material on Aboriginal culture. While it stated that it stood for the protection of fauna, flora and waterways, this could be difficult to reconcile with its promotion of shooting as a sport. The magazine was acquired by K.G. Murray in 1955; it ceased publication under the Federal Publishing Company in 1983. From the 1980s, a renewed enthusiasm for outdoor recreation saw the publication of several new magazines, including Rock (1978– ), Backpack (1979–85) and Action Outdoor Australia (1986–88). The most important and successful was Australian Wild (now Wild), first published in 1981 as a quarterly. The magazine

was founded by passionate bushwalker and rock-climber Chris Baxter, and catered for active participants in ‘rucksack sports’. Baxter wanted the magazine to be ‘a celebration of our wild places’. Alongside the glossy wilderness photography, track notes and gear surveys, Wild emerged as a strong voice for the protection of wilderness areas. Wild gave small cash donations and advertising discounts to conservation organisations. The magazine quickly developed a loyal readership; within three years, its print run reached 20,000. Since its inception, Wild has expanded in size, become full colour and, from 2009, has been published bi-monthly. Its commitment to promoting the recreational and environmental value of Australia’s wild places remains. Australian Geographic was launched by entrepreneur Dick Smith in 1986, billed initially as ‘Dick Smith’s Journal of Adventure and Discovery’. In 1995, it carried the subtitle ‘Journal of the Australian Geographical Society’. In 1995, Mason Stewart Publishing NSW launched Outdoor Australia, which morphed into Australian Geographic Outdoor when it was acquired by Australian Consolidated Press in 2009. REF: M. Harper, The Ways of the Bushwalker (2007). MELISSA HARPER

O U TD O O R M ED IA ASSO C IATIO N The Outdoor Media Association (OMA) was established in its current form in 2005 as the national body serving Australia’s out-of-home media display companies and production facilities, as well as some media display asset owners. Its core activities include marketing and research, and cultivating relations with government, media, and community groups. In 2010, its 33 members accounted for 97 per cent of revenue generated through outdoor advertising. At the beginning of the 20th century, statebased bill posters’ associations were already fighting council attempts to curtail outdoor advertising. These associations were incorporated in 1939, forming the Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia (OAAA). During World War II, the battle to minimise government interference heightened, and it would remain a concern throughout the post-war decades. The OAAA would also seek to standardise outdoor advertising operations. Outdoor advertising content became contentious in the 1970s. BUGA-UP, an anti-smoking activist group, highlighted advertising’s persuasive influence by defacing billboards. Arguing that it was not responsible for advertising content, the OAAA was in part dependent on tobacco advertising. Moves by state governments to prevent tobacco companies from advertising outdoors in the 1990s inevitably elicited a vigorous but ultimately unsuccessful campaign from the association.

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overland telegraph line A spate of overtly sexist advertisements in the early 2000s compelled the OAAA to take a more proactive stance on content or risk government intervention. Together with other advertising bodies, the association prepared an advisory paper and a cautionary checklist concerning content. Members were also advised to take down any advertisement that was deemed offensive by the Advertising Standards Board—regardless of the client’s stance. The changing media landscape had a significant impact on outdoor advertising. As television’s primacy declined, outdoor sites were being upgraded and extended into new areas. While most advertising appeared in roadside locations (as billboards and on street furniture), airports and retail centres were becoming more important. The organisation’s name was changed to the Outdoor Media Association in recognition of the expanding range of out-ofhome media used for advertising. The OMA’s active support of audience measurement technology seeks to underscore the cost efficiency of the medium, and to ensure that the right consumers are exposed to the right messages. The association’s ongoing efforts to safeguard the industry by way of liaising with government and other stakeholder groups, as well as its adoption of a Code of Ethics, were rewarded in 2011 when a parliamentary inquiry recommended against government regulation of outdoor advertising. In 2013, $544 million was being spent on out-of-home advertising. REFs: R. Crawford, But Wait, There’s More … (2008); http://www.oma.org.au. ROBERT CRAWFORD

O V E R LAND T EL EGRAPH LINE Stretching 3200 kilometres across the Australian continent from south to north, the Overland Telegraph Line opened in August 1872. Built by the South Australian government, its purpose was to link Australia telegraphically to the rest of the world by connecting in Darwin with an undersea cable being built southwards from Java by the British Australian Telegraph Company. This link opened in October 1872, enabling the transmission of the latest news from London to Melbourne in around 24 hours. Previously, the minimum transmission time, using a combination of telegraphy and mail steamships, was about a month. The building of the line across the desert was hailed as a magnificent feat of engineering and human endurance. However, many in the eastern colonies of Australia questioned the wisdom of the project, believing it would have been better to build such a link via the Queensland coast, viewed as an easier and more populated route. South Australia’s decision to go ahead with the construction without consultation with the other colonies reflected the inter-colonial rivalry then current. The South Australian Superintendent

of Telegraphs, (Sir) Charles Todd (1826–1910), who promoted and planned the project, wanted South Australia (within which Darwin was then situated) to be the exclusive telegraphic gateway to Australia. The opening of the telegraph link to London had a major impact on the conduct of government, the press and business. The first private telegram received in Melbourne was on the state of the London metal market; the first press message also included information on metal prices. For the major newspapers, securing a daily supply of cable news from London became an indispensable—though expensive—requirement. After all, news from London was ‘news from home’. The London-based news agency, Reuters, was an obvious news source, though Australian press groups also appointed their own cable news editors in London. Australia’s international telegraphic arrangements were criticised for their cost. A single message cost nearly £10, or about five weeks’ wages for a working man. One pound of this went to the South Australian government. The rates were determined by the private British cable company, which retained a monopoly on the service to London until 1902. The overland telegraph, which required 11 repeater stations at intervals of 200–290 kilometres, proved difficult to maintain. Between its opening and the end of 1877, there were 60 separate breakdowns for periods of between one and six days. Causes ranged from detached or broken insulators to wires cut by local Indigenous people, bushfires and lightning strikes. These breakdowns, together with interruptions on the undersea cable, meant that Australia’s international communication was very unreliable until the 1890s, by which time adequate duplication had been built into the system. Particularly in its early days, there was widespread concern that the unscrupulous could ‘work the telegraph’ to raise and lower the price of commodities, and that the high costs of telegraphy meant that early access to information was the preserve of the wealthy. Such concerns led to calls for a government-funded official service of basic commercial and political news that would be made available to the public at telegraph offices. John Fairfax, the proprietor of the Sydney Morning Herald, supported the idea on the grounds that it was unwise to leave such a matter to private agencies. However, colonial governments ultimately decided that the public provision of telegraphic information should be left to the press. The overland telegraph played an important role in Australia’s international communication until World War II, when the undersea link from Darwin was cut and not repaired because radio telegraphy had made the cable unnecessary. The

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line remained in use within Australia until it was replaced by microwave links in the 1970s. REFs: A. Moyal, Clear Across Australia (1984); P. Putnis, ‘The Early Years of International Telegraphy in Australia: A Critical Assessment’, MIA, 129 (2008). PETER PUTNIS

O V E R S E A S TE LE C O M M U N IC AT IO N S C O M M ISS IO N

see Telstra

O W N E R S H I P see media ownership

OZ OZ magazine was launched in Sydney on April Fool’s Day 1963. Its co-editors, Richard Neville and Richard Walsh, had been editors of the student newspapers Tharunka (University of New South Wales) and Honi Soit (University of Sydney) respectively, while the main cartoonist, Martin Sharp, had been involved with the shortlived Arty Wild Oat at East Sydney Technical College. OZ was self-described as a ‘satirical magazine’ and intended to be monthly. The irreverent newcomer soon ran into legal problems. The first issue was prosecuted successfully for obscenity and then issue number 6, published in February 1964, became the subject of a protracted and famous obscenity case. Initially, Walsh and Neville were each sentenced to six months’ hard labour and Sharp to four months’ hard labour after a procession of cultural and scholarly figures had traipsed through the Magistrates Court to give evidence in their defence. Their appeal against this conviction in the District Court, spearheaded by Sir John Kerr QC, was successful, but then the NSW government appealed. In the end all charges were dismissed. To meet their legal costs, the ‘OZ Boys’, as they were known, organised a national fundraising effort. The successful Mavis Bramston Show featured the ‘OZ Newsroom’, written by

Richard Walsh, and as their contribution to the legal defence appeal, the stars of Mavis Bramston appeared at a fundraiser. Richard Neville and Martin Sharp set off for London in 1966, and in the following year established London OZ, which was less satirical than its Australian antecedent and became a major underground magazine. In an amazing twist of fate, in 1970 the then editors of the British version—Jim Anderson, Felix Dennis and Richard Neville—were prosecuted for obscenity in relation to their famous ‘School Kids Issue’ and sentenced to jail; they too were eventually acquitted on appeal. With the departure of Neville and Sharp, Dean Letcher joined Richard Walsh as co-editor, and the pair continued to produce OZ intermittently until issue 41, published in February 1969. Subsequently, it limped on as a political newsletter, appearing surprisingly regularly from 31 March 1969; an Election Special of OZ was produced in October that year. OZ was mainly written by its editors, when and if they felt sufficiently inspired. It was topical and irreverent, but without any party political leanings. It sought to discredit the strong influence at that time of the church and the Returned Services League (RSL); it was fiercely anti-monarchy and nationalistic in its aspirations. It also provided an outlet for a wide range of literary and artistic rowdies: Robert Hughes contributed the cover for the second issue, and Bob Ellis and Mungo MacCallum wrote for it before later joining Richard Walsh’s Nation Review in the early 1970s. Undoubtedly OZ’s star contributor was Martin Sharp—his dazzlingly original artwork was its most memorable feature. Although very uneven in quality, it managed to throw off the dullness of the 1950s and early 1960s and to begin the long process of invigorating Australian cultural life. REF: R. Neville, Hippie Hippie Shake (1995). RICHARD WALSH

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P P A C IFI C AREA NEW SPAPER PUBLISHERS’ A S S OCI ATI ON Out of the problems that confronted Australian newspaper publishers as they ditched letterpress printing for web offset in the late 1960s emerged the Australian and New Zealand Web Offset Newspaper Association (ANZWONA). After five years, ANZWONA widened its membership geographically and technologically to become PANPA—an association that served both offset and letterpress newspaper publishers. By the end of March 1969, about 40 Australian and New Zealand newspaper publishers had installed their own web offset presses. The rate of conversion from letterpress, which had begun in 1965, was gathering momentum. Along with the new presses had come other new processes, such as photosetting, strikeon composition, automatic film processing, computerised typesetting and paste-up composition. Because of their common difficulties and the adventurous spirit that the web offset pioneers required, most had exchanged information freely during plant visits or by letter. Otherwise they were working in virtual isolation, ‘solving the same problems 40 times over’. The existing newspaper associations— daily, provincial, suburban and business—did not provide an adequate forum for discussing technical problems. To meet this need, a group of Melbourne web offset newspaper publishers met on 1 April 1969 and a month later formed ANZWONA. Ken Heyes of Progress Press was founding president and Tony Whitlock from Peter Isaacson Publications, a fourth-generation newspaperman from New Zealand, became the secretary and the first editor of the ANZWONA Bulletin. By April 1974, when Frank Welsh from Shepparton Newspapers suggested an enlarged association with a new name, ANZWONA had 88 member companies, including letterpress papers such as the Adelaide Advertiser and Leader Community Newspapers in Melbourne. The new body began as the Pacific Area Newspaper Production Association, but became the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association (PANPA) from April 1980 because the services it provided had broadened to include editorial and advertising.

PANPA’s membership includes publishers, suppliers and affiliates, such as others interested in newspapers and production technology. In 1977–78, on learning that an American company was charging an exorbitant price for a visual display terminal (VDT), the PANPA board established a company that produced a ‘Panterm’ VDT to sell for about 40 per cent of the American price. PANPA’s first president was Frank Welsh. Under Patrick Hegart (executive director, 1983–86), PANPA moved into management training. Frank Kelett (executive director, 1986–2001) built international links for PANPA and developed the annual conference into a major event for delegates and suppliers. Ongoing information-sharing occurs through the PANPA Bulletin, which began publication in June 1974 and now appears bi-monthly. Since 26 August 2010, PANPA has been a hybrid organisation, retaining the old title for its international dealings but becoming the Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) for strictly Australian initiatives. In 2012, NPA/PANPA was incorporated into the national marketing and promotional organisation, TheNewspaperWorks, formed in 2006. REFs: PANPA Bulletin, June 1974, April 1989, June 1989, June–July 1990, and May 2005. ROD KIRKPATRICK

P AC KER FAM ILY The Packer family was a dominant force in the Sydney media landscape for a century. The family originated in Hobart and became prominent in musical circles and the civil service. Robert Clyde Packer (1879–1934) worked on the Tasmanian News from 1900 to 1902, when ambition propelled him to the mainland. After marrying Irish-born Ethel Maude Hewson, Packer reported for the Dubbo Liberal and the Townsville Daily Bulletin. He joined the Sydney Sunday Times in 1908, becoming editor, as well as chief scoutmaster of New South Wales. In 1919, he moved from the editorship of the Sunday Sun to manage a newspaper launched by the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Sir James Joynton Smith. When Smith’s Weekly turned a profit in

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packer family 1921, Smith gave Packer and the editor, Claude McKay, each a one-third share in the company, laying the foundation stone of the Packer empire. The trio launched the Daily Guardian in 1923, which Packer helped to publicise by launching the first Miss Australia quest in 1926. A keen observer of overseas newspapers, he paid top salaries but drove his staff (as well as himself) hard; he balanced a sharp news sense with an eye for populist stunts. His son, (Douglas) Frank Hewson Packer (1906–74), was a founding ‘cadet reporter and photographer’ on the Guardian, but struggled with written expression and was to prove more adept as advertising manager of Smith’s Newspapers Ltd. In 1930, Sir Hugh Denison’s rapacious Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) controversially purchased the Daily and Sunday Guardians in return for an agreement not to publish a newspaper for 21 years. In 1931, R.C. Packer joined the company as managing editor to protect the shares he and his son held in ANL. Tired and ill, Packer failed in a bid to install his son at ANL in 1932. Later that year, Frank Packer and a former Labor politician, E.G. Theodore, threatened to publish an afternoon newspaper, forming a new company, Sydney Newspapers Ltd. R.C. Packer authorised ANL to pay £86,500 to the pair not to publish an afternoon paper for three years. The extraordinary manoeuvre preserved the Sydney monopoly of the Sun, the jewel in ANL’s crown, but provided Sydney Newspapers with the capital to launch the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1933. R.C. Packer died in 1934, with his estate valued at £54,307. That year, Frank married Gretel Bullmore; they were to have two sons, (Robert) Clyde (1935–2001) and Kerry Francis Bullmore Packer (1937–2005). The family moved to ‘Cairnton’ in Bellevue Hill, not far from the Fairfax family in Sydney’s exclusive eastern suburbs. Frank’s blatant exploitation of ANL, his robust business style and his public brawl with Ezra Norton in 1939 brought him considerable notoriety. Sydney Newspapers went into partnership with ANL, forming Consolidated Press Ltd to take over the Women’s Weekly and to re-launch the morning Daily Telegraph in 1936. Packer became managing director. During the war, he enlisted in the AIF as a lieutenant, and worked at the Allied Works Council alongside Theodore, serving as an at times unpopular director of personnel. The Theodore family sold its shares to Packer in 1957, the year Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) was formed. Packer’s achievements were largely due to two exceptional mentors (R.C. Packer and Theodore), financial cunning, bravado, prodigious energy and an ability to identify and nurture the talents of others. During the Cold War, his papers turned increasingly to the right. Knighted in 1959, Packer spearheaded two spectacular but unsuccessful challenges for

the America’s Cup in 1962 and 1970. He was drawn to other venerable institutions, buying the Bulletin in 1960, but failing to acquire Angus & Robertson. Clyde, who was not allowed to go to university, began his career as a Telegraph journalist and sub-editor, and became general manager of ACP in 1965, as well as chairman and managing director of TCN9 in 1970. He also served (1964–77) as a Liberal member of the NSW Legislative Council. His less intellectual brother, Kerry, became advertising manager of ACP in 1965, echoing something of his father’s trajectory, and deputy chairman and assistant managing director of Consolidated Press Holdings (CPH) in 1967. In 1972, Clyde and Kerry persuaded Sir Frank to sell to News Limited the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, which had never been able to arrest the Sydney Morning Herald’s stranglehold on classified advertising, and which needed an afternoon stablemate to utilise idle printing capacity. Later that year, Clyde resigned his positions in protest at an attempted act of censorship by Sir Frank and went on to launch an adult sex magazine, Forum; at the same time, Kerry had his first real taste of success at ACP with Cleo, under the editorship of Ita Buttrose. Following Sir Frank’s death in 1974, his estate was sworn for probate at $1.3 million; tax-minimisation schemes meant that the assets under his control were worth much more. In 1977, Clyde moved to the United States, where he died in 2001. Kerry succeeded his father as chairman of ACP. He and his wife, Roslyn, had two children, Gretel (1966– ) and James Douglas Packer (1968– ). Kerry launched World Series Cricket in 1976–77, shocking the international cricket establishment and transforming the game. In 1987, he was cleared of allegations aired at a Royal Commission headed by Frank Costigan that he was involved in organised crime and tax evasion. Passionate about television, Kerry was less editorially interventionist than Sir Frank. In 1987–90, with the sale and then repurchase of the Nine Network, he made a fortune at the expense of disgraced tycoon Alan Bond. Packer was a gambler, but he never risked the lot, and he always looked to get the borrowings of a business down. Although media ownership rules prevented him from gaining control of his family’s old foe, John Fairfax Holdings, his bombastic performance before a parliamentary inquiry in 1991 attracted considerable attention. James Packer served as CEO of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) from 1996 and executive chairman from 1998. However, his father found it difficult to hand over the reins of the group, despite terrible health, after James’ championing of telecommunications company One.Tel went disastrously wrong in 2001–02. After Kerry—Australia’s richest man—died in 2005, James became executive chairman of

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pamphlets CPH. More interested in gaming than in the media, he swiftly sold off 75 per cent of PBL to a private equity firm in 2006–07. He concentrated his energies on Crown Limited, owner of Crown Casino in Melbourne and casino interests in Asia, and by 2014 appeared to have lobbied successfully to redevelop the Barangaroo site on Sydney’s Darling Harbour, with a $2 billion iconic building and Sydney’s second casino. He announced that his sister Gretel would, in return, be heavily involved in administering a $60 million arts fund for Sydney. REFs: P. Barry, The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer Uncut (2006) and Who Wants to be a Billionaire? (2009); B. Griffen-Foley, Sir Frank Packer (2014). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

P A M PHL ET S Largely ignored in histories of Australian publishing and reading, pamphlets have been a staple of communication in Australia since the late 1790s. The colony of New South Wales appointed its first government printer in 1795, and the oldest surviving printed document (held by the National Library of Australia)—a one-page playbill for the ‘Sydney Theatre’—dates from 1796. Government printers were set up in every colony to reproduce official announcements. While handbills and playbills were designed to be affixed to a display point, pamphlets were printed on both sides; some definitions, including that of UNESCO, insist that they must have at least five pages, exclusive of cover pages, but be no more than 48 pages—otherwise they are considered a book. Pamphlets produced to persuade, provide advice or proffer assistance could be printed on the simplest of printing machinery, and distributed by hand to residential addresses or businesses—or distributed from a military barracks, a bank, School of Arts, house of entertainment or agricultural show. Pamphlets might praise particular products, from the stump jump plough to wash tubs, advertise services or advocate a particular cause. In the first half of the 19th century, most pamphlets distributed in Australia were printed in Great Britain, but with the discovery of gold and the rapid rise of an immigrant population, more pamphlets were printed locally. Metal-press printeries were established in cities and major towns. Pamphlets could be ordered by anyone, from political candidates to commercial and religious organisations. With the rapid spread of postal systems in the second half of the 19th century, it became possible to deliver pamphlets to the farthest reaches of a colony, or overseas. The literary historian H.M. Green observed in A History of Australian Literature (1961) that a ‘mass of pamphlets’, addressing ‘political, economic, social, educational and sectarian’ controversies from ‘all sides’, was one of the most striking parallels between the

literature of early 19th-century Australia and the literary output of the ‘mother country’ in the 17th century. Religious groups used pamphlets for both instruction and propaganda. Probably the longest-running group of pamphlets comprises the monthly pamphlets published since 1904 by the Australian Catholic Truth Society, which outline the church’s position on topical issues. The Catholic Church has long distributed pamphlets about social justice and papal encyclicals: Michael Hogan has compiled a run of them in Justice Now! (1990). Beginning on a subscription basis, over one million copies of the Catholic Record were being distributed annually by the late 1940s. These pamphlets, available from the back of most Roman Catholic churches, were also handed out in Sunday schools. Family planning associations and new environmental groups concerned about population growth answered the church’s position with pamphlets of their own. Pamphlets on health issues, mostly produced by the state, also enjoyed wide circulation. They were produced during the influenza pandemic in 1919 and the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, and at other times of heightened risk—addressing, among other things, the scourge of tuberculosis and polio. Such pamphlets were distributed through general practitioners, hospitals and health clinics. With the rise of travel in the Australian colonies, by ship and the railways, promotional pamphlets for cities, towns, guest houses and hotels became very common. Pamphlets promoted establishments as far afield as Jenolan Caves House in New South Wales, the Mount Buffalo Chalet in Victoria and Yarringup in Western Australia. Government tourist bureaus, established in all states by the early 1900s, were among the major publishers of both information and evocation, sometimes directed at incoming migrants, sometimes at domestic travellers; as Jim Davidson and Peter Spearritt show in Holiday Business (2000), for much of the 20th century they were well designed and well printed. Government printers were also kept busy with railway, tramway and bus timetables. From the early 1900s, pamphlets became the most popular medium through which to promote new products and new energy sources. The spread of the gas supply in Australia, and the introduction of electricity, proved a boon to printers. Pamphlets explained the virtues of particular products, from stoves to refrigerators. When a new product came on to the market— like radio in the early 1920s and television from the mid-1950s—it was accompanied by an avalanche of pamphlets for both promotional and explanatory purposes. Motor manufacturers seized on the pamphlet to promote new vehicles. From the 1920s, Ford, General Motors and a number of British car manufacturers produced elaborate pamphlets.

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parliamentary broadcasting By the late 1930s, most of these pamphlets included a colour component. The introduction of the Holden in 1949 and the Falcon in 1962 was heralded by ever more elaborate pamphlets. Political pamphlets rarely ran to colour. They were modest black-and-white attempts to outline the candidate’s or party’s policy, and to make an election pitch. Most carried some graphic material, sometimes with dramatic imagery. Major parties employed pamphlets as part of their communication strategy, as did minor parties and fringe groups. The most prolific publisher of political pamphlets was the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), which had limited access to the mass media. For the 1920s to the early 1990s, Communism in Australia: A Resource Bibliography (1994), compiled by Beverley Symons and others, lists nearly 1100 individual titles; the CPA ended in 1991. Newly emerging forms of social media, including Twitter, take up some of the space formally occupied by the pamphlet. How-to literature—including product guides, as well as product guarantees—is moving online. Tourist brochures, among the most common pamphlets in Australia from the 1850s to the 1990s, are giving way to websites where accommodation and transport can be viewed and then booked. While political parties still produce pamphlets hand-delivered when door-knocking, left in letter boxes or delivered by mail—and pamphlets putting the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ cases at referenda are still delivered by post to every elector in the land—no longer are pamphlets produced giving advice about how to pack, let alone how to dress, when travelling on a ship or an aeroplane. PETER SPEARRITT and MURRAY GOOT

PARER, DAMI EN (1912–44) Damien Parer attended Catholic schools in New South Wales and Victoria before completing his apprenticeship in photography in 1930–33. He worked until 1940 as a studio photographer and cameraman on feature films, including for Charles Chauvel. One of his employers was Max Dupain. With the outbreak of World War II, Parer sailed with the Second AIF to the Middle East as a photographer with the Department of Information (DOI). Feats such as filming advancing soldiers at Derna in Libya made him well known. Japan’s entry into the war resulted in the best-known period of Parer’s brief career: his filming of Australian activities in Papua and New Guinea. His record of the fighting on the Kokoda Track in late 1942 was shown in the documentary Kokoda Front Line!, which was distributed worldwide. Ken G. Hall, the film’s producer, received an Academy Award for it in 1943. Parer’s footage was used in several newsreels, but after a series of disputes with the DOI, Parer resigned in 1943. He joined Paramount News— one of several Australians to team up with US

media organisations during the war. He was killed during the American assault on Peleliu in the Palau Group on 17 September 1944. Parer’s images of Australian troops—especially from Papua New Guinea—are some of the best-known photographs of Australians at war, displaying his gifts of visual composition and shot selection. As an Australian combat photographer, his fame is only rivaled by that of Neil Davis, also killed while filming; however, as Davis rarely worked with Australian soldiers, Parer’s images are far more embedded in the Australian psyche. Parer’s son, Damien Robert Parer, who was born after his father’s death, became a film producer. REF: N. McDonald, War Cameraman (1994). RICHARD TREMBATH

PA RK S , HA ROL D see Edwards, George (1886–

1953)

P AR LIAM EN TARY B R O AD C ASTIN G The proceedings of all but one of Australia’s state and federal parliaments are now webcast ‘live’ online directly from parliamentary websites. Since 2004, the niche pay television provider Sky News Australia has also carried the proceedings of the House of Representatives and Senate on its dedicated Parliamentary Channel, as has the A-PAC channel since 2009. The introduction of pay television and then internet—particularly broadband—removed a barrier to parliamentary broadcasting. Prior to this, only the national broadcaster was available, and radio carried the bulk of parliamentary coverage. The Parliamentary Proceedings Broadcasting Act 1946 obliged Australia’s public service broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), to broadcast the proceedings of the national parliament. The Commonwealth has constitutional jurisdiction over radio, and state parliaments had no similar option to mandate the broadcast of their proceedings. By the 1980s, the ABC—reconstituted as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1983—was chafing at the requirement to interrupt its normal schedule to broadcast parliament. In response to its lobbying, a purpose-specific Parliamentary and News Network was established in 1988. In 1994, this became NewsRadio. Operated by the ABC and transmitting across Australia, when parliament is sitting, NewsRadio broadcasts proceedings from the Senate and the House of Representatives on alternate days. The live broadcast of parliament in Australia can be traced to 1925, when 2KY microphones captured the opening of the NSW parliament. But it was the New Zealand parliament in 1936 that first provided for the routine radio broadcast of proceedings. After research across

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pay television the Tasman in 1943–45, involving Australia’s chief parliamentary reporter, George Romans, and C.G. Scrimgeour, a former controller of the NZ National Commercial Broadcasting Service, Australia’s Standing Committee on Broadcasting was charged with investigating the desirability of parliamentary broadcasting. Both antipodean parliaments permitted broadcasting of their proceedings well before Westminster, which did so only in 1978. In 1990, shortly after moving into a new Parliament House equipped with closed-circuit television, and well after the arrival of television in 1956, parliament acceded to televising its proceedings. The ABC agreed to squeeze into the schedule of its then solitary analogue network, broadcasts of Question Time from the Senate and the House of Representatives (as well as occasional landmarks such as the Treasurer’s Budget speech and the opposition leader’s reply). The shift to digital television and multiplication of ABC (and other) free-toair channels after 2009 did not encourage a more extended televising of parliament, which remains available only on pay television. Free-to-air commercial television networks are chiefly interested in snippets from Question Time for broadcast in news bulletins. Their access to parliament is decided by the Joint Committee on the Broadcasting of Parliamentary Proceedings, which under the 1946 Act also determines how and when NewsRadio will broadcast parliament. Initially, television networks were permitted only to record footage at the beginning of a parliamentary session for subsequent illustrative purposes. The rules, last revised in 1994, now allow networks to use excerpts from parliament’s own closed-circuit coverage of its proceedings, subject to some provisos—such as a restriction on showing events in the public gallery and the preservation of ‘balance’. REF: I. Ward, ‘Parliament on “the Wireless” in Australia’, Australian Jnl of Politics and History, 60(2) (2014). IAN WARD

P AY T EL EVI S I ON The seeds of pay (or subscription) television in Australia were planted in the early 1970s, when a small regional television service, Murrumbidgee Television, decided to trial a multi-channel service similar to the US cable networks. After Murrumbidgee’s parent company, Henry Jones (IXL), was taken over by a young management consultant, John Elliott, in 1972, Murrumbidgee’s manager, Ray Gamble, convinced his new owners—who would rise to the pinnacle of Australian corporate power a decade later—that pay TV made commercial sense. Australia lagged most developed countries by decades in developing multi-channel pay TV because it was opposed so effectively by the three commercial television networks, Seven, Nine

and later Ten. Ultimately, the irresistible force of commercial imperative and a government greedy for money opened the floodgates. What followed was a stampede of money, rushed and at times foolish decision-making, corporate confrontation and political ineptitude on a scale that has never been seen before in Australia. Elliott became increasingly influential in Liberal Party politics, and from 1975 lobbied the incoming Fraser Coalition government to legalise pay TV. That it was illegal in Australia was a tribute to the power of the networks. Despite assurances from government ministers and a favourable recommendation from the media regulator, the networks—led by Nine’s Kerry Packer—frustrated all attempts to have pay TV legalised. With the election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983, Elliott gave up and told Ray Gamble to sell the media assets. However, Gamble decided he would buy Murrumbidgee Television, arranging the buyout funding through Hill Samuel (later Macquarie Bank) and the subsequent float of the media business on the stockmarket under the name of Broadcast and Communications (later Broadcom). Gamble’s next move was to buy the piped music business of a young former television presenter, Steve Cosser. Cosser suggested using a microwave technology called MDS. It would be five years before this would happen, and in the meantime Cosser and Broadcom carved out a reputation for themselves as opportunistic players, snaring the broadcast rights to VFL football (later the AFL) in 1986. They found themselves the owners of Network Ten in 1989 after its previous owner, Westfield Capital Corporation, decided it could no longer stand the losses and loaned Broadcom the $22 million purchase price of the network. The networks were struggling for survival after having all changed hands in the frantic deal-making of the 1980s and then succumbing to receivership or, in the case of Nine, falling back into the hands of the previous owner, Kerry Packer. Just over a year after Broadcom took control of Ten, it too was put in receivership. Cosser saw the period of chaos for the networks as a window of opportunity that he would exploit as quickly as the regulatory environment would allow. During this period, three important developments occurred that would influence the timing and force with which commercial interests would press for pay TV. They were the fast-approaching development in the United States of digital technology that would allow multi-channel broadcasting using a fraction of the spectrum consumed by analogue; the emergence of two powerful potential pay TV players driven by commercial imperative to invest heavily on a pay TV service that even the politicians couldn’t resist—the merged government-owned telco that would be renamed Telstra, and a new

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payola phone company controlled by the UK’s Cable & Wireless group, called Optus; and the sale by the Labor government of its two AUSSAT satellites to Optus for $800 million. These events made a multi-channel pay TV industry inevitable, particularly after Optus’s demand that, in return for the high price it had paid, it must be allowed to use the satellites to broadcast a pay TV service. In the meantime, Steve Cosser started buying up MDS licences in Sydney and Melbourne to ‘narrowcast’ a news service rebroadcasting the CNN, NBC, BBC and Financial Times television services to corporate clients in Sydney. Cosser could see larger corporate players entering the field only when there was some certainty about the technology that would prevail. However, events were moving far quicker than Cosser realised. Having acquired 24 MDS licences in Sydney and Melbourne by early 1993, Cosser believed he had sufficient infrastructure to form a business and renamed his company Australis Media. The federal government, meanwhile, had to stick with its promise to Optus to sell licences to broadcast a multi-channel television service using the Optus satellite. A former computer salesman named Albert Hadid succeeded in winning the two licences (one very restricted with little or no value) with a series of bids that cascaded down to a level at which he attracted the interest of a serious US cable operator who could pay the deposit. This was Lenfest Communications, a subsidiary of TeleCommunications Inc. Lenfest had access to a huge range of US programming, but more importantly money, and had the capacity to build a national pay TV business that would quickly overwhelm Australis’s small operation. Cosser and his backers, Richard Wiesener and Peter Scanlon, had a rethink about satellite. Out of the swirl of backroom activity that followed, Lenfest ended up buying out Hadid for $13  million and the same day sold one of the licences to Australis Media for $138 million in shares. Suddenly, Australis was a serious contender in terms of its ability to reach a mass audience, but it walked straight into an auction with the newly formed Optus Vision consortium, consisting of Optus, US cable group Continental CableVision and all three commercial networks. The Hollywood studios could see a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and there were rumours of a third pay TV operator, so they were in no hurry to do any deals. Although the networks had teamed with Optus Vision, their main concern was for their core businesses: their free-to-air television interests. Nine’s David Leckie and Seven’s Bob Campbell drew up a list of about 30 sporting events the pay  TV industry would not be allowed to ‘siphon’ from the networks. Between them, Australis and Optus Vision had locked up most of the programming they could access that wasn’t subject to anti-siphoning rules.

Arguably the two most powerful players— Telstra and News Corporation—remained uncommitted, and by the time they finally decided to form a partnership, Foxtel, there was precious little programming available, with the Foxtel launch scheduled for September 1995. News Corporation and the head of its UK-based Sky TV pay TV business, Sam Chisholm, moved quickly to try to get what they could of sport and movie programming. With sport blocked by anti-siphoning legislation, News Corporation started its own sporting competitions, Super 12 Rugby and Super League, backed by Telstra’s money. Movies were tougher: Chisholm ended up negotiating a crushing 50-year, multi-billion-dollar agreement to take Australis’s movie channels. Along with News Corporation’s Fox Studios, this gave Foxtel a superior movie package to Optus Vision. Rivals they may have been, but the three operators joined forces to form the Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association (ASTRA) to promote the pay TV industry and lobby in Canberra to rectify the lopsided playing field the commercial networks had created. Ultimately, the story of pay TV is how Telstra and News Corporation hesitated before making their entry to pay TV, and then used their muscle and money to climb over the top of their rivals to emerge the monopoly provider. The cost incurred by all players is estimated to be at least $5 billion, with the biggest losses being incurred in the eventual collapse of Australis, and $600 million or so lost by News Corporation and Telstra on their Super League rebel competition. There were ongoing losses and writedowns by Foxtel and Optus Vision that finally forced Optus Vision to close its operations in 2003 and take the Foxtel feed. After losing more than a billion dollars over the first decade of its 18 years in operation, Foxtel is now the most profitable media business in Australia, lifting operating profit in the 2013 financial year 22 per cent to $944 million. It is an advertisers’ dream, with 200 channels aimed at every conceivable demographic. More than 7 million Australians, in 2.4 million households, are getting used to ‘paying for the footy’, something Kerry Packer had doubted they would be willing to do. At least they get to see it. REF: M. Westfield, The Gatekeepers (2000). MARK WESTFIELD

P AYO LA This refers to the practice of paying disc jockeys to promote a specific piece of music on their radio programs. While the term was first coined in the United States in the 1950s, the practice has been firmly embedded within the music industry for the past 150 years. In the mid-19th century in both the United States and the United Kingdom, music publishers used financial inducements

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pearl, cyril alston (1906–87) to persuade performers to sing their songs and thereby encourage the sale of sheet music. With the advent of radio, new opportunities for promotion became available. In his unpublished memoirs, Melbourne’s star radio announcer, Norman Banks, recalls that during the 1930s, he regularly brought home gifts from appreciative sponsors. Announcers were wined and dined, their cars were repaired for free, and envelopes of cash supplemented pay packets. However, Banks’ memoirs did not address the issue of whether announcers were more inclined to endorse sponsors’ products in exchange for personal gifts. In the 1950s, the Top 40 format became established, increasing the competition for airplay and helping to give disc jockeys power over which songs would be played, making them prime targets for record companies hoping to buy success in the music charts. The American payola scandal of 1958 resulted in the conviction of several prominent disc jockeys for receiving bribes. The US Communications Act 1934 was amended, outlawing payola but permitting pay-for-play as long as the commercial arrangement was disclosed and the station received the money. In Australia, disc jockeys such as Bob Rogers and John Laws similarly had enormous power over what music went to air. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some disc jockeys were offered inducements ranging from free records to a share of lucrative royalty payments. However, the audiences and the market were not large enough for this practice to become as entrenched as in the United States. While there were rumblings of disquiet, such as when Frank Browne’s newsletter Things I Hear fulminated about ‘FREE LOADER SUPREME’ in 1971, the industry was never investigated. A more serious form of payola came to light in Australia in 1999, when ABC Television’s Media Watch revealed that top-rating commercial talkback radio hosts were doing their own deals, accepting money in exchange for positive comments on air. The ‘cash for comment’ affair resulted in tighter regulation of the commercial radio industry in order to ensure a clear distinction on air between comment and paid advertising. REFs: R.H. Coase, ‘Payola in radio and television broadcasting’, Jnl of Law and Economics, 22(2), 1979, pp. 269–328; S. Homan, ‘Classic hits in a digital era: Music radio and the Australian music industry’, MIA, 123, 2007, pp. 95–108. GAIL PHILLIPS

P E A R L, CYRI L AL ST ON (1906–87) Cyril Pearl studied philosophy and the Russian language at the University of Melbourne, but did not take a degree. Instead, in 1931 he edited the student newspaper Farrago, where he championed ‘uninhibited thinking’—and his own

editorials caused some, including the sporting editor, Alan Moorehead, to puzzle over what on earth they meant. That year, Pearl also established a short-lived literary magazine, Stream, with capital of £40. In 1933 he joined the Star, the Argus’s new challenger to the Melbourne Herald, and in 1935 organised a debate about censorship in the Melbourne Town Hall. With the collapse of the Star in 1936, Pearl joined an exodus to Sydney to join the Daily Telegraph, re-launched by (Sir) Frank Packer’s Consolidated Press. Intellectually fearless, witty, cynical and iconoclastic, Pearl worked as leader writer then features editor. In 1939 he became inaugural editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Handwritten signatures and ‘Memos from the Editor’ were a feature of the newspaper, which was known for its liberalism; the paper also played a central role in the 1944 censorship dispute. From 1948, Pearl simultaneously edited a new monthly magazine, A.M.; he stopped editing the Sunday Telegraph in 1950 and resigned from Consolidated Press to write books in 1953. John Hetherington writes, somewhat too dismissively, of Pearl: ‘His period in journalism hardly matters, except as it deferred his emergence as a writer’. Pearl sprang to prominence in 1958 with Wild Men of Sydney, which told the story of the Rabelaisian lives of publisher John Norton and his cohorts, William (Paddy) Crick and William Willis, all NSW parliamentarians. The work so incensed living descendants of the trio that they persuaded the NSW government to rush through legislation to allow defamation of the dead. Writing as ‘Melbourne Spy’ and ‘Tom Ugly’, Pearl also contributed to Nation (‘the most exciting event in publishing I have been associated with’) and Nation Review. He wrote more than 20 books, including a biography of George Ernest Morrison (1967), and edited a selection of the works of cartoonist Lennie Lower (1963). Pearl had a brief, joyous return to Sydney journalism as editor (1960–61) of the Sunday Mirror, which bore the marks of Nation’s influence, before he was sacked by Rupert Murdoch. Pearl’s first wife, Irma, died of cancer in 1962. In 1964, while appearing as a panellist on the television quiz show Any Questions?, he met Patricia Mary (Paddy) Donohue. She became his lover, helper, assistant, researcher, organiser, typist and, in 1965, his wife. They travelled extensively in Eastern Europe during the Cold War before returning to Sydney, where he became an influential literary figure, writing a column for the Sydney Morning Herald and appearing on the ABC Television game show Would You Believe? (1970–74). REFs: J. Hetherington, Forty-Two Faces (1963); C. Pearl Papers (NLA). MARK DAY

PE RIODICA L S see magazines and periodicals

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photography PERKI N, ( EDW IN) GRAHAM (1929–75) Graham Perkin became editor of the Melbourne Age in 1966, aged 36, and held the job for nine years. By then, due largely to his leadership—and favourable circumstances—what had been an almost moribund broadsheet was listed among the world’s great newspapers. The annual Graham Perkin Award for Australian Journalist of the Year was established in his memory. Perkin initially enrolled part-time in law at the University of Melbourne, but left in 1949 to become a cadet journalist at the Age, quickly earning a reputation as an outstanding reporter. In 1955 he was awarded a Kemsley journalism scholarship to Fleet Street. Back at the Age, he wrote features, joined the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery and won a Walkley Award for covering a 1959 ‘hole in the heart’ operation. He became deputy news editor in 1959, followed by a stint lecturing in journalism at the University of Melbourne (1961–63). Back at the Age, Perkin became news editor in 1963, assistant editor in 1964 and editor two years later. The challenge suited him. The Age—whose glory days under David Syme were a faded memory—was in the doldrums and in desperate need of modernisation. Two events in 1964 contributed to Perkin’s success. One was the appointment of Ranald Macdonald, Syme’s 26-year-old great-grandson, as managing director. The other was Rupert Murdoch’s decision to launch the Australian, posing a new threat to the Age. Macdonald took two wise decisions: to make Perkin editor, and to back him against board resistance. Working extraordinarily hard, Perkin transformed the paper. He attracted and motivated talent from around the nation—reporters, columnists, feature and leader writers, photographers, cartoonists and illustrators. He launched a lively graphic redesign, fostered investigative journalism that exposed political scandals (the Loans Affair, 1975) and social injustice (the Minus Children Appeal), boosted space for features, comment and letters to the editor, and acknowledged mistakes under the heading ‘We Were Wrong’. Change swept through every area: political, finance and foreign news coverage, sport, the arts and women’s pages. Circulation rose from 183,000 when Perkin took over to 222,000 when he died of a heart attack, aged just 45, widely acknowledged as one of Australia’s most effective and inspirational editors. From 1966, Perkin was a director of Australian Associated Press (AAP). He became chairman from 1970–72, and from 1971–74 was a director of Reuters Ltd, London. REFs: B. Hills, Breaking News (2010); personal knowledge. PETER COLE-ADAMS

P H O TO G R AP H Y Since the 1850s, photography has influenced how Australians have viewed society, and played a critical role in Australia’s evolving national identity. Throughout the 20th century, press, magazine and television photography attained acceptance as a compelling and separate record, and the professional status of photographers gained credibility, but its trajectory has never been linear or inevitable. The first Australian magazine reproduction of a photograph appeared in 1888. Subsequently, press photography was influenced by the popularity of British and American pictorials, shifts in visual representation and the impact of cinema. After 1900, photographs became a part of daily journalism in both the United Kingdom and United States, especially in the mass-circulation tabloids. On 22 April 1908, the Melbourne daily broadsheets, the Argus and the Age, published the first photographs in Australian newspapers. Photography captured the Australian public imagination, and newspaper proprietors began to exploit the interest—though the pictorial side of news reporting was mainly confined to the weeklies and magazines. (Sir) Keith Murdoch, inspired by Lord Northcliffe’s London tabloids and the Daily Mirror’s enviable circulation, launched the Sun News-Pictorial in 1922. It was Australia’s first daily pictorial newspaper, with four full pages of illustrations in addition to over 20 photographs scattered through the rest of the pages. The Sun initially hired four staff photographers, but no more than 10 press photographers in total were employed in each major city during the 1920s. Despite the low representation of press photographers, enduring stylistic trends were quickly established. The ‘hook’ and the use of the ‘splash’ picture were deemed major developments; crime and fear, human-interest stories and sport became popular visual features. Public debates about ‘horror pictures’ and their impact on public morality, and the influence of the ‘terrible’ American pictorial tabloids, also prevailed. Industrial recognition of photographers was a more gradual process. Few photographers were employed on daily newspapers when the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) was formed in 1911. In 1920, the AJA invited photographers and artists to become members. Subsequently, there was a constant battle for their improved working conditions, and for attribution, copyright ownership, higher award rates and transparency over pay and overtime. Photographers wrote to the AJA’s newspaper, the Journalist, from the mid-1920s, objecting to the pay disparity between photographers and journalists. Much was also made of the physical and personal dangers to photographers and later cinematographers.

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photography By the 1920s, technological innovation paralleled the growing use of photographs, in particular the half-tone process, which made possible the reproduction of photographs. Previously, press and magazine photographers and Australia’s two World War I Official Photographers, Frank Hurley and Hubert Wilkins, had been captive to box cameras and tripods, and glass plate negatives. The invention of the Leica camera in Germany in 1925 ushered in the new genre of photojournalism, the purpose of which was to tell a visual narrative. This portable camera with film negatives allowed photographers greater latitude to move with the action as events unfolded. The improvements in technology also enhanced the quality of photographs and their reproduction, and hastened the dissemination of images. This was particularly critical for the Australian press, which was always under-resourced and struggled with its geographical isolation. Despite these seismic changes in the industry, the mainstream broadsheets were resistant to the adoption of photography due to industry perceptions that the image was considered inferior to more serious text reporting because of its association with the populist tabloid press. Pictorial magazine editors had no such qualms, and the 1930s represented the beginning of their ascent, with successful magazines including Australasian Post (1864–2002), Smith’s Weekly (1919–50), the Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ), Walkabout (1934–78) and Pix (est. 1938, merging with People in 1962). The rise of pictorial magazines allowed the public new ways to imagine Australia and themselves. A seminal group of photographers sought commissioned commercial and magazine work (which invariably coincided with successful public exhibitions), including Hurley, Wilkins and later Max Dupain, Laurence Le Guay, Athol Shmith and David Moore. The reputation of the two pioneers, Hurley and Wilkins, was established by their documentation of Antarctic exploration and later war. Expedition photography embodied the importance of place and travel for Australian audiences: the bush, beach culture, expressive pictorialism and ‘intimate glimpses of Aborigines in the outback’ were staple features of the pictorial magazines. The magazines offered photographers more flexible deadlines, improved production techniques, by-line recognition and greater autonomy. From the inception of news photography, however, the tension between the photograph as a form of art, as evidence and a means of representation was constantly debated. Some photographers struggled with the polarity between the photographic imperative. Hurley produced composite photographs combining negatives in order to convey the multiplicity of action and the staging of scenes, and believed the embellished aesthetic was more important than authenticity.

As the pictorial magazines rose to prominence, there was still caution in the industry about the use of photographs. The fundamental justifications for newspaper photography—immediacy and visual evidence of images—were undisputed. Yet images were still used arbitrarily by the daily pictorial newspapers and sparingly in the broadsheets. The immediacy of the photograph was also dependent on technological innovation. In 1935, the Associated Press (AP) launched its Wirephoto service that sent photographs more swiftly and became as revolutionary as the invention of the telegraph a century before. It alleviated some of the logistical difficulties experienced by photographers, particularly during World War II. However, working conditions remained challenging. Still and moving images were taken in a vacuum, picture transmission to Australia remained slow and the protection of photographic film was a constant preoccupation. In addition, all photographers’ work during World War II was pooled, censored and uncredited by the Department of Information, which led to the resignation of George Silk and Damien Parer. Silk later became one of Life magazine’s most fêted sports photographers. Parer’s footage from Papua, which was included in the Cinesound documentary Kokoda Front Line, helped to secure an Academy Award in 1943 for director Ken G. Hall. The visual representation of AIF and Anzac iconography in war reporting from the time of World War I was closely guarded. The Australian military and press have always been assiduous censors, and the Australian media has refused to publish photographs of ‘our dead’. The Australian press was also slow to adopt the photographic essay. This had become a new way of incorporating images in narrative form, and was used to great effect by Allied press photographers when covering World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps. In Australia, the wire photographs were used sparingly, and story and image were rarely matched. The tendency to converge and conflate the popular historical memory of Australian press photography in the narratives of international photojournalism is both problematic and misleading. The Australian experience has been different and trends were adopted more gradually. Australian photographers did not experience a ‘golden age’, a period commonly defined by the creation of Life as a weekly magazine in 1936 and its demise as a weekly publication in 1972. Nor did pictorial magazines have the same cultural resonance in Australia. In addition, ‘photojournalism’ as a term did not have the same currency and was not used in Australia until the 1970s. Photography only became a separate and compelling staple in Australian newspaper journalism in the late 1950s. Until then, press photography was often subsidiary. Australia

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photography did usher one important development when the Argus became the first newspaper in the world to print coloured photographs on 28 July 1952. By the 1960s, photographs became more critical in the Australian media. As visual conventions changed, iconic imagery chronicled social and political change: feminism, Indigenous rights, the Vietnam War, the peace movement and protests against capital punishment. More press photographers worked across the rounds but their work remained hindered by staggered newspaper production, morning and afternoon deadlines, the difficulties of photographic development and the constant chase for film stock. Photographers slowly diversified: Mervyn Bishop, a news and documentary photographer, was the first Indigenous Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper when he joined the Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 1963. The conditions for female press photographers were also limited. Unlike their male counterparts, they found newspaper appointments were not readily available. Pat Holmes is thought to have been the first full-time female photographer on an Australian newspaper. In 1943 she was offered a job by AP, and joined the Sydney Sun as a press photographer. Newspapers employed female photographers more frequently from the 1970s, but gender inequality continued. A 1993 survey of Australian newspaper photographers found that regional newspapers were more receptive to female photographers, with women comprising up to half of the photographic staff in the non-metropolitan press in contrast to 7 per cent on metropolitan papers. The first female photographer to win a Walkley Award was Verity Chambers in 1992. Women photographers have subsequently achieved much greater recognition but they are still under-represented in the newsroom. Australian television did not immediately take over the role of visualising the nation as it had in the United States, nor was it as prominent during the Vietnam War. The antecedent of television was the Cinesound Review newsreels, which covered all the major events in Australia and the world from 1931 to 1970. Their demise coincided with improving television technology and its capacity to film live. Similarly, newspapers could not compete with the immediacy of television footage, and the problem of faster transmission remained. A group of celebrated Australian television cinematographers emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Many were drawn from the experienced cohort of cameramen employed by Cinesound (which merged to become Cinesound and Movietone Productions in 1970). The ABC recruited a group of young Tasmanian cinematographers. The most acclaimed was Neil Davis, who worked for the ABC and later as Visnews’s cameraman and correspondent for South-East Asia until he was killed in 1985 while filming

a coup in Bangkok. The ABC’s current affairs programs, most notably Four Corners, provided exceptional training. Other cinematographers and freelance photographers (and a litany of filmmakers) refined their craft on local dramas and in television comedy. However, the majority of international news footage was, and continues to be, supplied to Australia by news agencies and through syndication. Most Australian photographers who worked for newspapers were not generally by-lined until the early 1980s. When the Walkley Awards were established in 1956, the ‘Best Photograph’ was included in the five categories; five awards are now offered for visual representation. The digital revolution from 1989 caused some of the most revolutionary changes in press photography and its dissemination. The Leafax scanned negatives and recorded photographs as digital information, and eventually transmitted colour images in less than 10 seconds. It was not until the beginning of the new millennium that colour photography was a familiar and then a common feature in Australian newspapers. With the introduction of digital cameras, photojournalism had finally caught up to the capacity of television photography for the immediate transmission of still and moving images. Today, press and magazine photographers are free from the most restricting aspects of their jobs. Computer technology scans images directly into the design and editors have the ability to receive photos digitally immediately after capture. Prints are seldom made, digital chips can store up to a thousand images and are less sensitive to exposure, and film was largely redundant by 2000. Digital photography had become faster and more affordable in a competitive industry preoccupied with both. Press and magazine photographers have also diversified. There are new mediums for gathering and exhibiting visual news: dynamic multimedia tools, online video, slideshows, blogging, social media and photo-sharing sites. Television cinematographers have also attained much greater autonomy: the new category of video journalists present, shoot and edit their own stories. While the digital age has transformed production and liberated photographers, it also had some devastating impacts on their profession. Never before have more images been available. Australian newspapers and magazines continue to source the majority of international photographs from the major picture agencies, AP, Getty and Reuters (an over-reliance on wire and agency material has always been endemic in Australia). Since 2011, many major Australian newspapers have lost an estimated 30 per cent of their staff photographers, and most departures have only been replaced on a casual basis. The decision in 2013 by the Chicago Sun-Times to terminate its full-time photographers and arm their journalists with smartphones has intensified the

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debate about the demise of photojournalism. In Australia, the combination of more accessible images, amateur or citizen photographers with their smartphones, cost-cutting and declining advertising revenue and audience has caused an alarming decline in the employment of staff photographers and a greater casualisation of its workforce. In May 2014 Fairfax Media announced it was all but disbanding its photographic department, calling for redundancies including 30 photographers. Fairfax plans to outsource many local photographic assignments to Getty Images. It further indicates a collapse of the traditional systems of distribution. The essential role that photojournalists play as trained, skilled, visual witnesses should prevail no matter the media format, but photojournalists are experiencing unprecedented change. For television news, pictures remain the most critical part of the medium, and so far cinematographers have not yet experienced the same diminished employment opportunities. REFs: K. Evans, ‘Still: A Cultural History of Press Photography in Australia’ (PhD thesis, 2001); G. Griffin, ‘A profile of Australian photographers’, Australian Studies in Journalism, 3 (1994). FAY ANDERSON

PIRAC Y see copyright

P L AY SCHOOL Based on the BBC’s Playschool, Play School first aired on ABC Television on 18 July 1966. It is Australia’s longest-running continuously produced children’s show, with 80 per cent of preschool children watching at least once a week. Play School has an educational approach, based on research into the conceptual development of pre-school children. The program aims to encourage children to wonder, to think, to feel and to imagine, encouraging participation. The show’s presenters seek to engage each child directly and personally, using stories, songs and activities reflecting the culture of Australian children. Many well-known Australian actors and television presenters have worked as presenters, including Lorraine Bayly, John Hamblin, Simon Burke, Noni Hazlehurst, Georgie Parker and John Waters. Play School also features familiar toys—including Big Ted and Jemima. Regular segments include book readings, telling the time and moving through different-shaped windows to video clips of the world outside. Throughout its life, the program has maintained its basic approach while revising its ‘look’ as television presentation developed. The show had a major revamp in 2000; another update occurred in 2011, with a new arrangement of its theme song sung by presenters Jay Laga’aia and Justine Clarke.

Play School spawned the Bananas in Pajamas, after the Bananas’ theme song became popular on the show. It also featured an early performance by The Wiggles. The program attracted controversy in 2004 when a segment showing a child with ‘two mums’ was aired. Play School was admitted to the Logies Hall of Fame in 2006. REF: Play School producers’ notes (held by author). HARVEY BROADBENT

PM see AM and PM

P O D C ASTIN G A podcast is a program (usually audio, sometimes video) which is made available as a downloadable digital file. It can be delivered via an RSS feed (see below) over the internet to a subscriber. Podcasts are designed for playback on computers and mobile devices such as digital audio players, smartphones and iPads. The first Australian podcast appears to be G’Day World, made available on the internet on 29 November 2004. Founders Mick Stanic and Cameron Reilly claim they were inspired by hearing downloadable MP3 recordings from the pioneering American IT Conversations Network (2003–12), founded by computer-software executive Doug Kaye. While the iPod inspired the neologism ‘podcasting’, the phenomenon’s origins were in the ‘open source’ movement in the United States, where ‘audio blogging’ was pioneered. This innovation was the culmination of a series of computing developments including compressed audio files (the MP3 format), the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) file format (allowing a user to subscribe to a podcast series), and podcasting and other digital recording and editing software. In June 2005, Apple added a podcasting feature to its iTunes software, at the same time making more than 3000 podcasts available free. The appeal of podcasting transcended the consumption of audio files by computer users, as iTunes allowed users to create and publish their own podcasts. Podcasting thereby incorporated aspects of both production and consumption. Anyone can create a podcast with a laptop and microphone. The BBC was the first public sector broadcaster (PSB) to trial podcasting in late 2004 with some of its specialist talk programs. ABC Radio was not far behind. The first Australian station to offer a program for download was ABC’s youth network, Triple J, which trialled podcasts of its current affairs show, Hack, in December 2004. In late 2004, Radio National (RN) decided to podcast, and six months later, eight of its flagship programs could be subscribed to with RSS technology. The huge takeup of this new service resulted in unprecedented downloads for the network. RN commanded the highest

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political journalism downloads for its programming across the ABC between 2005 and 2013. Podcasts have become part of a revised multi-platform vision for all kinds of media organisations. Regular podcasts (and video ‘vodcasts’) are offered by media ranging from newspapers to community and commercial radio stations through their online portals, with broadcasting organisations moving from the one-to-many delivery of programs (broadcasting) to a far more convergent model. Podcasts in their purely audio form might be understood as extending and invigorating the life of traditional broadcast radio programming. They have also allowed a renewed focus on high talk content, and on the auditory experience. The majority of podcasts are talk based, and do not appear to be a threat to traditional services; rather, they appear to be contributing to rejuvenation of the industry. Along with web radio, ‘audio on demand’ and ‘streaming’, introduced in the late 1990s, an extended ‘sound work’ industry has emerged in many developed countries, including Australia. Podcasting success stories such as This American Life are now part of this global environment of renewed audio/radio creativity, making audio programming and radio forms of this kind more visible than before. These programs are not only broadcast in real time (for example, on the ABC), but have cultivated new audiences in Australia through their podcast downloads and subscriptions via iTunes and their websites. Radio comedy in Australia has benefited from the podcasting boom. Early podcasting saw a huge range of comedy programs proliferating. In 2010, the Age described comedians Josh Thomas and Tom Ward’s Josh Thomas and Friends podcast as ‘one of the best non-radio comedy podcasts’. Wil Anderson was another comedian who moved into the flourishing world of podcasts: in 2012, his TOFOP [Thirty Odd Foot of Podcast] podcast (with actor Charlie Clausen) attracted ‘as many as 50,000 downloads an episode’. Other prominent podcasters in Australian comedy include former breakfast radio hosts Wendy Harmer and Angela Catterns. Like the PSBs—and before DAB radio—commercial radio networks such as Nova, Triple M and 2Day began investing heavily in content initiatives aimed at delivery to PCs and MP3 players. Podcasting trials in 2005 transformed into regular services. Along with top-rating podcasts of big-name duos like Hamish and Andy and Kyle and Jackie O, today they offer highlights packages of their most popular breakfast and drive-time programs, selected music and specialist content like Your Tech Life, which airs on Sydney’s 2GB. Australian community radio also offers a huge range of podcasts from its talk base, and—like Triple J—offers MP3s of independent music recorded by the sector. Australia’s first and only gay and lesbian community radio station, JOY 94.9FM in Melbourne, was selected in early 2014 as the first Australian

community broadcaster to join the Apple iTunes Featured Podcast Provider program. Podcasting has become standard for most radio stations and networks. It bypasses the limited or disrupted reach of traditional AM/ FM radio, delivering audio programming and ‘radio-like’ content on demand to potentially global audiences. For broadcasters, podcasting operates in a non-linear manner; however, podcasting need not be defined in opposition to broadcasting. For countless amateur producers, podcasting provides a means of distribution that confounds the former professional broadcasting monopoly—whether public, community or commercial. Yet this largely free, ‘time-shifted’ dissemination remains predicated on an ethos developed with broadcasting in its formative period and with an idea of the ‘gift ecology’ of the ‘commons’. REFs: V. Madsen and J. Potts, ‘Voice-cast: The Distribution of the Voice via Podcasting’, in N. Neumark, R. Gibson and T. Leeuwen (eds), The Grain of the Voice in Digital Media and Media Art (2010); S. Murray, ‘Servicing “self-scheduling consumers”: Public broadcasters and audio podcasting’, Global Media and Communication, 5(2) (2009). VIRGINIA MADSEN

P O LITIC AL JO U R N ALISM Political journalism refers to reporting on parliament, government functions, political campaigns and elections. In Australia, it is chiefly but not exclusively undertaken by journalists accredited to the press galleries of the various state and national parliaments, including the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery (FPPG). State politics continue to attract news coverage, but since the 1960s, news media have invested more heavily in reporting on federal politics. It is widely accepted that the media—particularly the journalists who specialise in reporting politics—should play a critical role in democracies. Political reporters should not only record their activities, but also serve as ‘watchdogs’ by scrutinising governments (and oppositions), and alerting voters to their follies and faults. However, it is now clear that the capacity of commercial mass media to finance a fourth estate has been eroded by the proliferation of alternative online news sources, audience fragmentation, and the consequent contraction of advertising revenue. Like other areas of journalism, political reporting is being impacted by technological change. The 2009 merger of the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age’s Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery bureaux is one measure of this, as is the 2012 spat over the accreditation of bloggers and new online publishers to the Gallery. Nor were political journalists insulated from the dramatic ‘downsizing’ of Fairfax Media and News Limited announced in 2012—witness the shrinkage of the Press Gallery from 283 in 1990 to fewer than 190 in 2012.

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political journalism With the development of digital technology and the internet, newspaper and broadcast newsrooms have evolved into multimedia operations. Most political journalists now routinely file stories for immediate online distribution, as well as versions for subsequent publication via traditional print or broadcast outlets. In publishing online, they face immediate, direct reaction from readers, who can ‘like’ or comment on their work. Some political journalists have developed their own ‘brands’ using j-blogs, platforms such as the ABC’s The Drum and social media such as Twitter to build an audience. The pressure on journalists to file immediately has also dissolved the regular daily deadlines and rhythms of the 24-hour news cycle. In its place, journalists are driven to provide a near-continuous coverage of parliament and politics—a pressure that critics argue has reduced the quality of political reporting. Political reporters themselves are openly professing concern that these pressures are now having an impact on the quality of journalism, and that, in conjunction with staff cuts, this has decreased the scrutiny of politicians and others. Liberal politician Malcolm Turnbull has complained that the accelerating news cycle has encouraged journalists to substitute easily written commentaries for news. But there may be an even more alarming consequence: in a damning critique of the FPPG and its capacity to serve as a democratic watchdog, one member considers that more news is being generated with fewer resources in an environment dominated by public relations spin, with the result that much political reporting has become superficial. It is clear that political reporting is being transformed in this new era, even if the changes being wrought are not yet fully understood—and perhaps not yet completely apparent. Political communication scholars have long understood that such technological developments will impact upon the culture and power relations of political journalism—after all, the introduction of free-to-air television broadcasting in Australia after 1956 undeniably transformed the field. There may even be lessons that date back to Federation. In May 1901, the news that Australia’s first parliament had assembled in Melbourne was reported in newspapers as diverse as the Kalgoorlie Miner and Goulburn Evening Penny Post. In the early part of the 20th century, there were numerous provincial papers in addition to the 21 daily newspapers published in capital cities. Most of the early political coverage of federal parliament was provided by the Victorian Parliamentary Press Gallery, augmented by a handful of journalists from news agencies and several Sydney newspapers. News coverage included accounts of what might have been said or discussed in Parliament but also opinion and commentary.

Julianne Schultz notes that the period leading up to Federation was one of heightened political debate around issues such as free trade and Federation, and that this was ‘reflected in the press’. After Australia’s modern party system took shape in 1911, and in the post-war and Depression years, political reporting ‘tended towards political conservatism’—apart from union-funded newspapers such as the Labor Daily. At the same time, metropolitan newspapers in Australia acquired larger readerships and grew increasingly subject to the very same commercial pressures that elsewhere had ended the era of partisan press. Ultimately, commercial pressures for media to build mass audiences prevailed. The trend to less blatantly partisan reporting notwithstanding, many Labor politicians continued to criticise biased press reporting. This was an impetus for the 1946 decision of the Chifley Labor government to have the ABC broadcast parliamentary proceedings. Yet, ironically, it was a concern about biased newspaper coverage of government formed by Labor’s foes that resulted in an independent ABC news office being opened in the FPPG. Although the ABC broadcast a popular political commentary by ‘The Watchman’ (E.A.  Mann) from the early 1930s, which carried some news content, the ABC was initially required by an agreement with press proprietors to draw political news for its bulletins from newspapers. But when in 1939 Prime Minister Joseph Lyons took umbrage with press coverage of his United Australia Party government, Cabinet requested that the ABC appoint its own Press Gallery representative and provide an independent news service. When Warren Denning was appointed to this role, his presence was initially resented by Gallery journalists. But eventually the ABC would establish a considerable presence in the Press Gallery and assume a substantial responsibility for reporting Australian politics. With the advent of television, the ABC was the first to establish a network that spanned regional as well as metropolitan Australia. With This Day Tonight (TDT) in 1967, it pioneered current affairs programming with extended interrogations of political leaders and officials. TDT was known for its ‘hard-hitting’ interviews and ‘irreverent’ approach to political reporting. Contemporary Australians used to reading or hearing about ‘Tony Abbott’ or ‘Julia Gillard’ will be struck by the formality of early 20th-century press and radio reporting of politics: political figures were treated with some deference and routinely addressed as ‘Mr Barton’ or ‘Mr Lyons’. Gallery journalists would address Prime Minister Robert Menzies as ‘Sir’. Television allowed a new intimacy. It would also fundamentally change the FPPG. In 1933, the Gallery numbered some two dozen ‘newspapermen’. By 1945, partly because

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pornography of the addition of radio journalists, it had expanded by a third. Despite the presence of a handful of women, it remained a predominantly masculine institution. It had 38 members in 1950, 70 in 1967 and 105 in 1973. By 1988, the FPPG membership had more than doubled (to 283 in 1990), and lost much of its ‘blokey’ reputation and culture. Clem Lloyd points out that television ‘perceptibly quickened’ the pace of current affairs and political news reporting. To accommodate its needs, from 1972 television stations began to install studios inside (Old) Parliament House. In recognition of the importance of television in parliamentary broadcasting, media were given an extended space in the new Parliament House from 1988. The Press Gallery is housed along a 200 metre corridor with Fairfax Media’s bureau at one end and ABC Television’s Lateline office at the other, located directly above the Senate. This unique arrangement allows an access and intimacy between political reporters, politicians and their staffers. Australian politicians grasped the importance and potential power of free-to-air television, and employed increasing numbers of media advisers to secure favourable news coverage. Political reporters examine the actions of a range of political actors. Inevitably—and far more so than with other forms of journalism—the political actors who are the subject of news stories want control over the stories. In an era dominated by television, this means shaping both the pictures and the words political reporters use. Thus television transformed political reporting. Political actors learned to ‘stage’ speeches and other public appearances, while formal press conferences morphed into truncated ‘door stop’ interviews that allowed politicians to avoid detailed questioning in favour of sound bites. All of the complaints made about the impact of new digital media—that it has encouraged shallow, superficial reporting that focuses on personalities rather than issues, and relies upon and churns spin—have their origins in an earlier, television-dominated age of political communication. REFs: D. Cryle, ‘Press Culture and Political Journalism to 1930’, Continuum, 4(1) (1990); C.J. Lloyd, Parliament and the Press (1988); J. Schultz, Reviving the Fourth Estate (1998). IAN WARD

PORNOGRAPHY ‘Pornography’—the explicit representation of sexually arousing episodes—has no fixed, legal definition in Australia. Prior to the 1970s it was primarily understood to refer to print material, both written and photographic, although a Film Censorship Board was established by the Commonwealth in 1917, restricting the release of cinematic films deemed to contain obscene or politically seditious content. Displays of

homosexuality, advice on contraception, Weird Science comics, and pulp crime fiction were all considered potentially obscene or pornographic, and could be seized and inspected by Customs or Postal authorities. In 1933, the Australian government established a Book (later Literature) Censorship Board, responsible for inspecting books which might have ‘a tendency to deprave and corrupt’ Australians. From 1954 the Queensland Literature Board of Review was active, notably banning Australian Consolidated Press’s popular magazine Weekend in 1956–57. Across Australia, texts policed on grounds of obscenity ranged from comic books to Playboy, however the censorship of literary texts such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Portnoy’s Complaint provoked the most public debate. Protests (and test-cases) led by anti-censorship campaigners and libertarians gradually gained the support of sympathetic politicians, such as Senator Don Chipp. In 1969, Chipp, Minister for Customs and Excise in the Gorton Coalition government, greatly reduced restrictions on publications, introduced the R18+ category for cinema, and famously ‘un-banned’ Henry Miller’s The Tropic of Cancer. By the early 1970s, all states (except Queensland) had introduced regulatory systems that allowed some circulation of sexually explicit material. In the mid-1980s, the federal government introduced clearly defined film and video classification categories, partly in response to debates raised during an Australian visit by British morals campaigner, Mary Whitehouse. The current classification rules apply to films, DVDs and computer games. Initially, R and X categories applied only to films and DVDs. However, the R18 category was extended to games in 2012. While both R and X categories can be considered pornographic, they differ in terms of content. R-rated films and DVDs may depict simulated sex, and high level violence and sexual violence, while X-rated films feature actual sex but must not include ‘violence, sexual violence, and sexualised violence or coercion’. X-rated material also excludes ‘demeaning’ language or activities, even where they are represented as consensual. The X category is applied to films and DVDs, with print and online publications classified according to separate guidelines. X-rated material can be openly sold in Australian federal territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory), but is not legal for sale in the states. Pornographic magazines (such as Playboy) are classified as Category One (equivalent to R-rated) and sold in sealed packaging to over-18s in most states, while Category Two (equivalent to X-rated) cannot legally be sold in Queensland. This Category Two material is more explicit, may depict sexual activity in detail, and most states and territories restrict it for sale in sex shops only. Western Australia also

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pornography requires retailers selling Category Two publications to register with the WA Censorship Office. Online material is regulated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. While much porn, including home-made porn, has not been classified by the Australian Classification Board (formerly the Office of Film and Literature Classification), where it has been classified, two prohibitions apply: firstly, content which is classified R 18+* and not subject to a restricted access system that protects children; and secondly, any online content (originating from a website hosted in Australia) that is classified as Refused Classification* (RC) or X 18+*. This includes real depictions of actual sexual activity, child pornography, depictions of bestiality, material containing excessive violence or sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use, and material that advocates carrying out a terrorist act. Classifications are based on criteria outlined in the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act 1995, the Guidelines for the Classification of Films and Computer Games (2005) and the National Classification Code.  Online material that would be classified R 18+ and X 18+ can be legally viewed on domains hosted outside of Australia. In 2009, the Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy, announced the Rudd Labor government’s intention to impose a mandatory internet filtering system on all Australian internet service providers. Following controversy regarding the contents of the ‘blacklisted’ RC category, the proposal did not gain sufficient support to be approved as legislation. In the late 1990s, the Eros Foundation, lobbyist for the adult entertainment industry, proposed that the X category be abolished, and replaced with a new category, Non-Violent Erotica (NVE). In the initial stages of negotiations with the Howard Coalition government (whose election campaigning had included a promise to abolish the X category), it was agreed that certain ‘offensive’ material would be expunged from the X category in order to ensure it was truly ‘non-violent’. The new category would then be made more widely available across the states. While the proposal was initially supported by all political parties, National Party MPs revoked their support following extensive lobbying, and a film screening by Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine, who opposed the application of the term ‘erotica’ to sexually explicit films. The NVE category did not eventuate.  All sexual activity in R- and X-rated films must involve ‘consenting adults’, which means participants must be over the age of 18. Although the age of consent in Australia is 16, any sexual images of people under 18 are legally prohibited as ‘child pornography’ and are refused classification. This includes amateur images produced by young people themselves,  including phone

‘sexting’. Those under 18 prosecuted for sexting may currently be listed on the Sex Offender Register alongside adult perpetrators of child sexual assault. This legal anomaly in Australia has provoked a number of concerned people and organisations to call for law reform, and also prompted an inquiry by the Victorian Coalition government in 2011. Due to intensive regulation of the production and distribution of sexually explicit material in Australia, very few long-form pornographic films are produced here. Additionally, since the mid-1990s, it has been illegal for Australian websites (with a com.au domain) to host material that would attract an R, X or RC classification. Even with these restrictions, Australians produce and distribute a wide range of sexually suggestive and sexually explicit materials, from ‘soft-core’ men’s magazines to highly explicit ‘amateur’ (or semi-professional) pornographic photosets and digital films. The regulation of pornography in Australia has relied heavily on the ‘old media’ boundaries, particular that of geography. Although X-rated material has only been legally available by mail-order outside of the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory, it is frequently sold under the counter in ‘restricted premises’ or sex shops. The presence of signage, surveillance by shop assistants, and the cost of purchasing pornography have been considered sufficient to deter under-age shoppers. Since the mid-1990s, there has been increasing concern that online and mobile and portable media have removed the physical boundaries designed to prevent children and young people from accessing pornography. This concern is twofold: that some young people may accidentally stumble on material they find frightening or disturbing, while others will deliberately seek out such explicit texts and images. These concerns draw on notions of media effects that exposure to pornography may contribute to sexist and misogynistic attitudes, and encourage callous and violent sexual behaviour, particularly in young men. In 2001, Alan McKee, Kath Albury and Catharine Lumby undertook a four-year, Australian Research Council-funded study, ‘Understanding Pornography in Australia’. They argue that the media effects model is problematic, and that many viewers of pornography report positive benefits in relationships, including a better understanding of sex and improved communication with their partner. These researchers also found that consumers of all ages (including those aged over 60) reported first viewing pornography prior to the age of 16. Published in 2008 as The Porn Report, this is Australia’s largest study of pornography. It includes a content analysis of 50 top-selling X-rated DVDs, an audience study of porn consumers, and findings from a qualitative study of Australian amateur and cottage industry producers and distributors of

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press galleries, state pornography. The study also discusses children’s safety in online environments. In early 2011, the federal Labor Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, directed the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) to undertake an inquiry into the National Classification Scheme. The ALRC’s 2011 discussion paper recommended that all material that would be likely to receive an X-rating should continue to be classified (including print publications, which are currently classified as Category One or Category Two rather than R or X), but left open the question of whether the material should be classified by the Classification Board, or by a panel of industry representatives. Critics argued that this recommendation didn’t appropriately address the question of distribution, as it disregards the disparity between state laws (which ban the sale of X-rated material), and federal laws that permit it.  The ALRC’s Final Report, tabled in March 2012, recommended that the board remain in place, but that a Classification of Media Content Act should allow for an element of industry self-regulation, under an ‘authorised classification system’, yet to be determined. REFs: K. Albury, ‘Pornography’, in G. Hawkes and J. Scott (eds), Perspectives in Human Sexuality (2005); ALRC, Classification—Content Regulation and Convergent Media Summary Report (2012); N. Moore, The Censor’s Library (2012); B. Sullivan, The Politics of Sex (1997). KATH ALBURY 

PRESS GAL L ERIES, STATE From the earliest days of colonial settlement in Australia, the cry for press freedom accompanied the struggle for elected democracy. One of the focal points of newspaper agitation was the right to cover the proceedings of the handpicked Legislative Councils, chaired by state governors, which met in secret. Newspaper coverage of the House of Commons and the House of Lords was banned in Britain until the late 18th century, and it was only in December 1831 that the first reporters’ gallery was constructed at Westminster. Still recovering from the loss of their American colony in the American War of Independence (1775– 83) and the menace of the French Revolution (1789–99), the British colonial authorities were apprehensive about extending the same right to their penal colony on the other side of the world. In 1833, the editors of the Monitor, the Australian, the Currency Lad, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser and the Sydney Herald, forerunner of the Sydney Morning Herald, were given access to copies of the votes, printed papers, Bills and proceedings of the council, and in 1838 reporters were allowed into the chamber in a specially constructed strangers’ gallery to report debates and decisions. ‘Members of the press are to be provided for in the gallery of the Chamber, which we think

a much better plan than merely to give them a promiscuous seat among the visitors,’ reported the Australian on 1 June. By the time responsible government was granted in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart and Adelaide in the 1850s, press coverage by skilled shorthand writers was the mainstay of the circulation of the leading daily newspapers in those cities. Indeed, the coverage was so detailed that commercial dailies were regarded as parliaments’ official record until the publicly funded Hansard was established in 1879 to provide a verbatim record of all proceedings. The lavish coverage of parliament—lengthy debates on Bills, the introduction of new regulations and ministerial statements on land, agriculture, mining, roads, education, disease and justice—was compulsive reading for settlers and convicts, and many people became literate and informed citizens by reading the spirited parliamentary news. On a proportional basis, the circulation of Australian newspapers was much higher than any of the London papers. Several of the nation’s early MPs, some future prime ministers and premiers, including (Sir) Henry Parkes, (Sir) Graham Berry, Andrew Fisher and W.A. Holman, had owned newspapers or worked as journalists, sometimes covering colonial and state politics. In 1895, the Speaker of the NSW Parliament, Sir Joseph Abbott, was informed by letter that a meeting of parliamentary reporters on 20 August had voted unanimously to form themselves into a committee for ‘the proper representation and safeguarding of the interests of the representatives of the press engaged in the NSW Parliamentary Gallery’. Mr D. Murray of the Sydney Morning Herald was elected chairman and Captain J.W. Niesigh of the Evening News was the founding secretary. The new body submitted a code of rules that guaranteed only parliamentary reporters would be accredited to the press gallery and tickets of admission would be issued by the Speaker on the recommendation of the gallery committee. The Speaker of the South Australian House of Assembly, Sir Jenkin Coles, reported in 1895 that he controlled the press gallery without written rules and by an arrangement of self-regulation, while the Speaker of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, (Sir) Alfred Sandlings Cowley, provided accommodation for 11 reporters—six passes allocated to three dailies and the others shared by bi-weeklies and weeklies. In the same year, the Victorian Legislative Assembly provided reporting facilities for one Melbourne afternoon newspaper and two morning papers, the Country Press Cooperative Company Limited, and provincial papers. In the first half of the 20th century, the prestige of state parliaments began to wane as the federal parliament took centre stage in the life of the nation, as a direct result of Australia’s involvement in two World Wars and the intervening Great Depression. State MPs resented

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press in australia’s external territories the loss of their parliamentary pre-eminence and made frequent attacks on the paucity of coverage. This led to tension between the legislators and the gallery, but never open warfare. The advent of radio and then television broke the newspaper industry’s exclusivity in the press galleries around the nation, and some MPs welcomed electronic broadcasting media as a way of delivering parliamentary proceedings ‘live’, unedited and direct to the public. It wasn’t to be, though: experimental broadcasts simply didn’t interest the general public. There was one significant breakthrough: in 1968, Helen O’Flynn of the Sydney Daily Mirror became the first female member of any gallery in Australia. By the end of the 20th century, membership of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery far outnumbered state political correspondents, and also commanded greater prestige within the profession. The media no longer covered debates in state parliaments, and only offered sketch pieces on rare occasions. State premiers, including Jeff Kennett (Victoria), Brian Burke (Western Australia), Neville Wran (New South Wales) and Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen (Queensland), built media departments comprising ex-political journalists who, according to Sir Joh’s famous phrase, ‘fed the chooks’ with stories. It meant that coverage was debased by the introduction of spin, which was rained on gallery reporters from several sources—the premier’s office, ministerial staff, departmental spin doctors and powerful vested interests. Royal commissions in Queensland (1987–89) and Western Australia (1990–92) found endemic corruption at the heart of government, bringing the tier of state government into further disrepute. The relationship between politicians, vested lobbying interests and state political correspondents became such a public scandal that the Commissioner of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, David Ipp QC, remarked in 2010: ‘A widespread perception of corruption in the government decision-making process has the capacity to adversely affect the proper working of our system of democracy’. In September 2011, there was excitement when ‘Macquarie Street Observer’ tweeted on the internal machinations of the NSW press gallery. During the federal election in August 2013, members of the Victorian press gallery were forced out of their offices, which occupied the same building as the Coalition’s national campaign headquarters—apparently due to concerns about leaks. Later that year, during a Victorian political crisis, the embattled Speaker of the Victorian Parliament banned the media from knocking on MPs’ doors and walking the corridors near their offices. In recent years, the live proceedings of some state parliaments have been broadcast over the internet. At their inception, press galleries in state parliaments had filled a vital public watchdog role. By the beginning of the 21st century, they

had evolved into lapdogs under the pressure of concentrated media ownership as well as coercive political and commercial lobbying. It appeared that state reporters—even those striving for independence—were trapped in a system of embedded journalism and arcane media communications technology, and the public interest suffered as a result. State galleries, with exclusive membership and exclusive insider access, appeared to have outlived their existence. REF: C.J. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist (1985). ALEX MITCHELL

P R ESS IN AU STR ALIA’ S EXTER N AL TER R ITO R IES Australia’s external territories consist of islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Australian Antarctic Territory. Until 1975, they also included Papua New Guinea (PNG). This entry provides a sketch of the Australian media in PNG until 1975 and a survey of the current situation in Australia’s external territories. Apart from Fiji, PNG was the only Pacific Island territory in the British empire where expatriate entrepreneurs established commercial newspapers. It was only comparatively late in the period of Australian administration that a major Australian publisher became involved, with the Herald and Weekly Times’ acquisition of the South Pacific Post in 1965. Its successor, the Post-Courier, was acquired when News Limited took over the Herald and Weekly Times in 1987. The company retains a majority 62 per cent shareholding through News Corp Australia. The first publications to disseminate news in PNG were newsletters printed by Christian missionaries. The first mission news publication was Jaeng Ngajam (1907–63), in the Jabem language; it was printed by the Lutheran Neuendettelsau Mission. Other Tok Ples publications included the Methodist mission’s Kuanua A Nilai Ra Davot, which first appeared in 1909. The first commercial paper was the Papuan Times and Tropical Advertiser, set up in Port Moresby in 1910 by former government printer E.G. Baker. It closed in 1917. With a potential audience of only 1000 Europeans in the whole of Papua, its circulation was never more than 200. The weekly Papuan Courier appeared in 1918 under the editorship of E.A. James. It was shut down by the Australian Army in January 1942 after it criticised the activities of Australian troops in the town; the press was subsequently taken over by the army and used to produce its wartime newspaper, Guinea Gold. After Australia captured German New Guinea in 1914, the Rabaul Record (1915–18), a garrison news sheet containing overseas news, appeared. The first editor of the Rabaul Times (1925–42) was Gordon Thomas, who had originally gone to Rabaul to work as a printer for the Methodist press, but was expelled from the

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press in australia’s external territories mission after allegations of sexual misconduct. He was one of the few expatriates to survive the Japanese occupation. The first post-war newspaper in the then Territory of Papua and New Guinea was the tri-weekly South Pacific Post (1950–69), based in Port Moresby and distributed nationally. In the second half of the 1950s, two newspapers appeared in Lae and Rabaul: the New Guinea Courier and a re-launched Rabaul Times. The Times was owned by the management of the Lae-based New Guinea Courier and was edited by Angus ‘Gus’ Smales. It was published every Friday from 1957. The Times was of the same standard as a good Australian provincial newspaper. The New Guinea Courier was also established in 1957. It was published every Wednesday and available for an annual subscription of 3 pounds and 5 shillings. The Courier later contained a Tok Pisin supplement, Nugini Toktok (1962–70), the first attempt by a commercial newspaper to reach an indigenous audience. Toktok was edited by Muttu Gware, the first indigenous editor of a commercial newspaper in PNG. In 1959, the Rabaul Times closed and was absorbed by its parent company, which then produced a joint publication, the New Guinea Times-Courier (1959–69), under the editorship of John Blair. The Territory’s first daily newspaper, the Post-Courier, a merger of the South Pacific Post and the New Guinea Times-Courier, was launched on 30 June 1969. The Post-Courier had a circulation of 15,000 for a population of 2.5 million. At the time of the merger, the paper’s managing editor was the Walkley Award-winning journalist Douglas Lockwood, previously in charge of the Northern Territory News in Darwin. The Australian Administration established a number of publications aimed at indigenous audiences. The government anthropologist, F.E. Williams, set up the Papuan Villager in 1929 and in the following decades—especially after the post-1945 return—the Administration produced a range of publications and other material distributed through the PNG Department of Information and Extension Services. The Administration also established local radio stations, which broadcast in Tok Pisin, Motu or Tok Ples. Each district headquarters produced its own materials, which carried agricultural information, news about government programs, details of changes in laws and regulations, and general information, using Police Motu and/or the local variant of Tok Pisin. The ABC established a national service broadcasting on medium- and short-wave, using the call sign 9PA. The ABC was aimed largely at the expatriate population, although it also broadcast didiman (agricultural) programs and local school programs, provided a news bulletin in simple English, and broadcast local music

and legends. Responsibility for broadcasting was taken over by the National Broadcasting Commission as Independence approached. There was no television broadcasting in PNG during the Australian period, although anecdotal evidence indicates that it was possible to receive broadcasts from outside PNG. While the mainstream media was in English, most literate indigenous people used Tok Pisin. Apart from the aforementioned Nugini Toktok, the Administration published a bilingual newsletter, Our News/Nius Bilong Yumi, from 1959. It continued after Independence until 1982. Nugini Toktok was closed when the New Guinea Times-Courier was merged with the South Pacific Post, but its place was taken by Wantok (1970– ), a Tok Pisin weekly first produced in Wewak by the Catholic Divine Word Mission, but later owned jointly by all the mainstream churches. Wantok was brought to life by the American Tok Pisin expert Father Frank Mihalic, with the support of Bishop Leo Arkfeld. In its early days, Wantok drew on the help of experienced expatriates like Ray and Fran Goodey and contributors like former ABC journalist John Ryan, who had established the independent New Guinea News Service in 1970. Wantok developed a skilled cadre of local staff and played a vital role in educating people about the political changes that were occurring in the run-up to self-government and Independence. *** On Norfolk Island, the weekly Norfolk Islander (1965– ) was begun by Tom and Tim Lloyd, and sold to the Snell family in 2005. The Islander contains the Norfolk Island Government Gazette. Broadcast media include the government-owned Radio Norfolk, which evolved over many years out of radio broadcasts that started during World War II. A privately owned television station, TVNI, was established in 2010. The online Norfolk Island Newsletter was begun as a private venture linked to the tourist publication, the Norfolk Window to the World. As with all of Australia’s Pacific and Indian Ocean territories, Norfolk Island is also served by the re-transmission of ABC and commercial radio broadcasts from the mainland. Local media on Lord Howe Island, an unincorporated territory of New South Wales, include a community radio station, Radio Lord Howe. In its current form, Radio Lord Howe FM started transmitting in 1988, but broadcasting on the island can be traced back to the 1970s. The island is also served by a fortnightly newspaper, the Lord Howe Island Signal (1955– ), which has been owned and published by Lord Howe Island board member Barney Nichols since 2006. The Signal has been described as ‘an entertaining mix of Island news, politics and gossip’. Christmas Island is served by a fortnightly newsletter, the Islander, which is produced by the

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press, australian capital territory shire council. It began as the Christmas Island Newsletter in April 1992, and first appeared under its current name on 4 November 1994. The colour A4 publication sells for $2. The island receives television broadcasts from Western Australia, and the local community radio station, 6RCI, broadcasts in English, Malay and Chinese. Local media on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands consist of a local community radio station and a newsletter, the Atoll, which is produced by the shire administration in collaboration with the Cocos Islands Community Resource Centre. Radio 6CKI provides some local content, and is run by volunteers. Television channels from Western Australia are re-broadcast from a local transmitter. The first newspaper published in the Australian Antarctic Territory appears to have been the Adelie Blizzard, of which five issues appeared at the main Australasian Antarctic Expedition base in the winter of 1913. According to Elizabeth Leane, all the stations operated by the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition produced newspapers, each of which lasted for a few years. Among these were Hardships: The Macquarie Island Paper (1957–60), Windmill (Wilkes Station, 1960), Antarctic News and Rumdoodle Exposés (renamed Katabatic, Mawson, 1960–61), Midnight Sun (Davis, 1963) and the Antarctic Waste, incorporating Drift Magazine (Casey, 1970). Today, Australia’s Antarctic stations—Casey, Davis, Macquarie Island and Mawson—produce regular online news bulletins—referred to collectively as Icy News—through the Australian Antarctic Division’s website. These contain accounts and photographs of the work carried out by the Antarctic research and support teams. REFs: P. Cass, ‘The Apostolate of the Press: Missionary Language Policy, and Publication in German New Guinea’ (MA thesis, 1997) and ‘People, Politics and Press in Papua New Guinea 1950–1975’ (PhD thesis, 2008); E. Leane, ‘The Polar Press: A Century of Australian Antarctic Newspapers’ (2011). PHILIP CASS

P R E S S , A US TRAL I A N CAPITAL TERRITORY When Canberra was officially named the national capital on 12  March 1913, the major paper in the region was the Queanbeyan Age, begun in 1860 by John Gale as the Golden Age and run by his descendants. Gale’s advocacy of the Canberra site earned him the title ‘the father of Canberra’. Two minor newspapers appeared in the 1920s. The Federal Capital Pioneer, a modest four-page monthly, began on 3 December 1924, published by district pioneer Alexander K. Murray and printed at the Queanbeyan Age. Described as the official organ of the Australian Federal Capital League, it placed strong emphasis on the history of the Canberra district. It ceased publication in August 1926.

The first issue of Canberra Community News, a 16-page monthly, appeared on 14 October 1925 as the publicity organ of the Federal Capital Commission. The paper’s aim was to sustain the morale of the workers who had come to Canberra to build the national capital in line with the views of the Commission’s Chair, Sir John Butters, who placed great emphasis on developing community spirit. Under the masthead it listed ‘honorary reporters’ for each of the sporting clubs and progress associations in the tent cities and temporary workers’ settlements scattered around Canberra. It continued until 15 December 1927, when the Commission withdrew financial support. As Canberra began to take shape, regional newspaper publisher Thomas Mitchell Shakespeare began publishing the Canberra Times with the help of his sons. The paper became bi-weekly on 3 May 1927, and in its first issue as a daily on 28 February 1928 carried the statement that became associated with the paper: ‘To serve the National City and through it the Nation’. The Great Depression resulted in a halt to the development of Canberra, making a daily newspaper unviable. This situation continued until 1936, when the Canberra Times saw revenue and expenditure balanced for the first time. World War II presented further difficulties, with staff enlistments and labour shortages. When the Canberra Times celebrated its silver jubilee on 3 September 1951, the Shakespeare family still maintained total control. An editor from outside the family, Charles Meeking, was appointed the following year. On 11 June 1956, the paper changed to a tabloid format. From its rocky early years the paper’s misprints, attributed to its notorious printers’ ‘gremlin’, became part of Canberra lore looked forward to by eagle-eyed readers. The gremlin could transfer ‘old buffers’ in copy to ‘old buggers’ in print and ‘recently married’ to ‘decently married’. Competition appeared from an unlikely source on 16 February 1961, when Kenneth Edward (Ken) Cowley began a weekly free paper, the Territorial, in a backyard shed. The paper was welcomed by advertisers tired of Shakespeare’s monopoly. Canberra businessman and developer J.H. Pead provided financial backing, and the paper expanded to a lively 32 pages and became a paid publication. In 1963, Cowley tried to interest Rupert Murdoch in a joint venture but Murdoch had more expansive plans. The following year, Cowley sold to Murdoch, with the last issue of the Territorial appearing on 21 May 1964. When Murdoch’s Australian began in Canberra in July, Cowley was production manager. When Shakespeare became aware of Murdoch’s plan to start the Australian, he sold out to John Fairfax & Sons Ltd. Within a month of the change of ownership on 1 May 1964, the new editor, J.D. Pringle—formerly editor of the Sydney Morning Herald—had transformed

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press, new south wales the paper from a tabloid into broadsheet with greatly improved news coverage. The first issue of the Australian appeared on 15 July 1964, with plates being flown to Sydney and Melbourne to print the national edition. From 17 August 1964 a separate tabloid Canberra and Southern edition was distributed in the region enclosed with the national edition but it made no headway against the reinvigorated Canberra Times. Murdoch, who had expected ‘to crush a weak and poorly produced provincial paper’, found he had ‘to compete with a quality daily, backed by a major rival’. The Canberra edition of the Australian was abandoned on 19 June 1965, and from 18 March 1967 production of the national edition moved to Sydney. The Canberra Times began an afternoon newspaper, the Canberra News, on 12 November 1969, but the paper made significant losses and ceased publication on 19 July 1974. A Sunday edition of the Canberra Times began in 1978 and continues under the title Sunday Canberra Times. After just over 60 years at Mort Street, Braddon, the Canberra Times moved its headquarters to a new complex in the industrial suburb of Fyshwick on 24 April 1987. In September 1987, in the break-up of the John Fairfax Group following Warwick Fairfax Junior’s failed attempt to privatise the company, Kerry Packer acquired the Canberra Times, soon selling it to Kerry Stokes. In September 1998, regional newspaper publisher Rural Press Ltd acquired the Canberra Times from Kerry Stokes. In 2004, when Rural Press sacked some of the Canberra Times’ senior journalists, the paper was accused of narrowing its focus and abandoning any ambition to ‘national greatness’. Tension between commercial considerations and quality reporting—sometimes enhanced by the availability in the national capital of senior academics and retired bureaucrats to contribute opinion pieces and reviews—has surfaced during several phases of the paper’s existence. In 2007, Rural Press Ltd merged with Fairfax Media and the paper remains in the Fairfax group. Although the only daily in the city, the Canberra Times continues to face competition from Sydney and Melbourne newspapers. REFs: Canberra Times anniversary supplements, 20 September 1976 and 3 September 2001; J. Gibbney, Canberra 1913–1953 (1988). PATRICIA CLARKE

P R E S S , E TH N I C see ethnic press

PRE S S , NE W S OUTH WALES The first newspaper in New South Wales grew out of the need to circulate official orders in the penal colony. The first step was to publish in late 1802 the standing orders of Governors Phillip, Hunter

and King in book form. George Howe—the second government printer, who was a ticketof-leave convict—produced the book. The first government printer (1795–1802), George Hughes, also a convict, printed more than 800 orders and notices, several broadsides and a few playbills, some of which were incorporated in the 136-page book that Howe produced. Governor Philip Gidley King can probably take as much credit as Howe for the idea of a newspaper, which materialised as the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on 5 March 1803. Howe had to suspend publication twice, for six weeks in 1807 because of a lack of paper, and eight months in 1808–09 largely during the military overthrow of Governor William Bligh in what has been loosely termed the Rum Rebellion. The never-ending difficulty of obtaining paper, in whatever size, shape or colour, led Howe to reflect on a publication ‘conceived in doubt, brought forth in difficulty, and reared in many an altered shape’. From 1811, under Governor Lachlan Macquarie, he received £60 a year as government printer. When Howe died in 1821, his 26-year-old son, Robert, took over the newspaper and succeeded his father as government printer. In September 1824, Governor Thomas Brisbane ruled that the ‘by authority’ regime in newspapers should end, opening the way for two barristers to launch the first ‘unshackled’ newspaper in Australia. When William Charles Wentworth and Robert Wardell started the Australian in Sydney on 14 October 1824, Governor Brisbane did not intervene. The next day, Robert Howe obtained the Governor’s permission to publish his Gazette and ownership of the copyright. The Australian exhibited the spirit of reform that Wentworth had noted during a visit to England. Even more outspoken against the government was the Monitor, first published in Sydney on 19 May 1826 by editor and part-proprietor Edward Smith Hall, a belligerent advocate of working men’s rights. Seeking to silence Hall, Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling passed through the Legislative Council in January 1830 a new press law making it mandatory for the court to banish any person convicted a second time of seditious libel. Hall resumed writing only on learning the British Parliament had disallowed Darling’s Act. Darling was recalled to Britain in late 1831. On 18 April that year, the Sydney Herald was launched as a weekly, appearing daily from 1 October 1840 and becoming the Sydney Morning Herald on 1 August 1842. It is still published under that title. The founding proprietors, Alfred Ward Stephens, Frederick Michael Stokes and William McGarvie, had met while employed by the Sydney Gazette. McGarvie sold his share in the Herald to Stephens and Stokes after the fifth issue. The circulation of the paper rose to 750

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press, new south wales in the first month and 1100 in the first year. By 1836, each issue of the Herald was selling 1600 copies—far more than any competitor. In 1850 the Herald was the only Sydney daily. But (Sir) Henry Parkes, later to be premier, started the Empire, with the backing of various wealthy men, on 28 December 1850 as a weekly, and issued it daily three weeks later. In 1854, the Empire first made a small profit, but even then Parkes did not manage to make it a solid business. He lost possession of it in August 1858 after being declared insolvent; Samuel Bennett, formerly a Herald printer and overseer, revived it in May 1859. Bennett launched the Evening News on 29 July 1867. He printed 2000 copies of the first issue, but by December 1867 its circulation was 8000. On 1 January 1868, the Empire became a penny daily, but under Bennett it was largely a scaled-down version of its former self. The Evening News outshone the Empire, so when the Empire’s compositors gave notice of a strike, Bennett closed the paper on 9 February 1875 and incorporated it in the Evening News. At the Herald, John Fairfax used his new six-cylinder Hoe rotary press to publish a weekly, the Sydney Mail, from July 1860. With a cover price of threepence, the Mail was a cheap, condensed version of the preceding six issues of the Herald. Its target audience was country people who received mail deliveries only once or twice a week. Sydney working men who could ill afford a quarterly subscription to the Herald or Empire also bought it. Sales of the Mail reached 5000 within six months and 10,000 within four years. Competition in January 1870 from Bennett’s Australian Town and Country Journal caused the Mail to modernise, adopting the smaller page size of its rival and introducing small illustrations; it also issued a monthly supplement with a large lithograph of a colonial townscape or landscape. The Mail and the Journal reflected much of the best of illustrated journalism in the 19th century. The Daily Telegraph, launched on 1 July 1879, initially struggled before a restructure brought new hope. Projector and founding editor J.M. Lynch quit in March 1882. New manager Watkin Wynne reconstructed the shareholding and senior staff of the company, building the editorial platform on which the Telegraph’s success would be based. He installed as editor Frederick William Ward, a former Wesleyan minister who had edited the Echo from 1879 to 1884 for the Fairfax family. The Telegraph treated news as, in Henry Mayer’s words, ‘something bright, light and entertaining’. Circulation jumped, overtaking the Herald by 1890, advertising revenue swelled and the mechanical department soon needed bigger premises. The Sydney market for afternoon newspapers became the scene of constantly changing competition from the mid-1880s. In 1884, the Evening News claimed a circulation more than double

its nearest competitor, and in 1888 a circulation four times that of any other daily. W.H.L. Bailey started the afternoon Globe in November 1885. By early 1886, the Globe claimed to be the largest afternoon paper in Australia, but it ceased publication in June 1887. Within six months, the Australian Star began, with W.H. Traill as editor and many workers as shareholders. The Star supported the protectionist cause, whereas the other four Sydney dailies supported free trade. By 1890, two morning and three evening dailies existed in Sydney. Except for the twopenny Herald, each of the dailies sold for one penny. The Echo disappeared in 1893 when the Herald reduced its price to one penny, and the Australian Star was remodelled and re-launched as the Sun in 1910. Reading Sunday newspapers became an established habit in the 1880s. The day before Bailey launched the daily Globe, he launched the Sunday Times (15 November 1885)—only the second designated Sunday paper in Sydney. The first, also the Sunday Times, survived only a few weeks in mid-1849. The second lasted until 1930 and Bailey, who was its proprietor for only a few months, launched the short-lived Sunday News in 1886. Truth, launched in 1890, became a profitable, sensational Sunday paper under John Norton’s ownership (1896–1916) and continued until 1995. The first Australian-born editor of the Herald was Thomas William Heney, who joined the Herald in 1878, becoming associate editor (1898–1903) and editor (1903–18). The Herald had a calm style, a reasoned approach and admirable news coverage. It tried hard to avoid sectarianism, then a powerful undercurrent in colonial society. In one way, the Herald abandoned the conservative commitment to old political forms and sponsored a radical change: Federation of the colonies. A distinctive press development began on 31 January 1880, when John Haynes and J.F.  Archibald started the weekly Bulletin. It carried an eclectic mix of news, cutting and sometimes humorous comment, social jottings and literary items. Intended to be a clever and humorous weekly with a Catholic flavour, the Bulletin was significant not because it started but because it survived. In its first full month, it sold around 4000 copies each issue, 10,000 in June and 16,000 in October. Its size jumped from eight to 12 and then 16 pages. Although sympathetic to Labor, it always remained independent of formal attachment to any party. It expressed a vociferous Australian nationalism, Anglophobia and republicanism. It was also blatantly racist. Suburban newspapers serving Sydney have been published, generally weekly, since the final decades of the 19th century, but the competition became fierce only when the heavyweights— Fairfax, Packer and Murdoch—clashed at the beginning of the 1960s. By the end of the 1980s, it was Murdoch (Cumberland Newspapers)

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press, new south wales versus Fairfax (Fairfax Community Newspapers) and the Hannan family (Eastern Suburbs Newspapers). Hannan sold to Murdoch in 2007, with the Cumberland-Courier newspaper group becoming NewsLocal in 2011. A labour press interpreting the world from the working man’s perspective sprang up across Australia in the 1880s and 1890s. Among the significant early labour newspapers were the Australian Worker (Sydney, 1891) and papers in provincial centres, such as Grenfell and Grafton. The Australian Worker, which started as the Hummer in Wagga Wagga, was soon rechristened the Worker and shifted to Sydney in 1893. It absorbed the Australian Workman in 1897 and became the Australian Worker in 1913. The talent of some of its contributors and staff members lifted it above virtually all other labour papers. Direct Action, a radical paper representing the Industrial Workers of the World in Australia, appeared in Sydney in January 1914 and was famous during World War I for whipping up opposition to two plebiscites on conscription. Both were defeated. A Labor daily—initiated as the Daily Mail (1922–24) and continued as the Labor Daily (1922–38) and the Daily News (1938–40)—was incorporated into the Daily Telegraph from 27 July 1940. Newspapers serving farming interests have been published since the 1880s, with the Sydney Stock & Station Journal (1888–1924) leading to Country Life and Stock & Station Journal (1924–78) and National Country Life (1978–79). The Farmer & Settler (1906–57) and the Land (1911– ) have been other major publications. The Land was the foundation stone for the Rural Press Limited empire. The ethnic press in Sydney dates back to the 19th century, with titles such as the Jewish Voice of Jacob (1842) and the Italian L’Italo-Australiano (1885). After World War II, when Australia experienced an unprecedented increase in the number of non-English-speaking settlers, New South Wales also experienced a significant growth in the ethnic press, for Europeans (especially Italians) in the 1950s and 1960s and for settlers from Asian and Middle Eastern regions from the mid-1970s and into the 1980s. In March 1919, within months of war’s end, Sir James Joynton Smith financed the launch of a cheeky weekly magazine by Robert Clyde Packer and Claude Mackay. Smith’s Weekly came, in the words of its historian George Blaikie, ‘jazzing from the inky womb of the press, roaring full toot, doing back flips to make people laugh, and offering to fight any many in the House, State, World, or Universe’. After initial losses, it turned the corner in 1921. By August 1922, sales had reached 145,000, of which 88,000 were in New South Wales. The most obvious quality of Smith’s Weekly was its splendid artwork—its illustrators were said to be the most highly paid in the world. Soon

Joynton Smith considered issuing a daily, and arranged for a cable service from the Manchester Guardian. Sydney’s Daily Guardian, which began on 2 July 1923, offered free insurance for readers, shopping competitions for housewives and the Miss Australia contest for maidens. The first photographic images in the Sydney Morning Herald appeared on 21 August 1908 to illustrate the arrival in Sydney of the visiting US Navy’s Great White Fleet. The photographic images used in the early years were mainly small portraits of people in the news. In 1924, the Daily Telegraph replaced advertisements on its front page with news, but the Herald did not follow suit until 15 April 1944. The Daily Telegraph struggled and changed in the 1920s and 1930s. It modernised itself in 1924 and made greater use of illustrations, no longer looking like a clone of the Herald. In 1927, it transformed itself into the new type of bright, breezy tabloid pioneered in Australia by the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial. It successively became the Daily Telegraph News Pictorial, the Daily Telegraph Pictorial and then simply the Daily Pictorial as it went increasingly downmarket. Under new ownership in 1931, it repositioned itself in the mid-market, again becoming the Daily Telegraph. By early 1931, Sun Newspapers Ltd had acquired most Sydney newspapers through amalgamating with S. Bennett Ltd to become Associated Newspapers Ltd, and also by buying the Daily and Sunday Guardians. Associated Newspapers closed the Sunday News (January 1930), Daily Guardian (February 1931), Evening News (March 1931) and Sunday Guardian (September 1931). This left Associated with one morning title (the Daily Telegraph), one afternoon title (the Sun) and two Sunday papers (the Sunday Sun and the Sunday Pictorial). (Sir) Frank Packer acquired control of the Daily Telegraph in 1936 and made it distinctively his own for 36 years. Between 1931 and 1941, the Sun had no afternoon competitor. But Ezra Norton, publisher of Truth & Sportsman Ltd, controversially launched the Daily Mirror on 12 May 1941 after several changes of heart by the government because of wartime newsprint rationing. The Sun’s circulation fell from 229,102 in March 1941 to 189,874 a year later. In 1958, John Fairfax & Sons, which had gradually taken a controlling interest in Associated Newspapers in the first half of the 1950s, bought the Mirror through a shelf company, O’Connell Pty Ltd. Fairfax did not divulge that it was publishing both Sydney afternoon newspapers. Amazingly, it did not incorporate the Mirror in the Sun. In May 1960, Fairfax managing director R.A.G. Henderson arranged the sale of the Mirror to Rupert Murdoch without finally consulting chairman Sir Warwick Fairfax who was overseas and was opposed to the sale. Murdoch, who had bought the suburban Cumberland Newspapers

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press, northern territory group in February that year, now had a firm foothold in Sydney. John Fairfax & Sons launched the Australian Financial Review as a weekly in 1951, issuing it daily from 21 October 1963. Murdoch shifted production of his national daily, the Australian (launched in Canberra in July 1964) to Sydney in March 1967. It is now printed in six capitals and Townsville. In June 1972, Murdoch bought the mastheads and goodwill of Frank Packer’s Daily and Sunday Telegraphs for $15 million and immediately closed his own Sunday Australian. The advent of television triggered a change in newspapers. They focused more on explaining and interpreting the news rather than straight reporting. Colour television greatly increased the pressure on newspapers to provide colour advertisements. To this end, web offset presses were adopted by Sydney’s dailies in the 1980s. In 1987, three events threw NSW newspapers into upheaval: the Murdoch takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) (February); the disastrous privatisation of the John Fairfax Group by Warwick Fairfax Junior (August) seven months after the death of his father, Sir Warwick; and the stockmarket crash (October). The crash accentuated the ineptitude of the Fairfax privatisation, which ended in receivership in December 1990. Meanwhile, in March 1988, Fairfax closed the weekly Times on Sunday (formerly the National Times, est. 1971) and the Sun on successive days. Two chains of country newspapers formerly owned by the Packer family and briefly by the HWT—Regional Publishers Pty Ltd and Western Newspapers Ltd—were divided respectively between Rural Press and Macquarie Publications Pty Ltd. John B. Fairfax, who had sold his stake in the Fairfax group, took a 51 per cent shareholding of Rural Press and soon became the chairman of the group, which expanded greatly over the next two decades before merging with Fairfax Media in 2007. Two north coast regional dailies, serving the Tweed and Coffs Harbour regions, became non-dailies in December 2011. Murdoch closed the Daily Mirror in October 1990, incorporating it in the Daily Telegraph to form a 24-hour paper. Both News Limited (April 1994) and Fairfax (early 1996) shifted their newspaper production plants from the Sydney CBD to outer suburban Chullora. Fairfax closed its Chullora site in mid-2014 and shifted the bulk of its printing to North Richmond. A Sydney version of mX, the free commuter daily launched in Melbourne in 2001, began in July 2005. News Limited and John Fairfax Holdings engaged in a full-scale newspaper war on the Central Coast from September 2002, when Fairfax launched a daily morning paper, the Central Coast Herald, to serve Gosford and Wyong. It had the backing of the Newcastle Herald. News Limited retaliated by making its free bi-weekly,

the Express Advocate, a free daily and by halving the price of its Daily Telegraph on the Central Coast and in Newcastle and the Hunter region to 50 cents and inserting a ‘Central Coast Extra’ supplement. Fairfax virtually threw in the towel nine months later and the Herald ceased publication in June 2004. REFs: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981) and Heralds and Angels (1991); R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (1976) and Yesterday’s News (1980). ROD KIRKPATRICK

P R ESS, N O R TH ER N TER R ITO RY The earliest Northern Territory newspaper was the Moonta Herald, published on board the ship that brought the South Australian Surveyor General, George Goyder, to the Territory’s capital (until 1911 called Palmerston) in 1869. The first machine-printed newspaper was the weekly Northern Territory Times and Gazette, initially published on 7 November 1873 from a government office in Darwin under the editorship of Richard Wells and owned by a consortium registered as The Northern Territory Newspaper and Telegraphic Agency Company Ltd. A new office and a printing press were later established in Mitchell Street. The paper survived until 28 June 1932, although in the late 1870s some issues were only two pages long. The many colourful characters who worked for the publication included Vaiben Solomon, who owned the paper between 1885 and 1890 and represented the Territory in the South Australian parliament. His clear and frequently dramatic editorials reflected his conservative political beliefs. Other editors included Joseph Skelton, George Mayhew, Charles Kirkland, Edward Foster and Jessie Litchfield. Litchfield overcame strong local objections to a woman being appointed when she took over in 1930. In a small and often deeply divided town, some editors were threatened with violence, and copies of the newspaper were torn up and burnt when it expressed views disliked by sections of the community. Kirkland was controversially imprisoned in 1913 after being found guilty of contempt of court for an article in which he criticised a judge. The paper closed after being purchased by the Northern Standard. Between 1883 and 1890, Mayhew and Kirkland published a rival Darwin newspaper, the North Australian. They then purchased the Northern Territory Times and Gazette from Solomon and amalgamated the two newspapers into the Northern Territory Times and Gazette, which became the Northern Territory Times in 1927. During the period in which both papers operated, they frequently published very different versions of the same events and were fierce rivals. The Northern Standard first appeared on 19 February 1921, published in Darwin with

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press, queensland trade union support and partly financed by a union levy. It was transferred to the North Australian Workers’ Union in 1928. For most of the time before World War II, its editor was Don McKinnon. The ‘Moscow Times’, as it was known, was very much the voice of the union movement, and opinions other than its own were not given prominence. An editorial in May 1946 stated that the paper ‘does not pretend, as do most organs of the free press to be neutral in the battle of life, and to present an unbiased view of current affairs’. From that year, it often supported communist positions. Prominent Darwin journalist Douglas Lockwood argued that by then it ‘still less reflected the moods of the town’, leading to ‘a lack of confidence of the townspeople’. The Northern Standard was the only Territory newspaper between 1932 and 1941, except for the brief appearance of the communist Proletarian in 1934. In October 1941, with large numbers of soldiers stationed in Darwin, the weekly Army News commenced. This may have resulted partly from the Northern Standard publishing a special issue on 2 September 1941 reporting in detail on a soldiers’ riot in Darwin that caused serious property damage. The army, however, was also concerned about the Northern Standard because of its supposed sympathy for communism. When Darwin was bombed for the first time in February 1942, the Northern Standard suspended publication until February 1946 and the Army News remained the sole Territory paper until the war finished. The Sydney public relations firm Eric White Associates started the Northern Territory News on 8 February 1952 as a weekly tabloid to counter-balance the Northern Standard, which it forced out of business in 1955. Initial efforts by the federal government to counter the Standard’s influence had been shelved in 1942, and revived in 1949. News Limited purchased the Northern Territory News in 1964, building it up to six days a week by 1979. Especially under the editorship (1955–73) of the flamboyant Jim Bowditch, the paper was politically active and, in spite of its origins, on occasions quite radical. It advocated greater self-governance powers for the Northern Territory and supported the Gurindji people’s land claims following their walk-off from Wave Hill Station in 1966. On 7 October 1984, News Limited began publication of the Sunday Territorian. After the early 1970s, various smaller newspapers—such as the weekly Darwin Star—attempted to challenge the dominance of the Northern Territory News but with little success. Between 1992 and 2005, the Northern Territory University/Charles Darwin University Student Union in Darwin published the monthly the Big Spit and Delirra. In July 1946, the Territory’s second largest town, Alice Springs, acquired its first newspaper, the Dead Heart? Ten months later, on 24 May 1947, it was replaced by the twice-weekly

Centralian Advocate, owned by the well-known local businessman C.H. ‘Pop’ Chapman, with Walter Allan as its short-lived first editor. Jim Bowditch was editor between 1950 and 1954, using the paper to fight for the right of Aboriginal people with white heritage to receive full citizenship. During the 1950s, the Centralian Advocate experienced frequent ownership changes and numerous production issues. News Limited took over the Centralian Advocate in 1966, providing access to much more capital than had been available previously. The paper showed little concern with the wider world, maintaining a strong local focus and not being afraid on occasions to criticise the Alice Springs Town Council or significant commercial interests. In September 1968, it attacked the local tourist industry, saying that tourist accommodation in Alice Springs was generally poor and service standards were abysmal. The Alice Springs Times, which claimed to ‘carry the torch for northern development’, had a brief existence between September 1965 and August 1966. The weekly Alice Springs News—which is still being published—began in March 1994, but with a considerably smaller circulation than the Centralian Advocate. In the post-World War II period, the Territory’s smaller towns also acquired newspapers as their populations increased. These included the Tennant and District Times (Tennant Creek, est. 1978), the Alyangula Newsletter (1980–89), the Jabiru Rag (est. 1982), the Katherine Times (est. 1983), the Barkly Regional (Tennant Creek, 1985–89), the Eylandt Echo (Groote Eylandt, est. 1989), the Arafura Times (Nhulunbuy, est. 1996) and the Palmerston Sun (est. 2000). From the 1970s, the Territory also saw numerous, often transitory, ‘throw-away’ newspapers. The most important of these was the weekly Darwin Sun, which began publication in March 2000. The history of the Northern Territory press is poorly documented. Information in various secondary sources is uneven, impressionistic and sometimes contradictory. Three brief historical surveys (by Barbara James, Alan Davis and Rod Kirkpatrick), together with the Northern Territory Library’s annotated list of newspapers and magazines, all on the Library’s website, provide the only overviews. DAVID CARMENT and BARBARA JAMES

P R ESS, Q U EEN SLAN D Queensland was the last of the Australian colonies to enter the newspaper field. Early newspaper readerships were low at one for every 5000 persons, and turnover was high, with 36 per cent of new provincial enterprises launched between 1855 and 1900 closing within two years. Only five newspapers were established in the so-called northern districts of the colony of New South Wales before those districts became Queensland from 10 December 1859.

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press, queensland The first of these, the Moreton Bay Courier (est. 1846), became the most enduring Queensland newspaper. Despite departing the newspaper only 18 months after its establishment, its founding editor, Arthur Sidney Lyon, went on to become known as the ‘father of the Queensland press’, as he was editor of the first four newspapers in Queensland: the others were the Moreton Bay Free Press (1850–59, a direct competitor to the Courier), Ipswich’s North Australian (Queensland’s first printed regional newspaper, 1855–65) and the Darling Downs Gazette and General Advertiser (1858–1922). Separation from New South Wales triggered a new era of development for Queensland, and the increasing settlement of pastoral areas of the Darling Downs, and Wide Bay and Burnett, along with the development of coastal towns such as Rockhampton, Bowen, Mackay and Townsville, led to much more rapid expansion of the provincial press. In the vanguard was Maryborough, with two newspapers being established there in 1860—the Wide Bay and Burnett Times, which survived only six months, and the Maryborough Chronicle, which survives as the Fraser Coast Chronicle. In 1861, newspapers were established at Gayndah, Toowoomba and Rockhampton; in 1862, at Warwick and St Lawrence; in 1863, at Rockhampton; in 1864, at Bowen, Clermont and Warwick; and in 1865, at Rockhampton, Ipswich and Dalby. Major gold discoveries at Gympie in the late 1860s and at Charters Towers and other far northern centres in the 1870s triggered a new surge of newspaper development for those towns and nearby ports, such as Cooktown and Townsville. The Rockhampton Bulletin became Queensland’s first provincial daily in 1873. Before the end of the 19th century, daily publication was also tried— with varying success—in Ipswich, Toowoomba, Townsville, Charters Towers, Maryborough, Mackay and Cairns. In Brisbane, one paper (the Free Press) closed only weeks after separation, and another (the Queensland Guardian, 1860–68) was launched 12 months later. In May 1861, the Courier became a daily and in April 1863 the Guardian followed suit. The Courier introduced a weekly, the Queenslander, in 1866, just as a new daily, the Telegraph (est. 1872) was to introduce the Week in 1876. Early newspaper workers were almost exclusively male, and only a minority were trained journalists. Parochial and separationist sentiment characterised the large colony, in which northern coastal centres were not linked by railway to the capital until 1920. While family ownership brought local respectability to the press in agricultural districts, such as Warwick, Rockhampton and Toowoomba, a significant Irish presence on the goldfields exacerbated tensions with both the Aboriginal people and the Chinese, fomented in turn by xenophobic mining journalism. Denounced for outbursts

of ‘Yankee’ journalism, Queensland’s colonial newspapers engaged in protracted editorial confrontation, heightened by an open pages tradition that permitted anonymous correspondents to attack local officials with relative impunity. This popular brand of journalism reached its peak in the 1870s and 1880s in Charters Towers, where Thadeus O’Kane’s relentless attacks on local officialdom provoked a series of libel actions against his Northern Miner. By the 1890s, Charters Towers had become a centre for radical thought, expressed in the Republican (1890–91) and the Eagle (1893–1906), which publicised Henry George and Edward Bellamy, attacked the ‘capitalist press’ and denounced coloured immigration. With the establishment of the Boomerang (1887–92) and the Worker (1890–1974) in Brisbane, William Lane became the voice of the metropolitan labour movement during the maritime and shearers’ strikes; however, with his departure to South America in 1893 as part of an ill-fated socialist experiment, the second legend of Queensland radical journalism passed into obscurity, making way for a more conventional political press. Although the 19th century is considered the golden age of the Australian regional press, the Queensland press continued to expand into the 20th century as its economy recovered from the 1890s depression. In 1900, there were 90 regional papers, two-thirds of these weekly newspapers in smaller centres. By 1920, this figure had increased to 101, and the number of regional dailies had doubled over this 20year period. Unlike their weekly counterparts, daily newspapers in centres like Townsville, Rockhampton and Toowoomba issued regular parliamentary and court reports, with metropolitan and local correspondents providing coverage of Brisbane affairs. Until the Great Depression reduced the number of regional titles to pre-1900 levels, competition thrived in larger centres. Rockhampton, for example, still boasted six regular newspapers in the 1920s: a morning and afternoon newspaper, three weeklies and a monthly. Complementing the evolution of local newspapers from parasitic news-gatherer to community noticeboard was a long-standing tradition of weekly publication for general and country consumption. Eclectic in content and generally bulkier than their city or country competitors, newspapers like the Queenslander (1866–1939), Queensland Figaro (1883–1936), the Capricornian (1875–1929) and the North Queensland Register (1892– ) attracted rural and family readers in the hinterlands of major centres through a combination of improved distribution, faster printing presses and plentiful paper. Combining the practical tradition of colonial almanacs with the family amusement and light serial fiction of imported British publications, the extensively illustrated Queenslander attracted a wide following and featured literary

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press, queensland talent like George Essex Evans and Brunton Stephens. Queensland Figaro, launched by J. Edgar Byrne, was described by the Sydney Evening News as overflowing ‘with sparkling wit and cheery wisdom’ and being ‘fearless and outspoken but [also] clean and respectable’. The North Queensland Register, which successfully competed in North Queensland with the Queenslander and the Sydney Bulletin, tapped local demand for history and fiction, fostering creative talents like Edmund Banfield and Glenville Pike. The Register achieved healthy circulations of 10–15,000 well into the 20th century, while in Central Queensland the efforts of the Capricornian lived on through the Central Queensland Herald until 1956, long after the demise of the Queenslander, by using a distinctive combination of magazine and rural journalism that gave way to the more business-oriented approach of rural weeklies like Queensland Country Life (1935– ). Theophilus Pugh (1831–96), an early editor of the Moreton Bay Courier and a leading proponent of separation from New South Wales, published Pugh’s Queensland Almanac (1862–1927). The turn of the century witnessed a resurgence in metropolitan journalism, with the founding in Brisbane of a second morning paper, the Daily Mail, in 1903, and the labourite Daily Standard (1912–36). Charles Hardie Buzacott (1835–1918), a brilliant and forceful writer who founded the Daily Mail, had been the prime mover in a series of Wide Bay and Central Queensland papers before purchasing a share in the Courier in 1880 and becoming its managing director (1883–94). With his retirement from the Mail in 1906, the prospect of an enduring Brisbane family newspaper dynasty waned, although a second generation of Buzacotts remained active in a literary capacity on the Queenslander and with the Rockhampton Daily Record (1897–1922). By the late 19th century, Brisbane journalism entered a period of professionalisation with the foundation of the Johnsonian Club in 1878, a social institution where influential metropolitan editors mixed with literary and political figures of the day. In 1911, a Queensland Journalists’ Association was formed and Reginald Spencer Browne was the first president. He sought to pre-empt the establishment of a rival association under the influence of the trade unions; nevertheless, deep divisions surfaced within the ranks of Courier staff when, in the following year, its printers came out in support of striking Brisbane tramways workers in defiance of its editorial line. In 1921, the University of Queensland introduced a Diploma of Journalism, the first certificated tertiary journalism course in Australia. Clem Lack (1900–72) graduated from the course in 1929 and later lectured there from 1948 until 1970. He worked as the Courier’s chief of parliamentary staff in Brisbane, before

moving to the Queensland Public Relations Bureau (1948–53). One of Australia’s most enduring and important ‘little magazines’, Meanjin, was launched by journalist Clem Christesen (1911–2003) in Brisbane in 1940 and moved to Melbourne in 1945. An ethnic press emerged in Queensland in the inter-war years. L’Italiano (1930–40), which was published in Brisbane, was augmented by newspapers including the pro-fascist L’Eco d’Italia (c. 1928) in North Queensland and the anti-fascist La Ricossa (1929–31), published in Ingham and Melbourne. Australia’s second Italian mass-circulation paper was Il Corriere d’Australia (1953–61), founded by businessman Giuseppe A. Luciano. It continued the traditions of the Italo-Australaian (1922–40), which despite being published in Sydney, had a substantial circulation in North Queensland. The Hellenic Australian News (1950–52) was the only Greek newspaper in Australia published in Brisbane. In the first few decades of the 20th century, the mechanisation of typesetting, a World War and a severe depression savaged the economics of newspapers and encouraged mergers or closures. Two dailies were merged into one in Warwick, Maryborough, Toowoomba and Charters Towers between 1919 and 1922. In Brisbane, the merger of Sir Keith Murdoch’s Brisbane Courier and John Wren’s Daily Mail in August 1933 resulted in the Courier-Mail. With Murdoch’s encouragement, talented journalists such as Colin Bednall and Adrian Deamer gained experience on various Australian and Fleet Street newspapers. Deamer worked at the Courier-Mail before he became an editor elsewhere, while Bednall served as managing editor of the Courier-Mail (1944–54). The Courier-Mail’s most enduring local voice during and after the war years was (Sir) Theodor Bray, who served as editor from 1942 to 1954 and editor-in-chief of the Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail from 1954 to 1968. Bray prided himself on opening the paper’s community pages to the ‘little man in the street’, while giving right of reply to politicians. In 1955, the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), which had taken control of the Courier-Mail soon after Murdoch’s death in 1952, acquired Brisbane’s afternoon daily, the Telegraph, and combined these interests through Queensland Press Ltd in 1956. Queensland Press started to look further afield than Brisbane, acquiring the Cairns Post in 1965 and the Townsville Bulletin in 1984. It took a benign ‘protective’ interest in Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd (PNQ) in 1971, only three years after the holding company representing the newspaper interests of six long-term provincial press families had been formed. Three generations of the Dunn family had built up a significant chain of provincial newspapers since 1891, at one time publishing five dailies.

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press, south australia In 1968, the Dunn interests in Rockhampton, Toowoomba, Maryborough and Nambour were combined with the Manning family’s Mackay daily, the Irwin family’s Warwick daily and three Ipswich families’ interests in their local daily. Added to this was a significant shared interest among the families in the Bundaberg daily. By 1988, PNQ controlled nine Queensland dailies and four NSW dailies. It became an attractive takeover target for an Irish-controlled company that is now APN News and Media. When Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited took over the HWT in 1987, the nation’s crossmedia rules limited it to a very brief tenure as majority shareholder in PNQ, but allowed it to take control of Brisbane’s Quest Community Newspapers and the Gold Coast Bulletin. This meant that Murdoch was the dominant figure in metropolitan and suburban newspapers in Brisbane, and he held the reins of the three most attractive regional newspaper enterprises—in Cairns and Townsville, and on the Gold Coast. The Courier-Mail continued with a middlemarket strategy that enabled it to withstand strong competition in the 1970s and 1980s from the afternoon Telegraph (1872–1988) and the Daily Sun (1982–91), which switched from morning to afternoon publication when the Telegraph closed in 1988. REFs: D. Cryle, The Press in Colonial Queensland (1989); D. Cryle (ed.), Disreputable Profession (1997); R. Kirkpatrick, Sworn to No Master (1984); J. Manion, Paper Power in North Queensland (1982). DENIS CRYLE

P R E S S , S OUTH AUST RALIA On 18 June 1836, South Australia’s first newspaper, the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register, appeared; it was published in London by George Stevenson, formerly of the London Globe, and Robert Thomas, a London stationer. Published only in London were a handful of ‘South Australian’ newspapers—all of them promoting immigration to the newest British colony. Although several initial London issues were planned, the second issue of the Register was published one year later in Adelaide. The Register heralded the beginning of an adventure not only for its owners, but for hundreds of carefully screened immigrants destined for the experimental colony of South Australia. This was not just the first Australian colony established without convict labour; the real experiment lay in selling land to fund free immigration of worthy, industrious young families, while also attracting ‘men of capital’ to invest in the experiment. In reality, the colony quickly descended into internal bickering, with the collapse of some of the founding ideals—probably assisted by tirades in the Register. The fact that editor George Stevenson was also the governor’s private secretary saw the newspaper embroiled in the debates, and led to the establishment of

Adelaide’s second newspaper, the Southern Australian. This rival collapsed in 1851 due to its unpopular support of state aid to religion, a troubled relationship with Governor Lieutenant-Colonel George Gawler and the economic downturn caused in South Australia by the exodus of labourers to the Victorian gold rush. The pattern of 19th-century newspaper proliferation was already well established. Within its first decade, Adelaide had 19 newspapers, peaking at 27 titles in the 1870s. This does not include country newspapers, which began to blossom from the 1860s. The country press began in 1839 with George Dehane’s Port Lincoln Herald. Showing great enterprise, Dehane sailed to the sea-port town, several hundred miles from Adelaide. But his newspaper appears to have lasted for just seven issues. In 1843, John Stephens produced the Adelaide Observer, which survived until its then parent Register was subsumed into the Advertiser in 1931. Stephens employed John Dickins to walk through the infant farming districts spreading out from the city to gauge demand for a newspaper aimed at country readership. The response was apparently overwhelming. Next came the German-language Die Deutsche Post (1848–51), intended to cater for South Australia’s large Lutheran community, many of whom did not read English; it soon moved from Adelaide the Barossa Valley. Die Deutsche Post went through various incarnations. By 1863, there were two rival German-language titles, the Süd Australische Zeitung (1859–1974) and the Tanunda Deutsche Zeitung (1863–69). The former represented the views of the urban, mostly well-to-do Germans, while the Tanunda-based title appealed to the larger Barossa Valley farming community. Apart from the large German community and its newspaper, there was no ongoing country press in South Australia until the irascible and argumentative George Allen established the Northern Star at Kapunda in 1860. The paper ceased in 1863 when Allen’s outspoken reporting landed him in prison for libel. Meanwhile, the Laurie brothers and their widowed mother had crossed the border from Portland, Victoria, to establish the Border Watch at Mount Gambier, in the far south east of South Australia, in 1861. This is the state’s oldest country newspaper, still appearing four times a week. It was closely followed by a rash of far-flung country titles: the Bunyip (Gawler, 1863– ), the Southern Argus (Strathalbyn, 1866– ) and the Northern Argus (Clare, 1869– ). The spread of a country press naturally followed the spread of agriculture. The 1870s saw a further population spread north and westward, with attendant newspapers published at such places as Jamestown, Burra and Port Augusta. In the 1880s, there was movement eastwards to Peterborough and Terowie with the expansion

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press, south australia of railway networks, and finally into the Riverland, beginning with the Renmark Pioneer (est. 1892), known as the Murray Pioneer since 1942. Only two country newspapers have ever been published daily—the short-lived Kapunda Evening News (1873) and the long-running Port Pirie Recorder (1898–1971), which from 1914 to 1941 appeared six days a week. Since 1904, the Stock Journal has provided farmers with agricultural reading. In 1914, on the eve of World War I, George Nicolaides founded the Greek-language ethnic press in Adelaide with Oceanis. He moved the newspaper to Sydney the following year, but it soon collapsed. Apart from the short-lived Deltion Pharoy (1935–36), there were no further Greek-language newspapers in South Australia until the late 1960s when two appeared, Tachydromos (1968–92) and Nea Estia (1969–70). In the 19th century, journalists relied heavily on the arrival of ships from interstate and overseas for their news. On 20 March 1844, the editor of the Register lamented: ‘We are now nearly six months without any direct news from England, and nearly two without anything of importance from the neighbouring colonies.’ Reporters waited at the port for ships to come in, cultivating the pilots to be first on board newly arriving vessels. However, things began to change from May 1858, when the Adelaide– Melbourne telegraph line was opened. Printer David Gall took advantage of the success of the innovation to establish Adelaide’s first afternoon newspaper, appropriately named the Telegraph (1862–65). But newspaper reporting changed forever on 15 November 1872, with the completion of the Overland Telegraph Line. The work of building the line from Adelaide to Darwin was completed in just 18 months, with a submarine cable to Java completing the connection direct to London. Newspapers of the other capitals based reporters in Adelaide to speed the relaying of news. During the 1850s gold rushes, all papers but the Register, the Adelaide Observer (which had become a subsidiary of the Register) and the Adelaide Times closed. The closure of the Adelaide Times in 1858 resulted in the founding of the Adelaide Advertiser by a disgruntled former Register leader-writer, Rev. John Henry Barrow. The Advertiser was founded jointly with a weekly news summary, the South Australian Weekly Chronicle, to compete with the Register’s earlier takeover of the Adelaide Observer. Both newspapers had afternoon tabloids—the Register ran the Evening Journal (1869–1912) and the Advertiser published the Express and Telegraph (1863–1923). The comic papers relished the jockeying of the two newspaper companies, often portraying them in cartoons and verse. For almost 70 years, the Advertiser and Register kept up their running battle, until the older title

was finally subsumed into the Advertiser at the height of the Great Depression. Technical advances locally followed world trends, through such innovations as steam printing presses, linotype machines and the appearance of half-tone photographs in 1887. The earliest illustrated newspaper was the Adelaide Independent and Cabinet of Amusement (1841). This contained crude cartoon-like lithographs as loose inserts. Brothers Samuel and Septimus Frearson experimented with publishing ‘sun pictures’ of outdoor scenes in 1887, in what became known as the Pictorial Australian (1878–95). Motor vehicles were first used in news delivery during the preliminary trial of Mary Schippan for the murder of her sister Bertha at remote Towitta in 1902, when Advertiser journalists drove to nearby Angaston to telegraph their reports to Adelaide. In 1933, pilot Bert Hussey was employed to fly Melbourne Cup photographs to Adelaide overnight, also for the Advertiser. Rupert Murdoch began in a small way in Adelaide in 1953 when he inherited his father’s afternoon tabloid, the News (1923–92). He went on to buy newspapers across Australia and New Zealand. In 1987, he sold the News and took over the Advertiser, which remains a Murdoch newspaper, with his sister Helen Handbury as director until her death in 2004. Apart from its early years, South Australia has generally had a conservative morning press. Alternative or radical newspapers were the basis for a lively but often unstable secondary press in the city. Much of the early radicalism became apparent in the country press in this period, and appeared in interesting pockets well into the 20th century. From 1894, the emerging labour movement produced the Weekly Herald. This became the widely read Daily Herald from 1910 to 1924. It was an annoyance rather than a threat to the dominant Register and Advertiser. South Australia’s press steadily decreased in the 20th century. Motor transport, a declining rural population, the Great Depression and the two World Wars all helped escalate newspaper closures and mergers. The gathering and delivery of news was greatly affected by communication advancements, particularly the advent of radio and television, despite the purchase by the Advertiser and News of substantial share-holdings in two of the commercial television stations. New styles of presentation and reporting emerged. Front-page headlines replaced frontpage advertising, and pictorial content was a firmly established norm. The shrinking South Australian regional press was offset by an increasing number of suburban newspapers from the 1920s—although the earliest titles appeared in the 1880s. Most of the early suburban newspapers were shortlived. In 1951, Roger Baynes and Len Croker established their first free Messenger newspaper at Port Adelaide (1951–84). It was based on

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press, tasmania papers Baynes had seen in Sydney. Messenger Newspapers acquired older suburban newspapers until, by 1964, every home in Adelaide was receiving a free Messenger newspaper. Through the 1970s and 1980s, the coverage extended to country areas. In 1988, Messenger Newspapers’ production moved to the Advertiser, and by 1991 all Messenger titles were printed by News Limited and were part of the Murdoch empire. Today there are 11 Messenger titles under the Advertiser’s control. In the mid-1980s, Rural Press Limited began buying into many of South Australia’s country newspapers. In 2007, the company merged with Fairfax Media. Today Fairfax owns 17 of the 34 country newspapers in publication in the state. The other country newspapers are owned independently or by small conglomerates, such as the Riverland’s Murray Pioneer and the Scott Group of Companies, established in Mount Gambier in 1952. Currently, two non-English titles complete the tally of South Australian newspapers— Paroikiako Vema (Greek Tribune, 1994– ) and Nan’ao Shi Bao (South Australian Chinese Weekly, 1997– ). A decade into the new millennium, the Advertiser and its subsidiary, the Sunday Mail, have no real competitors. The last afternoon tabloid, the News, closed in 1992. At various times, others have tried to chip away some of the Advertiser monopoly. The monthly Adelaide Review (est. 1984) was revamped and became fortnightly in 2004 with an eye to taking on the Adelaide daily, but in 2008 returned to monthly publishing. The Independent Weekly was established in 2004, also with a view to challenging the Advertiser. This title did at least succeed in its original aim of daily publication in 2011, when it ceased as a paper product to become the online InDaily— currently the sole South Australian newspaper published only electronically. Since 1987, Sister Janet Mead with the Romero Community has produced Adelaide Voices, not as a challenge to the Murdoch press, but simply to print the stories the others do not cover. REFs: Sir John Langdon Bonython Papers (SLSA); L.S. Marquis, Rescuing History in South Australian Newspapers (1975); R.B. Walker, ‘German-language Press and People in South Australia 1848–1900’, Jnl of the Royal Australian Historical Society (June 1972). ANTHONY LAUBE

P R E S S , TASMA NI A Tasmania has enjoyed a strong and vigorous newspaper history that dates back to the earliest days of settlement. The first newspaper, the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer, appeared on 8 January 1810, just seven years after the establishment of the first colony at Hobarton. It was produced on a wooden press brought to

Van Diemen’s Land by Lieutenant-Governor Colonel David Collins. The newspaper was printed ‘under authority’ of the government by George Clark and James Barnes. Clark also printed the second newspaper to be produced in the colony, the Van Diemen’s Land Gazette and General Advertiser (1814). Both newspapers were short-lived, the Derwent Star lasting just 12 issues and the Gazette nine. Since then, more than a hundred titles have been published, some lasting just a few issues like the Derwent Star and the Gazette, others spanning decades—and longer, in three cases providing the foundations of media dynasties that lasted more than a century. While a small number bear the name of the colony—Van Diemen’s Land—others are more geographically specific, reflecting the smaller population centres in which they appeared. Among the former are titles such as the Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser (1825–57), the Tasmanian (1827–39) and the Colonist and the Van Diemen’s Land Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser (1832–34). Included among the latter are the Hobart Town Courier (1827–59), the Cornwall Press and Commercial Advertiser (1829), the Launceston Advertiser (1829–46), the Devon Herald (1877–89), the North West Post (1887–1916) and the Zeehan and Dundas Herald (1890–1922). In fact Launceston can claim the distinction of being the home of Australia’s regional press, with the first seven titles being produced in that city. Representative of the subject-specific titles that sprouted, particularly during the 1800s, were the True Catholic: Or Tasmanian Evangelical Miscellany (1843), the Teetotal Advocate (1843), the Britannia and Trades Advocate (1846–51), the Temperance Banner (1850–51), the Irish Exile and Freedom’s Advocate (1850–51), the Tasmanian Democrat (1891–99) and the Leader: The Truth. The Whole Truth. And Nothing But The Truth (1868–69), which supported the Orange Movement. More enduring religious titles have included the Church News (now the Tasmanian Anglican, 1862– ), the Quaker Australian Friend (1887– ) and the Catholic Standard (est. 1937), renamed the Advocate (1971–77). There were also a number of rather quirky titles, including the Trumpeter (1833–49), the Peoples’ Horn Boy (1834), the Tasmanian Weekly Dictator (1839), the Hobarton Guardian, or, True Friend of Tasmania (1847–54), the Clipper (1893–1909), the Monitor (1894–1920) and Sunbeams (1896–1902). Tasmania also had its own version of the political satire, Punch (1866–78). According to J. Moore-Robinson’s Chronological List of Tasmanian Newspapers (from 1810–1933), the majority of early newspapers were relatively short-lived. This often reflected the activities of the early printers, editors and writers—particularly people like Andrew Bent, Robert Lathrop Murray, Henry Melville and

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press, tasmania John Morgan. Two prominent early names were John Pascoe Fawkner, who established and edited the Launceston Advertiser for two years before playing a key role in the settlement and early development of Victoria, including as editor of the Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser, and Henry Savery, the convict author of Australia’s first novel, Quintus Servington (1830–31). Bent probably had the greatest influence on the development of the Tasmanian press. He was a strong advocate of press freedom, and played an important role in emphasising a right to private ownership of the press. He also introduced editorials and letters to the editor. A small number of newspapers have enjoyed long and successful lives. The Launceston Examiner and Commercial and Agricultural Examiner, the Hobarton Mercury, and the Wellington Times (later the North Western Advocate, before becoming the Advocate in 1918) have all been operating for well over a century. For much of their lives, these newspapers were run by family dynasties: the Examiner by the Rolph and later (by marriage) Rouse families; the Mercury by the Davies family; and the Advocate by the Harris family. The success of these papers can be attributed to their strong association with the communities they serve. Tasmania is considered highly parochial, with the state divided into three geographic regions that approximate the prime circulation areas of the three major newspapers. They were able to develop strong reader loyalty, which enabled them to absorb competitors and withstand challenges. For example, the Advocate was able to hold off challenges from both the Examiner and, to a lesser extent, the Mercury, along the north-west coast, while the Examiner withstood attempts by the Mercury to establish a foothold in the north. The Mercury was also able to withstand a challenge from the Southern Star and Advocate in the Hobart suburbs during the 1980s. Established in 1985 as a single suburban newspaper serving Hobart and its surrounds, the Southern Star evolved into a chain of area-specific papers published weekly by the Advocate. These included the Glenorchy Star, the Bay City Star, the Eastern Shore Star and the Kingborough Star, all published between 1994 and 1997. The Advocate’s financial interest in Star Suburban Newspapers, the parent company, increased as the printing bills mounted. In 1997, the company was restructured, with the individual titles being absorbed into a single publication—the Star—which eventually closed in July 1998. There has been just one attempt to take on the major players since. In 2002, Hobart-based advisory firm Corporate Communications purchased a small monthly newspaper, the Eastern Shore Sun (1998– ). The company has since taken advantage of the internet to expand the stable to three other newspapers: the Glenorchy

Gazette (1993– ), the Hobart Observer (2013– ) and Island Business (2013– ). All compete with the Mercury in its core distribution areas. Ultimately, however, even the stalwarts of the Tasmanian media market succumbed to the realities of the newspaper business—Davies Brothers Limited (owner of the Mercury) became a wholly owned subsidiary of the News Limited empire in 1988, while the Examiner (in 1990) and the Advocate (2003) were ultimately swallowed by Rural Press Limited, which later merged with Fairfax Media. Tasmania’s newspapers have been forthright, willing to speak out against the government of the day and even to take on major issues, such as the Examiner’s role in the formation of the Australasian Anti-Transportation League in the late 1840s under the influence of the author and editor Rev. John West. The tradition continues to the present day. For example, during the 1980s, the Mercury, the Examiner and the Advocate were all active in reporting on the Franklin Dam and Wesley Vale pulp mill environmental battles. This focus on the environment also manifested itself in their coverage of the forestry battles of the 1990s and the Gunns pulp mill dispute of the 2000s. However, it was in their election reporting that the major newspapers revealed their true loyalties. Distinctly Tasmanian in focus when covering federal campaigns, they became highly parochial when covering state elections. While the three major newspapers have dominated the media landscape, the smaller monthly and weekly newspapers have played an equally important role in the communities they have served. Notable publications include the Circular Head Chronicle (Smithton, 1906– ), the North-Eastern Advertiser (Scottsdale, 1909– ) and the various publications serving the Huon Valley and west coast, commencing in the 1800s. Tasmania had eight country papers that were published daily for some part of the 19th century (four in Launceston, and one each in Zeehan, Queenstown, Devonport and Burnie/Devonport), and only one new country daily in the 20th century, the North West Post (Devonport). Research shows little evidence of an ethnic press in Tasmania. The state can, however, boast a strong heritage in the production of quality magazines, beginning with news magazines in the 1800s, through to glossy publications including Leatherwood (est. 1991, now 40° South), Tasmanian Life (1996– ), Tasmanian Style (2011– ), Tasmania Enjoy! (2011– ) and the literary magazine Island (1981– ). Publishers have also tapped into the popularity of sport with a range of publications covering fishing, lawn bowls and the AFL. REFs: J. Moore-Robinson, Chronological List of Tasmanian Newspapers (from 1810–1933) (1933); E. Morris-Miller, ‘A Historical Summary of Tasmanian Newspapers (Part II)’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings (March 1953) and Pressmen and Governors (1952); S.J. Tanner,

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press, victoria ‘Regionalism and Newspapers in Tasmania’, Australian Journalism Review, 16(1) (1994). STEPHEN TANNER

P R E S S , V I CT ORI A Melbourne, the state’s capital, has two morning daily newspapers, the Age and the Herald Sun, and an afternoon free ‘pick-up’ tabloid for city commuters, Mx, also available on mobile. The Age (1854– ) is owned by Sydney-based Fairfax Media. Formerly a broadsheet, it changed to ‘compact’ (tabloid) format in March 2013. The popular tabloid the Herald Sun, which began in 1840, and Mx, which began in 2001, are owned by Sydney-based News Corp Australia (formerly News Limited), a subsidiary of the New York-based News Corp. Between them, Fairfax Media and News Corp Australia also own around 80 per cent of Melbourne’s weekly suburban newspapers. The inroads of these multimedia conglomerates into country newspapers are less extensive: ownership of five of the seven regional dailies but only a handful of other non-metropolitan newspapers. A continuing Australia-wide concern, the dangers arising from excessive concentration of media ownership were examined in Victoria in the late 20th century. For much of its existence, however, the state’s press has been characterised by competition, diversity and single local ownership. While its 1838 beginnings were later than in four of the five other states, Victoria’s press grew rapidly to become the most prolific in the Australian colonies, and the source of innovations in newspaper businesses throughout Australia, until falling behind New South Wales around 1900. Newspaper publication in Victoria occurred before the Port Phillip District separated from New South Wales to become an independent colony. John Pascoe Fawkner (1792–1869), one of Melbourne’s original 1835 settlers, began publication of the Melbourne Advertiser on 1 January 1838. Copies of his weekly were handwritten until March, when a printing press was procured. In April, publication was terminated because the newspaper had not been registered in Sydney, as required by law. Subsequently, arrangements were made for registration in Melbourne and newspapers reappeared. By 1840, there were three bi-weeklies, together amounting to a daily newspaper, excluding Sundays: the Port Phillip Gazette, the Port Phillip Patriot (another Fawkner enterprise) and the Port Phillip Herald, ancestor of the Herald Sun. The same year saw the start of a regional press, with the appearance of the Geelong Advertiser (1840– ) in the developing port township. With much newspaper activity during the 1840s, by the end of 1849 Melbourne, with a population of some 18,000, had three daily papers: the Melbourne Daily News (formerly the Port Phillip Patriot), the Melbourne Morning (formerly Port Phillip) Herald and the Argus, begun in

1846. The country press had also grown, with the Geelong Advertiser becoming a daily, and a newspaper presence in Portland and Belfast (later Port Fairy). Independent colonial status, effective on 1 July 1851, was followed within weeks by promising gold discoveries in central Victoria, word of which brought about massive immigration and the spread of European settlement. Initially, rushes to the goldfields caused labour shortages and press growth was slowed. The Melbourne Daily News was incorporated into the Argus in 1852, but Melbourne regained three dailies with the start of the Age in October 1854. Intense rivalry between the Argus and Age centred on diametrically opposed political and economic policies. The Argus became increasingly conservative, siding with the established squattocracy and the forces of law and order, and supporting free trade; the Age, representing the aspiring gold-rush immigrants, propounded radical, liberal-reformist policies and advocated protective tariffs. For decades, all but the smallest country newspapers aligned themselves politically with one or the other. Less ideological, the daily Herald came to be seen by Age proprietor David Syme as a threat, which he neutralised in 1868 by purchasing it, changing it to an afternoon newspaper, then selling it two years later. Within a few years the Age had the highest circulation of any newspaper in Australia and by 1892, it had passed 100,000. In Victoria, there were countless other relatively short-lived newspapers, particularly in the 19th century. Noteworthy are the Melbourne Daily Telegraph (1869–92) and the daily Evening Standard (1889–94). For a few years, before both were absorbed into the Herald, the metropolis had three morning and two afternoon dailies. The Age, Argus and Herald—all broadsheets—continued into the 20th century, joined by the morning tabloid Sun News-Pictorial, begun in 1922 and bought by (Sir) Keith Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) in 1925. Strikingly, photography covered the front page. Its afternoon companion, the Herald, had abandoned the standard sober columns of advertisements on its front page in 1889, but the Argus did so only in 1937 and the Age in 1941. There were short-lived attempts to break into the daily market, such as the evening Star (1933–36), published by the Argus proprietors. After rising early in the 20th century, circulations of the Age and Argus dropped between the World Wars; recovering during World War II, they rose modestly thereafter. The Argus ceased publication in 1957. Morning readers were soon also offered national dailies: from 1963 the Australian Financial Review, from 1964 the Australian. Meanwhile, circulations of the Herald and Sun News-Pictorial, which had been increasing exponentially from the early 1930s, and which

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press, victoria for periods were the highest in Australia, peaked in the early 1960s at over 500,000 and 650,000 respectively. The Herald’s circulation dropped equally dramatically from 1970, and in 1990 the paper merged with the Sun News-Pictorial to form the Herald Sun. Its circulation rose to around 600,000 in the early 1990s, then began to fall away, particularly on Saturdays. The Age, which had an unsuccessful afternoon counterpart, Newsday, for nine months from 1969 to 1970, peaked at 250,000 in the mid-1980s; with a slowly declining circulation—albeit maintaining higher Saturday levels—it continued into the 21st century. With many readers switching to online access, the circulation of the printed editions of the dailies declined drastically. In 2013, circulation of the Age was 133,981 on weekdays and 198,537 on Saturday; circulation of the Sunday Age was 167,775, of the Herald Sun 399,638 weekdays and 399,730 Saturday; and that of the Sunday Herald Sun was 470,326. Melbourne’s weekly press has been prolific and heterogeneous. From the mid-1850s into the 1860s, when transport was still irregular, the dailies had weekly editions (such as the Weekly Age, 1855–68) for distribution to the bush. These were superseded in the 1860s by weekly newspapers that also included extended magazine-type material. The Leader, companion to the Age and first published in 1856, ran until 1957. The Australasian (est. 1864), companion to the Argus, was replaced in 1946 by the Australasian Post, which ceased in 1996. The Weekly Times, companion to the Daily Telegraph until 1892 and then to the Herald, expanded to national circulation as a rural newspaper, and continues today. In the later 19th century, the dailies also had companion monthly illustrated newspapers: for the Herald, the Illustrated Melbourne Post (est. 1862), in 1869 absorbed into the Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers; the Argus had the Australasian Sketcher (1873–89). Falling outside the definition of newspaper in the Printers and Newspapers Registration Statute, which limited frequency of publication to 26 days or less, these monthlies otherwise undoubtedly met legal criteria. Initially directed at an English readership, they were published just before the monthly mail boat sailed. By the mid-1890s, all had ceased. For weeklies, the line between newspaper and periodical or magazine is often blurred. Among a host of Christian denominational (‘sectarian’) newsletters and magazines springing up in the 19th century, the weekly Advocate (1868–1990), intended for Catholic readers and opposed by the Age for its Irish Catholic stance, was a general newspaper for many decades. The Australian Jewish News, one of several newspapers published for the Jewish community, began in 1935; there are now weekly editions in Melbourne, Sydney and Queensland. Melbourne Punch (1855–1925) and Table Talk (1885–1939) were quasi-newspapers.

Each dealt somewhat satirically with current events—the former chiefly in the field of local politics, the latter with happenings in theatre, art and the Melbourne social whirl. From the 1880s there was a spate of sports weeklies, most focused on horse racing. From 1902 to 1994, the sensationalist Sydney Truth, dealing in scandal and social injustice, had a Victorian edition. In 1972, the groundbreaking Nation Review commenced. Known as the ‘Ferret’, it was published until 1981, foreshadowing the fierce investigative journalism that would develop in Australia during the 1980s, with the Age a leading practitioner. It was formed by a merger of the Sydney Nation and the Melbourne Review, which began in 1970 as the Sunday Review. Sunday newspapers appeared in Victoria only after 1889 legislation prohibiting their publication was repealed in April 1969. The Sunday Observer started in September, to be succeeded by several others, including the Sunday Press—an unlikely joint venture of the Age and the Herald from 1973 until 1989, when each started its own Sunday issue, as did the Sun News-Pictorial. The Saturday Paper, a weekly aiming at quality long-form coverage of news and current affairs, began in March 2014; published by Melbourne-based Schwartz Media, its print edition was initially available in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra, then extended to Brisbane and Adelaide. A suburban press began for Melbourne in the 1850s, with newspapers for a few of the inner suburbs and for outlying villages such as Brighton and Williamstown. Reflecting the remarkable expansion of Melbourne in the 1880s, the number of titles rose dramatically, with 48 suburban newspapers for some 30 suburbs in 1892, before the depression forced closures. This number was not equalled again until the 1950s, after which it increased steadily, as country areas became part of the metropolis. In 2013, there were some 71 suburban papers. The character of suburban newspapers changed radically during the later 20th century. From a standard newspaper format with locally slanted news and comment, most came to have a magazine format, with much use of colour, and bulked out by a huge volume of property advertisements. Distributed free into letterboxes, their circulation figures became huge. The relatively few news features were frequently syndicated in several papers, an outcome of the ownership concentration that developed progressively during the 20th century. At the end of the 19th century, there were already several newspaper groups. During the 20th, Leader Community Newspapers, which developed out of the Mott family newspaper business, was sold in 1986 to the HWT and in due course came into the News Limited stable. In parallel, David Syme & Co. Ltd acquired groups of suburban papers for Syme Community Newspapers, becoming Fairfax Community

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press, victoria News Victoria after John Fairfax & Sons took over Syme, and in 2013 issued with the Fairfax Media imprint. Outside this network, irregularly from 1968 to 1990, a publication variously titled Koorier, National Koorier, Koorier 2, Koorier 3 and Jumbunna was issued in Fitzroy for the Aboriginal community by the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League and the Koorie Information Centre. Victoria’s ethnic press, based in Melbourne, came into being with post-World War II immigration. A few foreign-language papers had appeared for short periods during the gold-rush 1850s—among them, German, Swedish and French publications in Melbourne and the English and Chinese Advertiser in Ballarat. For almost 100 years thereafter, there were only occasional publications, notably the Chinese Times (1902–15). Starting in 1949 and reflecting migrant ethnicities, there was a spate of Albanian, Estonian, Czech, Dutch, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Russian and Serbo-Croatian (Yugoslav) publications, most monthly and many short-lived. Survivors into the 21st century include the Italian Il Globo, begun in 1959 as a weekly, published briefly as a daily and tri-weekly, in 2013 bi-weekly; the bi-weekly Greek Neos Kosmos (1957– ); and a Polish weekly from 1950. In the early years, a major objective was to assist orientation and assimilation; later, the aim of preserving cultural traditions and languages came to the fore. In 2013, the ethnic spread of publications (some issued infrequently and more like magazines than newspapers) in Melbourne reflected changing immigration demographics—including Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Indian, Italian, Korean, Pakistani, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The Chinese community appeared to be the best served, with the Australian Chinese Daily (1987– ) circulating nationally and several commercially oriented weeklies. Victoria’s country press has maintained a strong and distinct identity, and been a powerful political influence. After a steady start in the Port Phillip years, from the mid-1850s there was a mushrooming of newspapers in the goldfields regions of central and north-eastern Victoria, followed in the next decade by papers for the towns in surrounding new agricultural districts, and in Gippsland and the Western District. In the 1870s, the country press spread to the newly settled Wimmera, the Goulburn Valley and along the Sydney–Melbourne transport corridor. In the 1880s, it penetrated the Mallee region of north-west Victoria; in the 1890s, there were newspapers for the last region to be settled, South Gippsland. New press sites resulted from closer settlement. A 1892 press directory lists 177 newspapers appearing in 121 country towns and displays the three-level country newspaper network that had evolved: three

provincial cities—Geelong, Ballarat and Bendigo—as multi-paper press sites, each with three dailies; large towns with at least two competing papers, usually published twice or three times a week; and a great scattering of small towns with a single paper—usually a weekly. A peak was reached in 1914, with 226 papers for 156 towns. Throughout the 20th century, the network remained, but with fewer press sites and very few with more than one newspaper—the additional papers often of the free, letterboxed advertisement-rich suburban weekly variety. By 2013, country newspaper provision amounted to 92 papers for 67 towns. Many districts surrounding Melbourne had been incorporated into the greater metropolitan area; the advent of alternative media—radio in the 1920s and television in the 1950s—was an additional factor in the decline of newspaper numbers. Throughout Australia, many a small and shrinking township lost services, the local newspaper included, and had to turn to a large regional town to supply their news. Cessations and mergers were actively encouraged by the Victorian Provincial Press Association from the early 20th century, in the interests of financial viability, so the availability of competing outlets for diverging views was lost. However, except for regional dailies, country newspapers remaining in print were no longer major sources of general news and comment for their local readers, but had a basically parochial function of amplifying news and views in the Melbourne daily papers—which, from the late 19th century, were carried by rail promptly to all parts of Victoria. Victoria’s regional daily newspapers have retained, if not enhanced, their importance. In 2013, there were seven: the Geelong Advertiser (a daily from 1849), the Bendigo Advertiser, the Ballarat Courier, the Warrnambool Standard, Mildura’s Sunraysia Daily, the Shepparton News and the Border Mail from 1999, published in Albury, New South Wales (where it began) and in Wodonga, Victoria. Circulations in 2013 ranged from 6908 for the Mildura paper to 22,491 (39,389 Saturday) for the Geelong Advertiser—small compared with those for Melbourne dailies, but comparatively healthy in proportion to populations served. Ownership of country newspapers in 2013 was also less concentrated than in Melbourne. News Limited owned the Geelong Advertiser and a few other papers; Fairfax Media owned the other four regional dailies and several other papers. Otherwise, proprietors were based in rural Victoria, with around two-thirds of the papers coming under the chain ownerships that began to form in the 1920s, replacing the earlier norm of single ownership by a family, a partnership or a local joint stock company. The two largest chains were the Elliott Provincial Newspaper Group Pty Ltd, with the Sunraysia Daily (1920– ) as a leading paper, and the McPherson family company with

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press, western australia the Shepparton News (1877– ) as its flagship. There were some eight other chains, each owning from two to five newspapers in neighbouring clusters. About one-third of the rural papers were still separately owned. In 2013, the circulations of country newspapers, including the dailies, were considerably less than those for suburban papers: roughly 86 per cent of papers under 20,000, 11 per cent between 20,000 and 50,000, and two titles (both Geelong weeklies) over 50,000. Victoria’s press, with a strong sense of its colonial identity, also took a leading part in developing an Australia-wide press network. The esprit de corps that manifested early led to the formation of colony-wide associations and organisations, with links and influence beyond Victoria’s borders. The Australian Typographical Circular (1858–60) issued by the Victoria Typographical Association (est. 1851), and the Australasian Typographical Journal (1870–1916) by the Melbourne Typographical Society (est. 1867), both circulated inter-colonially. Printing trade journals, they were also sources of useful current information to personnel engaged in newspaper production. Inaugurated in Melbourne in 1892, the Australasian (at first called Australian) Institute of Journalists had an ambitious program of standards-setting, accreditation, education and lobbying for legislative reform. Disbanded by 1897, it was a forerunner and impetus to the formation in 1910 of the Australian Journalists’ Association (later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) in Melbourne, when the city was temporarily the federal capital after Federation. In the 19th century, the Argus and Age proprietors each allied with Sydney and Adelaide counterparts to operate competing cable news services and share copy—features from serial fiction to expedition reports. In the 20th century, state borders were crossed when single newspaper proprietorship gave way to media empires. (Sir) Hugh Denison, chairman of Sun Newspaper Ltd in Sydney, moved into Melbourne, starting the Sun News-Pictorial in 1922 and the Evening Sun in 1923. In a counter move, Keith Murdoch, managing editor of the HWT, bought the former and caused the latter to be closed. In an ironic reversal, in 1987 Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited took over the HWT. John Fairfax & Sons had tried unsuccessfully to do this in 1979, and had also, for several decades, set its sights on David Syme & Co. Ltd, increasing its shareholding and eventually, in 1983, effecting ownership. With Fairfax in financial distress and expressions of interest from overseas in the David Syme subsidiary, in 1988 Age staff, with public support, drew up a charter of editorial independence for the daily. Public concern about the extent of ownership concentration had already caused the Hamer Liberal government to instigate an inquiry chaired by Justice J.G.

Norris, which reported in 1981 that regulation would be in the public interest. A follow-up working party established by the Cain Labor government reported in 1990, recommending Victorian legislative action and a major public inquiry—preferably national in scope. Press regulation, subsumed under media (radio, television and newspaper) regulation, has become a national matter, subject largely to Commonwealth legislation. The Victorian requirement for newspaper registration was repealed in 1998. In 2005, Victoria—along with other states—agreed to uniform defamation laws and passed a new Act reflecting this. Cross-media ownership regulation was addressed in the Commonwealth Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and subsequent amendments. Further action in relation to printed newspapers is complicated by the rapid supply and takeup of news and newspapers online, entailing declining print readerships and redirection of income-bearing advertisements, and raising the divisive question of charges for online use. In 2013, most of Victoria’s newspapers had some online availability and a few imposed a charge for full-text access. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, The Bold Type (2010); E. Morrison, Engines of Influence (2005); Australasian Institute of Journalists Papers (Melbourne University Archives). ELIZABETH MORRISON

P R ESS, W ESTER N AU STR ALIA Within months of the arrival of the first British settlers in the Swan River colony in 1829, attempts were made to provide them with newspapers. Two incomplete handwritten survivors from 1830 are the Fremantle Journal and General Advertiser and the Western Australian Chronicle, but neither lasted more than a few issues. The arrival of a printing press in April 1831 facilitated the publication of the Fremantle Observer, but it too was short-lived. Despite a small non-Aboriginal population (under 2000 in 1838 and exceeding 5000 only in 1849), the Perth Gazette (est. 1833 and to continue under various names) was followed by competitors, including the Swan River Guardian (1836–38) and the Inquirer and Commercial News (1840–1901). After the coming of convict transportation in 1850, the Inquirer (owned by Edmund Stirling and his family) and the slightly less conservative Perth Gazette continued unchallenged, drawing most of their news from rural local correspondents and the months-old London newspapers arriving by sea. In 1867, a trio of educated ex-convicts founded the Fremantle Herald as an alternative, with its columnist William Beresford, writing under the semi-literate guise of ‘An Old Sandalwood Cutter’, delivering many shrewd thrusts against the governing classes. However, in 1870 it was the Perth Gazette and the Inquirer that felt the wrath of Chief Justice

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press, western australia Archibald Burt for publishing criticisms of his judicial decisions; the editors of both were fined and one was imprisoned. All three newspapers learned discretion when it came to challenging authority. The introduction of the telegraph in 1869, and its connection to the eastern Australian and overseas systems in 1877, brought major change. Historian Tom Stannage wrote that its impact ‘should not be exaggerated, for the cable was expensive, the news coming down it was highly selective and sketchy, and the local newspapers continued their long-established practice of reprinting fuller accounts from British and colonial journals’. These became more accessible after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was followed by regular steamship services. From 1868 onwards, the King George’s Sound Observer (1868) in Albany and the Eastern Districts Chronicle (1877–1959) in York began, followed by other publications in Geraldton and Bunbury. The Fremantle Express (1870–71) was the first Western Australian daily, followed by the Daily News in Perth, founded by the proprietors of the Inquirer. This proprietorship soon acquired the Fremantle Herald and closed it in 1886. The rival newspaper, the West Australian, was established as a bi-weekly in 1879. In 1885 it became a daily and started a rural weekly, the Western Mail, which continued until 1955. Distribution was facilitated by the gradual construction of a railway system that by 1890 extended from Perth to Albany and Bunbury. The media were emboldened to encourage controversy. Competition between the two dailies was further enlivened by the democratic influence of the West Australian Catholic Record (1874– ) and a more short-lived humorous weekly the Possum (est. 1887), at times part of the W.A. Bulletin (1888–90). Greater dynamism resulted from the coming of responsible government in 1890 and the massive gold discoveries that followed almost immediately. Between 1890 and 1901, the population quadrupled. Among the thousands attracted to Western Australia’s goldfields were journalists ready to model their style on the Sydney Bulletin and John Norton’s Truth, and they found a ready readership. From 1890, the locally born John Drew, as editor of the Victoria Express (from 1894 the Geraldton Express, and still in publication as the Geraldton Guardian), denounced government shortcomings and encouraged outback literature. The Murchison and Eastern goldfields were soon served by many newspapers of the same character; the Murchison Miner (1893–94), the Coolgardie Miner (1894–1911, 1913–17, 1935–57) and the weekly Kalgoorlie Sun (1898–1929) were among the most prominent. The Kalgoorlie Miner (1895– ) has been Western Australia’s only country daily since 1930.

By 1900, around 35 newspapers were published in Western Australia. The two Perth dailies responded by upgrading their technology, including the introduction of photography and cartoons. Competitors appeared. In 1896, the Stirling brothers, proprietors of the Daily News, set up the Morning Herald avowedly to appeal to readers critical of Sir John Forrest’s government, but the paper opposed Federation and was eventually sold to the Catholic Church and ceased publication in 1909. The Sunday Times, a weekly established in 1897 by the goldfields radical Frederick Vosper and Edward Ellis, founder of the Sydney Sunday Times, proved more durable, but after Vosper’s death in 1901 shifted to a populist conservatism favouring Western Australia’s secession from the Commonwealth. The gradual decline of the goldfields after 1905 was reflected by the closure of many local newspapers, but these were replaced by newcomers—usually weeklies—in the expanding wheatbelt of the south-west. By 1930, Western Australia supported 68 registered newspapers. If coverage in the regional press was more parochial than in their goldfields predecessors, these newspapers still afforded space for local versifiers, as well as reflecting the political views of their agrarian readers. In Perth, the main newcomers between the two World Wars were two weeklies: the Call (established as the W.A. Sportsman in 1914), devoted to racing, and the Mirror (est. 1920), a great favourite with Saturday-afternoon football crowds for its reportage of divorce cases and other scandals. The ALP weekly, the Westralian Worker, established in Kalgoorlie in 1900, reached its zenith under the editorship of John Curtin in the 1920s. After a shortage of newsprint during World War II, a gradual decline followed. The Westralian Worker ceased publication in 1951; the Call was absorbed by the Mirror in 1953; and the Mirror itself closed in 1956. However, with postwar immigration, the ethnic press in Western Australia (which had emerged with the shipping newspaper, La Stampa Italiana, in 1931–32) expanded. Echo: Polski Tygodnik Niezalezny (1950–52) was published for the Polish community. It was followed by the Italian-language Il Canguro (‘The Kangaroo’, 1955–57), dealing mainly with sport, and Eco Italiano (1958–59) and the Hellenic Echo (Greek, 1967–68). Indigenous newspapers included Identity in Perth in the 1970s, Yamaji News (Geraldton, est. 1995, now known as the Mulga Mail) and the Aboriginal Independent Newspaper (1997–2001). Specialist interests were served by publications ranging from the Anglican Messenger (1965– 2005) to the Westside Observer (1987–2001) for the gay community. As agricultural technology changed, many of the smaller rural townships lost population and their newspapers closed. The arrival of television in Western Australia in 1962 hastened

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pringle, john martin douglas (1912–99) the process, although it was 2003 before the last of the locally printed linotype newspapers, the family-owned Gnowangerup Star (est. 1915), ceased publication. The mining magnates Lang Hancock and Peter Wright financed the Perth Sunday Independent, edited by Max Newton, from 1969 but, unable to compete with the more established Sunday Times, it was wound up in 1986. Following Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times in 1987, there was considerable turmoil in the ownership of the WA press, involving both Alan Bond and Robert Holmes à Court. After 1990, the West Australian was unchallenged as a metropolitan daily, and its ownership controlled 21 of the 36 regional newspapers surviving in 2014, as well as owning a half-share in many suburban weeklies. Kerry Stokes acquired the largest shareholding in West Australian Newspapers Ltd in 2008, and went on to form what is now Seven West Media. Several weekly suburban newspapers, including the Fremantle Herald and the Subiaco Post (1977– ), survived as independent commentators on local affairs. Post Newspapers was set up by journalist Bret Christian and his wife Bettye in the front room of a terrace house in Subiaco in 1977 and over the next few years several other titles were established in neighbouring suburbs in western Perth. The Claremont-Nedlands Post (1978– ) fought several battles on behalf of wrongly convicted individuals. These are now part of Perth Suburban Newspapers, formerly known as Perth Independent Newspapers. The Swan Express (1900–79) reported mainly on happenings in suburban Midland Junction. Since the 1980s, an Asian press has appeared, including the Japanese Perth Times (1989–96), the Pho Thong News (Vietnamese, 1993–99), the Indonesia Post (1995–97) and the W.A. Chinese Periodical (1995–c.98). An Islamic newspaper, the Crescent Times, has been published in Perth since 2008. In addition, many suburbs and country towns are served by computer-produced monthlies, often of A4 size, covering local sporting and social events. But in Western Australia as elsewhere, the long-term future of print media remains uncertain. REFs: B. Shoesmith (ed.), ‘Media, Politics and Identity’, special issue of Studies in Western Australian History, 15 (1994); http://www.slwa.wa.gov.au/find/ wa_collections/wa_newspapers. GEOFFREY BOLTON

PRI NGLE, J OHN M ARTIN DOUGLAS (1912–99) Twice editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, John Douglas Pringle (as his by-line always appeared) broke several moulds in Australian newspaper journalism. The last figure in a Fairfax tradition of importing editors from Britain, he modernised the Herald’s appearance and broadened its coverage in news, features

and foreign affairs. Pringle’s liberal editorial approach towards some social upheavals of the 1960s sparked conflicts with Sir Warwick Fairfax, the Herald’s conservative proprietor. But Pringle left a lasting legacy for the paper, as well as several elegant and challenging books about his adopted city and country. A Scot, Pringle took a brilliant classics degree at Oxford, then joined the Manchester Guardian and the Times, where he was regarded as the finest leader writer of his generation. R.A.G. Henderson, managing director of John Fairfax & Sons, recruited Pringle as Herald editor in 1952. He was attracted by Sydney’s invigorating climate as much as the professional challenge: tuberculosis in his youth had left him with only one working lung. Pringle’s charm, detached wit, lucid writing and encouragement of younger journalists inspired his staff. Yet the editor’s role, confined then to just the leaders and book pages, with no control over the rest of the paper, was still constrained by decades of Herald traditions. Frustrated, Pringle did not renew his contract after five years and returned to Britain: ‘I was not prepared to be a figurehead even on such an ancient and respectable barque.’ When John Fairfax & Sons again lured him back from Britain in 1963, he insisted that the job embrace the whole paper. He spent a year as managing editor of the Canberra Times, and introduced a current affairs program, Seven Days, for ATN7, before moving back to the Herald in 1965. He started liberating women from the social pages, and promoted such outstanding writers as Margaret Jones and Lillian Roxon. Freeing the Herald from its conservative editorial policy in a decade of intense social and political change proved less straightforward. The Vietnam War posed a dilemma for Pringle, a liberal rationalist who had agreed to support the Fairfax board’s case for the war. His misgivings about US policy grew, ultimately causing personal distress and health problems. Pringle wrote a leader saying that pacifists could be brave people. He published another by Evan Williams predicting that Australia would become a republic. An Easter leader discussed not religion (as they always had) but a humanist approach to abortion and contraception. This was all too much for Sir Warwick. Feeling increasingly uncomfortable in the job, Pringle stepped down in April 1970. Gavin Souter, a colleague of Pringle’s through both his editorships, says Pringle ‘marked the end of an ice age and the start of a modern thawing process without which the paper might not have survived’. A decade after Pringle’s death, the Herald strongly supported Australia becoming a republic. Women enjoyed as much editorial power on the paper as men. For laying the groundwork of these and other progressive changes, John Douglas Pringle could take much credit.

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print workers Pringle authored several books, including Have Pen: Will Travel (1973). The annual John Douglas Pringle Award is offered jointly by the British High Commission and the National Press Club. REF: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). ROBERT MILLIKEN

P R IN T W ORKERS In the country’s first 60 years of colonisation, the Australian printing industry was mainly restricted to the publication of newspapers and official notices, with a small jobbing industry. The first print workers in Australia were immigrants from Britain, some of whom arrived as felons. Whether convict or free, all printers shared in the customs of the trade that provided a structural basis for the emergence of trade unionism. Each printing office had its own chapel, to which all workers belonged. An agreed set of rules, enforced by the father of the chapel, bound workers together in a tightly knit group through the exercise of workplace rituals and after-work socialising. Over time, these workplace groups—unique to the printing trade—began to assume industrial as well as social functions, with the father of the chapel representing workers in negotiations with employers. From the outset, Australian unions were involved in political agitation to control the entry of labour to the colony and end the convict system. The use of excessive numbers of apprentices was an equally burning issue for printing workers in Australia, and the earliest industrial campaigns were directed at limiting the employment of boys to a fixed ratio of journeymen. In the subsequent history of printing unions in Australia, these themes continued to resonate, although in changing form. The craft traditions of the typographers’ societies were preserved until well into the 20th century, with their position as the elite of the trades unchallenged until after World War II. Industrial and political organisation to restrict entry to the trade was part of this success, and from the 1880s the targets of this exclusion included women and girls as well as boys and less-trained males. Most famously, the Typographers’ Association resisted the attempts of the feminist publisher Louisa Lawson to employ women typographers on her journal the Dawn, physically harassing the women workers and refusing to admit them to membership even though they were paid male wages. Although admitted to union membership in the 20th century, women were still kept out of the craft jobs by a combination of male domination of the unions and support for men’s claims for a monopoly of certain work from the new industrial tribunals at both state and federal levels. The late 19th century brought other challenges, as new technologies and working methods

changed many of the older ways of working. For example, two-thirds of the compositors working on daily newspapers lost their jobs with the introduction of the linotype machine in the 1890s. Despite such dramatic short-term impacts, printers were more successful than most tradesmen in extracting benefits for themselves out of these changes in the form of higher earnings and shorter working hours, while increased production over the longer term offset initial job losses. The adoption of electronic printing technologies in the late 20th century presented similar challenges in fundamentally altering the old ways of composing and printing. Meanwhile, after the gold rushes of the 1850s, other unions associated with the production of books, newspapers and other printed items proliferated. These unions included separate male and female bookbinding associations, cardboard box-making unions and general print unions that represented the non-craft workers. The 20th century saw these unions amalgamate, first with each other at state and federal levels and then with other manufacturing unions outside printing. The Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia registered federally in 1917, but did not include the Victorian unions until the Victorian Branch of the Printing Industry Employees’ Union was formed in 1920 after the successive amalgamations of several Victorian printing unions. In 1966, the Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia changed its name to the Printing & Kindred Industries Union. In 1986, this union amalgamated with the Federated Photo Engravers, Photo-Lithographers & Photogravure Employees’ Association of Australia and in 1992 with the Victorian Printers Operatives’ Union, each time under the name of the Printing & Kindred Industries Union (PKIU). In 1995, the PKIU amalgamated with the Automotive Food Metals and Engineering Union to form the Automotive Food Metals Engineering Printing & Kindred Industries Union, otherwise known as the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union. REFs: R. Frances, The Politics of Work (1993); J. Hagan, Printers and Politics (1966). RAELENE FRANCES

PRINT E RS see print workers

P R IN TER S’ FU R N ISH ER S A printer’s furnisher’s role was to supply the print media with machinery, paper, type, inks, varnishes, washes and driers. From 1804, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser urged readers to sell it paper. Around the rural and suburban press, shortages recurred into the 20th century, sometimes because of a lack of capital. Alexander Thompson set up Australia’s earliest type-foundry in Sydney in 1843; it was maintained by his widow until 1865.

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printing The foundry sold to the Sydney Morning Herald and other colonies until it was displaced during the gold rushes by importers such Gordon & Gotch. By 1900, linotype machines had replaced the work of type foundries, except for larger fonts and attractors. At the same time, photolithography took over from engraving on stone. However, colour printing for posters and packages increased the demand for a range of inks, with Collie & Co. offering 30 different reds. In the mid-1930s, Australia had 12 ink-makers, while five of the bigger printers made some ink themselves. F.T. Wimble & Co. and Cowans had become the leading houses by 1900. Frederick Thomas Wimble (1846–1936), the son of an ink-maker for Cambridge University Press in the United Kingdom, landed in Melbourne in 1867 with printing materials valued at £150. A tour of the United States and Britain in 1876 to secure agencies for equipment was followed by a move to Sydney in 1878. He conducted a type foundry for overseas designs, which he naturalised as Extended Tasmanian Gothic or Wentworth Bold. From 1895 until 1957, the firm promoted its wares through a quarterly magazine-cum-catalogue, Wimble’s Reminder, which championed process engraving and the colour printing flaunted in a lavish edition in July 1927. The firm continued under outside management until 1991. The Scottish paper-maker Cowan’s sent a consignment to Melbourne in 1844, operated through agents after 1855 and set up its first branch office in Sydney in 1868. Alex Cowan and Sons were manufacturing stationers until the firm was taken over by James Hardie in 1975. It published Cowans from 1904 to 1930 as a sampler for company products. The introduction of Xerox’s 914 plain paper copier and IBM’s Selectrical typewriter in the early 1960s, and, in the late 1970s, Wang’s OIS word-processor, together with photo-typesetting and advances in the web-offset and other printing technologies, further marginalised the furnishers’ inventories, except for inks and varnishes. Letraset sold at local newsagencies displaced larger fonts, and the demand had changed to one for photographic equipment and chemicals. So thorough-going had the changes become by 1970 that franchises for instant print shops were on offer. HUMPHREY McQUEEN

PRI NTI NG The reproduction of written history in Australia began with the arrival of Governor Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet in 1788. A modest woodscrew printing press, together with a limited range of typefaces and sizes, were listed in the ships’ manifest. According to David Collins’ Account of the English Colony of New South Wales (1798), ‘a small printing press ... was found very useful … a very decent young

man … George Hughes … [was] found equal to conducting the whole business of the press’. Hughes thus became the first Australian printer. The first known example of his work is a 1796 broadsheet, Instructions for Constables of the Country Districts. The press was little more than a glorified cheese press and Hughes could only manage about 50 impressions per hour. However, he managed to compose and print 200 official documents plus other ephemera. He left the colony in 1800 and was succeeded by George Howe, widely regarded as the father of Australian printing. At 21, Howe served his apprenticeship as a compositor in the British West Indies then travelled to England where he worked on several London newspapers, including the Times. He was transported to Australia for shoplifting in 1800 and was emancipated six years later. In 1802, he printed the first book in Australia, New South Wales Standing Orders. He also initiated the first Australian newspaper, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (1803–42). A new penal settlement at Port Phillip and an Admiralty commission enabled LieutenantGovernor David Collins of the Royal Marines to set sail from Portsmouth in April 1803. Of the 300 people in Collins’ party, three were printers. One of these, Robert Walsh, printed a series of General and Garrison Orders on a small hand press set up beneath a crude shelter on a beach at Sullivan Bay, near Sorrento. The first of these orders, dated 16 October 1803, became the first printed item to be issued in what would become the state of Victoria. In December 1803, Collins moved his group to Hobart Town. When a new settlement was established on the banks of the Yarra River in 1835, one of the co-founders was John Pascoe Fawkner, who had lived at the earlier settlement at Sullivan Bay. Upon his return to Port Phillip, Fawkner published his first newspaper, the Melbourne Advertiser, nine of the 17 issues handwritten, from January 1838. Fawkner’s renamed Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser was published in February1839, followed in 1840 by George Cavanagh’s Port Phillip Herald (now the Herald Sun); the Argus was begun in 1846 and the Age in 1854. Many early commercial printers began trading around the time of the gold rush, including Sands & Kenny (1853), Walker, May and Co. (1855) and Sands & McDougall (1862). The gold rush created enormous wealth, and the printing industry flourished in central Melbourne. The spread of printing in the Australian colonies widened when newly established commercial and agricultural interests made the supply of paper, materials, trade and professional services possible for growth and self-sufficiency. Paper that had not been ruined by seawater was often dampened with fresh water and pressed to improve the impression of inked metal type on paper. The first mass-produced Australian paper was produced by Samuel

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printing Ramsden’s mill (later Australian Paper Manufacturers, now Amcor Limited) at Southbank in Melbourne in 1868. Ink was first produced in Melbourne by Fred Wimble (later F.T. Wimble & Co.) in the same year. Production of early Australian printing was nevertheless slow and laborious on wood and iron hand presses from well-worn type fonts. Colonial printers were plagued with difficulties caused by the harsh climate, and the acute shortage of paper, ink, type, tools and machinery imported from the United Kingdom and later from Europe and North America. Printers were also required to register newspapers and publications with colonial administrations in accordance with British government regulations. The insatiable thirst for news and printed information from Britain and continental Europe in the Australian colonies encouraged the publication of local newspapers and the start-up of commercial printing offices in the principal towns. This provided work opportunities for journalists, compositors, printers and importers of British newspapers such as Gordon and Gotch. Collins and his party re-established their settlement and printing press after their arrival at Hobart Town in 1803. On 20 February 1804, the first printed item in Van Diemen’s Land, entitled A General Order Fixing the Price of Pork and Other Comestibles, was set up and printed by Robert Walsh. Andrew Bent started the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencia (1810–12), Hobart’s first newspaper, and later published the Hobart Town Gazette, and Southern Reporter. Bent imported a new iron Albion press in 1828 and sold the old wooden press to John Pascoe Fawkner, who used it to start his own newspaper, the Launceston Advertiser (1829–46). In 1831, Fawkner sold the Advertiser and the old press to Henry Darling. What became another famous Tasmanian masthead, the Hobart Mercury, first appeared on 5 July 1854. William Shenton and Charles Macfaull formed a partnership to produce handwritten copies of their Western Australian Chronicle and Perth Gazette in February 1831. John Weavell imported a small iron Ruthven press and leased it to Shenton and Macfaull in Fremantle for two guineas a week rental. Together they published the first issue of the Fremantle Observer, Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal on 25 April 1831. Robert Thomas and George Stevenson imported the first press, an iron Stanhope, into South Australia from England. This press reproduced one of South Australia’s earliest printed items, Governor (Sir) John Hindmarsh’s Proclamations of the Province, on 25 December 1836. On 18 June that year, Robert Thomas published South Australia’s first newspaper, the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register. Arthur Sidney Lyon and James Swan set up a small press and published Queensland’s first

newspaper, the Moreton Bay Courier, on 20 June 1846. This newspaper continues today as the Brisbane Courier-Mail. Attempts to publish a rival to the Courier failed, but on 1 October 1872, the Telegraph ran its first edition, with 200 copies printed on a Wharfedale press. The first half of the 20th century found the majority of the world’s metropolitan newspapers printed from hot metal, linotype-set pages and curved stereos on single colour rotary letterpress equipment with spot-colour and pre-printed tabloid and broadsheet colour inserts. Newspaper ROP (run of press) colour on rotary letterpress equipment was pioneered in the early 1950s by the Argus with financial support from the London Daily Mirror. The high cost of this world-first innovation was said to have caused the demise of this popular daily in January 1957. High-volume colour magazines, journals and commercial printing were, for a time, printed rotogravure, but more recently have been printed on heat-set web-offset and multi-colour sheetfed offset equipment, with artwork produced on photo-composing terminals with text merged from writers’ terminals. Today, the digital revolution and ‘desktop publishing’ have overwhelmed the 550 year world history of hand and machine composition and printing from ‘hot metal’ type. Personal computers now enable authors to keyboard their own manuscript for digital output in typeset form. This information can be manipulated to interface with not only high- and low-end compatible printing machines, but also with home, office and commercial instant printing devices. The electronic transfer of digital material to the printing media was so rapid that by the end of the 1980s, hot metal typesetting and letterpress printing remained the realm of only a few small suburban and rural printers. At the end of the decade, the craft was almost a curiosity and most of the equipment became scrap metal or museum pieces. Printing in Australia today is inextricably connected to the electronic movement and incorporation of formatted text, images and multimedia. Only the internet could claim a more universal method for mass communication than Gutenberg’s printing from movable type. During the 1990s, this incredible information superhighway grew to become a worldwide phenomenon. Existing lithographic, digital and as yet undiscovered developments will be central to the continuance of a viable Australian printing industry. The speed of change for many large and medium Australian newspaper and journal publishers, caught in a new age electronic and digital web, was swift and unforgiving. Investment strategies  were hurriedly refocused to reduce paper, machinery and distribution costs to  enable both traditional paper and digital editions and to protect advertising and sales revenues.

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privacy The advent of self-publishing, e-book and social networking could further diminish the size and scope of this once-powerful medium. REFs: T.A. Darragh, Printer and Newspaper Registrations in Victoria, 1838–1924 (1997); D. Hauser, Printers of the Streets and Lanes of Melbourne (1837–1975) (2006); H.A. Hunt, The Master Printers of Sydney (1976). DON HAUSER

PRI VA CY The interplay between the Australian media and privacy laws has long been a struggle between free expression and the desire of individuals for confidentiality. Complaints about media intrusion date back to the early 19th century. According to Historical Records of Australia, as early as 1827 NSW Chief Justice Francis Forbes rejected Governor Ralph Darling’s proposal for legislation licensing the press, stating that ‘the press of this Colony is licentious may be readily admitted; but that does not prove the necessity of altering the laws’. Three years later, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser published an extract from London’s New Monthly Magazine noting the prying nature of the British press, suggesting they would hound a ‘lady of fashion’ relentlessly. In 1847, New South Wales became the first Australian state to add ‘public benefit’ to its defence of truth for libel—essentially a privacy element in defamation law. The notion of a ‘right to privacy’ did not emerge until the late 19th century, after the US publication in 1890 by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis of the landmark Harvard Law Review article with that title. In the 1937 case of Victoria Park Racing and Recreation Grounds Co. Ltd v Taylor, the High Court decided by a three to two majority that a commercial radio station that broadcast its horse race call from a platform it built on property overlooking the racetrack did not unlawfully interfere with the racing club’s use of its property. It ruled that the station had not breached any ‘right to privacy’. But the comments of the dissenting Justice Rich were prescient: ‘Indeed the prospects of television make our present decision a very important one.’ Over the ensuing 75 years, support for an actionable right to privacy increased as the concept gained currency internationally. Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed in Paris in 1948, enshrined privacy as a human right, and was reinforced by the proclamation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966, protecting privacy in Article 17. In 1979, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) released its first major report on privacy, Unfair Publication: Defamation and Privacy, recommending that people be allowed to sue for damages or an injunction over the

publication of ‘sensitive private facts’. Following a second report in 1983, Privacy, the Privacy Act 1988 was introduced to establish information privacy principles and the appointment of a Privacy Commissioner. It initially applied only to the protection of personal information in the possession of Australian government departments and agencies, but was extended to larger private-sector organisations in 2000. Media organisations were exempted from the provisions as long as they ascribed to privacy standards published by their representative bodies, including the Australian Press Council and the various broadcasting industry bodies whose policies were registered with the Australian Communications and Media Authority. In 2001, the High Court revisited its 1937 Victoria Park Racing privacy decision in the case of Australian Broadcasting Corporation v Lenah Game Meats. It rejected the argument of a Tasmanian abattoir to a right to privacy after animal liberationists trespassed to film the slaughter of possums and the ABC planned to broadcast the footage. However, the court refused to rule out the potential for a right to privacy under a different fact scenario. Intermediate court decisions in Queensland in 2003 and Victoria in 2007 awarded plaintiffs damages for invasion of privacy, but these decisions were not appealed. Meanwhile, in 2008 the ALRC recommended a statutory cause of action for breach of privacy where an individual had a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy’, with a cap for non-economic loss of $150,000 in its For Your Information report. In 2011, the federal government proposed to implement a variation on this when it released an Issues Paper floating a Commonwealth cause of action for a serious invasion of privacy. It made other amendments to the Privacy Act in 2012 which took effect in 2014, but with no proposed tort for invasion of privacy. The government’s Convergence Review report of 2012 flagged the withdrawal of privacy law exemptions from media outlets that refused to join its proposed news standards regulatory system. In June 2013, the federal AttorneyGeneral directed the ALRC to conduct an inquiry into the protection of privacy in the digital era. The inquiry was to address both prevention and remedies for serious invasions of privacy with a deadline of June 2014. The Gillard Labor government also introduced legislation to establish a ‘Public Interest Media Advocate’ with the power to strip media outlets of their Privacy Act exemptions, but it was not supported in the Senate. Australia has not experienced the same level of intrusion into the private lives of celebrity figures that has occurred in the midst of frenzied tabloid newspaper competition in the United Kingdom in recent years, prompting that country’s Leveson Inquiry in 2011. Actress Nicole Kidman won a temporary restraining order against two magazine photographers in

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property reporting 2005. She planned to follow this up with an apprehended violence order, but her lawyers reached a confidential agreement with one of the photographers. Paparazzo Jamie Fawcett later lost a defamation action against Fairfax Media over an article that labelled him ‘Sydney’s most inventive and most disliked freelance photographer’. Australian celebrities such as actress Judy Davis, footballer Andrew Ettingshausen and businessman Rene Rivkin chose the developed tort of defamation for their litigation over the undeveloped tort of privacy. New technologies prompted privacy concerns in 2013. The federal Attorney-General sought state and territory input on the regulation of drones following the Privacy Commissioner’s concerns that their operation by individuals was not covered by the Privacy Act. Google unveiled its wearable ‘glass’ technology, prompting privacy commissioners from 10 nations including Australia to query its potential for surreptitious recording of private activities. REFs: ALRC, For Your Information (2008); Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Issues Paper: A Statutory Cause of Action for Serious Invasion of Privacy (2011). MARK PEARSON

P R O PERT Y REPORT I N G Notices about the lease and sale of property have been central to Australian newspapers from the start. Until the advent of the internet, newspapers were the primary form of communication about individual sales of house blocks and rural properties. Ever since the British Crown claimed the entire Australian land mass, both colonial and then state governments have not only been major sellers of land in their own right, bit have mandated successive systems of leasehold and freehold title. In the 19th century, Australian property reporting was straightforward, and rarely went beyond advertisements and minimal commentary on what did and didn’t sell. The number of notices depended on the size of the market and the economic mood of the time. In the 1880s, ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ experienced a phenomenal land boom, recorded by the press. The collapse in the 1890s was also embraced as newsworthy. By the early 20th century, real estate agents were taking large advertisements in broadsheet newspapers. Jack Lang’s agency, trading as Lang and Dawes, took out quarter-page advertisements in the Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers’ Advocate (1888–1950). The suburban subdivision boom of the 1920s saw some real estate agents producing journals in their own right, including Rickard’s Realty Review (1909–c.1927) in Sydney. Real estate agents’ hyperbole was rarely questioned in the newspapers, and advertisements for rent and sale became a mainstay of the classifieds in the

Saturday dailies. Some trade union papers and the Labor Daily in New South Wales criticised property interests, and generally viewed the property market—including the expulsion of tenants during the Depression—as an evil expression of capitalism. With the coming of by-lines, especially from the 1970s, property journalists finally gained more status and influence, serving as gatekeepers for hard-to-obtain market information. Most still liked the easy jobs, profiling major property entrepreneurs from L.J. Hooker to Harry Triguboff. Like tourism journalists, property journalists were often fêted by agents and developers seeking favourable coverage. Unlike travel reporters, they didn’t feel obliged to cite any contra deals or hospitality that they had enjoyed. From the 1970s, the heritage and environmental impacts of property development— urban, rural and coastal—attracted growing public debate. This liberated some journalists, who preferred to write about the larger questions, including Joe Glascott on the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and Christopher Jay in the Australian Financial Review. Some journalists researched property market scandals, including Ben Hills in the Age, who revealed corruption about land releases in Melbourne. Juanita Nielsen, an urban conservationist, led the battle against the redevelopment of Victoria Street, Kings Cross through the local paper Now (1968–75), which she published from her home. She was almost certainly murdered in 1975 for her advocacy, but her body has never been found. By the 1990s, more real estate advertisements were in colour, and Saturday papers began to produce lavish real estate supplements. Real estate proved readily transportable to the internet, so John Fairfax Holdings founded the Domain site and a publicly listed real estate group established realestate.com.au. At first, sales data for sites and suburbs still had to be purchased, but is now readily available on a number of websites. Prospective home purchasers and tenants can now get everything they need free of charge on the web. Apart from analysing overall demand and supply and consumer preferences, property journalists now have little to tell us that we can’t find out for ourselves. Even well-known property columnists, including Jonathan Chancellor, who wrote the ‘Title Deeds’ column for the SMH from 1987 until 2011, now writes for Property Observer, a website published by Private Media Partners. The Australian Financial Review still surveys the commercial and industrial property market, but much of its journalism is about the profile of developers and the scarcity of good development sites, and less about understanding the property market itself. Both broadsheet and tabloid newspapers still love to run tables of the most expensive

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provincial newspapers (qld) ltd and cheapest suburbs in which to buy, and the locations experiencing rapid capital growth. Commercial television programs offer advice about how to prepare an apartment or house for sale. Backyard Blitz (Nine, 2000–07) and The Block (2003–04, 2010– ) on the Nine Network have been ratings blockbusters, and home improvement shows are heard on commercial radio stations, including Sydney’s 2GB. Both print and electronic media worry about the impact of ‘foreign buyers’ on the price of real estate. All media regularly bemoan the high cost of new blocks of land and the difficulties facing new home buyers in one of the world’s most expensive housing markets. Because property law remains in state hands, major legislative changes—particularly to the Strata Titles Acts, town planning issues, land tax and stamp duty—continue to elicit journalistic comment. But today any adept web user can be their own property journalist. The property journalist, other than when they reveal a scandal, is all but extinct. REFs: M. Cannon, The Landboomers (1966); P. Spearritt, Sydney’s Century (2000). PETER SPEARRITT

PROVI NCI AL NEWSPAPERS (QLD) LTD Six pioneering Queensland country press families merged their newspaper interests in 1968 because of concern about a possible takeover by metropolitan interests, which they were afraid would result in the regional press becoming completely subservient to the capital city dailies. The model for the holding company that resulted from the merger was provided by the purchasing vehicle used in 1961, when eight provincial dailies acquired the Barton family’s interests in the Bundaberg News-Mail; however, the catalyst for the merger was the takeover of the daily Cairns Post by Queensland Press Ltd in 1965. The families were satisfied they could work together because of the similarity of ethos among their newspaper businesses. They also saw in the merger the chance to seek listing on the Stock Exchange so that shareholders who wanted to sell their interests had greater opportunity to do so. The combination of the interests also provided access to greater funds and an opportunity for technological redevelopment that otherwise would have been impossible. The families that combined were the Dunn, Manning and Irwin families, and three Ipswich families— the Parkinsons, Stephensons and Kippens. The Dunns owned three dailies—the Toowoomba Chronicle, Rockhampton Morning Bulletin and Maryborough Chronicle—and the bi-weekly Nambour Chronicle; the Mannings owned the Mackay Daily Mercury; the Irwins owned the Warwick Daily News; and the Ipswich families owned the Queensland Times. Each of the six families held an interest in the Bundaberg News-Mail. Each also had strong

links with the Queensland provincial press dating from the 19th century, with the Parkinson and Stephenson families having been involved since the early 1860s and the Irwins since 1867. The Dunns were the latest entrants, with their patriarch, Andrew Dunn (1854–1934), becoming the business manager of the Maryborough Chronicle in 1887, but the Dunns emerged as the dominant Queensland provincial press family. Andrew Dunn became the major shareholder in the Maryborough Chronicle in 1891. He steered the paper through difficult times in the 1890s but gradually turned the business around in the early years of the new century. With six sons, he was ready to expand his newspaper interests. Spurred on by the success of newspaper families such as the Buzacotts (of Maryborough, Rockhampton and Brisbane), the Grooms (Toowoomba) and the Morgans (Warwick), Dunn laid plans for his family. He had several of his sons trained in various departments of newspaper work, and arranged that others who had taken up other occupations should be available if required. All six sons played important roles in one or more of the newspapers the family acquired. The acquisitions were: 1911—the daily Rockhampton Morning Bulletin; 1914—the tri-weekly Warwick Argus; 1919—the tri-weekly Warwick Examiner & Times, which Dunn merged with his Argus to become the Warwick Daily News (with the Irwin family clinging to a minority interest); 1922—the two Toowoomba dailies, the Chronicle and the Darling Downs Gazette, which Dunn merged into one daily; and 1929—the Rockhampton Evening News (which the Dunns absorbed into the Morning Bulletin in 1941). The advent of television in Australia in 1956 had a dramatic impact on media ownership because newspaper companies held the major interests in the companies awarded the first commercial television licences. Soon metropolitan newspaper owners—their bank accounts flush with television profits—were eager to acquire country newspapers. Country newspaper families, including the Dunns, began to devise strategies to avoid being taken over. In October 1963, the Dunns investigated a possible merger with the Townsville Daily Bulletin. Other talks were held, but there was no urgency until Queensland Press Ltd acquired the Cairns Post in November 1965. Serious talks about a holding company took place in January 1966 and continued at five meetings between March and August 1966. Townsville, Gympie and Cairns withdrew. The merger of the Dunn, Manning, Irwin and Ipswich families’ newspaper interests formed Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd (PNQ) as a holding company on 1 April 1968, with the Dunn interest being almost 60 per cent. The company operated from Rockhampton until 1974, when it shifted to Brisbane. It was listed on the Stock Exchange from 9 December 1976. Within six weeks of the 1968 merger, Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited outbid PNQ and

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public opinion and opinion polls others to acquire the bi-weekly Gladstone Observer from the Macfarlan family interests. When Murdoch tried to acquire a parcel of PNQ shares in 1971, PNQ approached Queensland Press Ltd and it took a ‘friendly’ 29 per cent interest in PNQ. In 1975, PNQ bought the Gladstone Observer, by then a daily, from News Limited, and in 1978 increased to 100 per cent its interest in the Bundaberg News-Mail (as it had been known since 1961). PNQ’s greatest success came when it launched the Sunshine Coast Daily at Maroochydore in 1980 after acquiring several small Sunshine Coast newspapers in 1970, 1973 and 1974 to add to its bi-weekly Nambour Chronicle. After struggles in its first half-dozen years, the new daily achieved profitability. Its circulation, boosted in 1988 by free home delivery for six-day subscribers, was close to 21,000 in 1990. PNQ bought the Emerald, Biloela and Chinchilla newspapers in 1985, 1986 and 1987 when they were offered the chance by owners wishing to exit. The end of PNQ came 17 months after the Murdoch takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) in February 1987. Many media properties changed hands—sometimes several times—in less than two years. In October 1987, PNQ bought the former Northern Star Holdings newspapers, principally the dailies based at Lismore, the Tweed Valley, Grafton and Coffs Harbour. But the Murdoch takeover of the HWT, assisted by the ‘friendly’ interest in PNQ held by subsidiary Queensland Press Ltd, gave News Limited a 48.6 per cent stake in PNQ. The Trade Practices Commission intervened, forcing News Limited to sell its stake in PNQ. This opened the way for the O’Reilly family and Irish newspaper interests to clinch the takeover that led to the formation of what became APN News and Media. REF: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Ghost of Caution Haunts House of Dunn: The Rise and Fall of a Queensland Newspaper Dynasty (1930–1989)’ (PhD thesis, 1994). ROD KIRKPATRICK

P U B L I C OPI NI ON AND OPINION POLLS Public opinion has been variously understood, both within the media and beyond. When used by scholars, it is often wrapped in inverted commas. Nonetheless, students of the media and of history have evinced little interest in the ways in which the term has been deployed, in Australia or elsewhere, nor in any of the terms that might stand as synonyms—‘morale’, during wartime; ‘common beliefs’, ‘public sympathy’, ‘the collective mass of opinion’, and so on, at any time; or, increasingly, what public opinion polls report. In the days before polls were first published, discussions of public opinion often revolved around views reported by the press, argued in its columns or characteristic of its editorials. United Australia (1890), published by the NSW

Government Printer to promote the Federation movement, was subtitled ‘Public Opinion in England as Expressed in the Leading Journals of the United Kingdom’. After the introduction of polls, the press retained its appeal as a source of public opinion, not least in relation to all those matters not covered by the polls. Historian Rosemary Campbell’s attempt to document the ‘critical mood’ of the ‘Australian public’ in 1944 cites newspaper reports of activities directed against American servicemen, letters to the editor of the Brisbane press—even a newspaper comic strip. The polls afforded newspapers some independence from politicians, pressure groups and others who claimed to represent ‘public opinion’—indeed, polled opinion helped the press create a new understanding of public opinion. Polls provide the press with ‘exclusives’. And polls increasingly have afforded the press political leverage; they can be cited, albeit selectively, in support of the kinds of parties, leaders or public policy particular newspapers favour. Apart from ‘exit polls’, conducted with voters after they have cast their votes at elections or referenda, television stations have not ventured far into ‘precision journalism’ of this kind. Initially conducted face to face, national polls were introduced to Australia in 1941 by Sir Keith Murdoch, the general manager of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT)—a group that produced daily papers in every state capital except Sydney—and in Sydney by (Sir) Frank Packer’s Daily Telegraph. Murdoch acquired the rights to the Gallup name from George Gallup in Princeton and sent Roy Morgan (1908–85), an accountant working on the finance pages of the Melbourne Herald, to Princeton to learn how to run a poll. On his return, Morgan became the director of Australian Public Opinion Polls (The Gallup Method) (APOP), jointly owned by the HWT and associated newspapers in every state. Meanwhile, Packer hired Sylvia Ashby (1908–78), the country’s first female market researcher, to sample opinion in New South Wales. The Ashby poll disappeared before the end of World War II. From 1941 to 1970, APOP—also known as the Gallup Poll—was Australia’s only national poll. In 1971, the Age and Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) decided to commission surveys through the Australian Sales Research Bureau, subsequently Irving Saulwick & Associates. At the same time, Rupert Murdoch—keen to see Labor win the 1972 federal election and suspicious of Morgan’s Liberal leanings—established Australian Nationwide Opinion Polls (ANOP) for the Australian; however, in 1974, disgruntled with Labor, Murdoch cut it loose. In 1973, the HWT dumped Morgan after he boasted that he had never read a book on sampling, that when making predictions he ignored his own data, and that others should do the same. What now became the Morgan Poll, under Roy’s son Gary (1941– ), was adopted by the Bulletin; it moved

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public opinion and opinion polls to Time (Australia) in 1992, before returning to the Bulletin until after the 2001 election—which it got badly wrong. Having cut its ties with Morgan, the HWT hired Ian McNair (1933–2007) of McNair Anderson & Associates to run the poll. But in 1987, after Murdoch bought the HWT, APOP disappeared. Murdoch now founded Newspoll, run by Sol Lebovic (1949– ), to service the Australian. Between 1992 and 1995, McNair replaced Morgan at the Bulletin. In 1994, AGB McNair (later Nielsen McNair, ACNielsen, and now Nielsen) replaced Saulwick at the SMH and the Age; Saulwick had been dumped after concerns about his figures had been expressed by NSW Premier Bob Carr and senior journalists on the SMH. From the 1970s, computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) was introduced, polling spread to more papers, and more market research firms became involved. However, none lasted long. McNair’s Quadrant Research polled for News Limited’s tabloids and ATN7, the Reark Group for John Fairfax & Sons’ Times on Sunday, Spectrum for the Australian and Australasian Research Strategies for the Bulletin. Confining their polling to particular states, Taverner Research Company polled for the Sun-Herald, Peter Gardner & Associates for the Adelaide Advertiser, Tasmanian Opinion Polls (and later Essential Market Research Services) for the Hobart Mercury and Patterson Market Research for the West Australian—and also later for the Canberra Times. Faced by diminishing revenues, the press has moved increasingly from CATI to the much cheaper medium of Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR or ‘robos’)—using a recorded voice. Another cheap alternative is polling online; since 2007, Essential Research has polled online and released its results weekly through Crikey. After a poor start—Morgan’s 1943 poll under-estimated Labor’s lead by 12 percentage points—the record of the polls in getting election predictions ‘right’ improved markedly; 1980 was the only occasion when they all failed to pick the winner. However, had someone in 1993 set up a pseudo-poll, conducted no interviews and simply worked on the assumption that at every election Labor would get 50 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, by 2010 their longterm record—a median error of 1.8 percentage points—would have been exactly the same as Newspoll’s, Nielsen’s or Morgan’s. In the 1940s, polls were not prominently reported; it was not until the 1949 federal election that a pre-election Gallup Poll made the front page of the Herald. Poll stories were generally modest in size; they focused on reporting or paraphrasing the question, setting out the results and perhaps explaining the process of sampling, rather than saying anything about the implications of the results. And journalists’ interest in polls was much less intense than it would later become; once published, polls were rarely referred to.

Rules covering the reporting of polls were set out in 1980 by the Australian Press Council (APC), but they are rarely given any attention. While the introduction of polling met with considerable interest, it also attracted some hostility and scepticism. Hostility came from the left—from unions and from some Labor Members of Parliament—suspicious of Keith Murdoch, his connections with the conservative side of politics, and the capitalist press. As late as 1951, sceptical journalists, party officials and politicians largely ignored the poll data when calculating the chances of the referendum on communism being passed. Critics of the polls have focused on a number of concerns. Initially, much of this focused on the relatively small number of respondents interviewed. But polls have also been criticised for creating opinion in the process of measuring it. And pollsters have been criticised for lacking independence (Gallup in the United States was not tied to any newspaper), for focusing their interests too narrowly (on voting intentions and the party leaders), and for framing questions in particular ways. The reporting of polls has also been criticised not only in relation to the standards set out by the APC, or in 1978 by the Market Research Society of Australia, but also for giving the polls too much prominence and for biased interpretations. In the 1950s and 1960s, polls on voting intentions were manipulated—if not to make the Labor Party appear less popular than it was (a worry expressed by Labor) then to bring the figures into line with what Roy Morgan thought the result would be. However, there is also evidence of questions on a range of public policy issues, from communism and the Vietnam War to Aboriginal land rights, being framed by pollsters to produce particular results. Polls may have come to dominate understandings of public opinion in the media, but they have certainly not eliminated other understandings. In a survey of newspaper, radio and television journalists conducted in 1992, among 245 ‘news-gatherers’, Julianne Schultz found fewer than half of the respondents prepared to describe ‘poll results’ as either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ expressions of public opinion, similar proportions describing ‘letters to the editor’, ‘news reports’, ‘the judgement of well-informed people’, and ‘protest demonstrations’ this way. The proportions that ranked ‘editorials’, ‘parliamentary debate’ or ‘pressure group activity’ as either ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ was much lower. Had her research been conducted later, Schultz might have included talkback radio in her survey—now tracked by media monitoring—as well as retweets, comments on Facebook, and other social media measures. Topping Schultz’s survey was ‘election results’. Ironically, this was one of the measures of public opinion in relation to issues that Gallup had set out to undermine. In an ideal world, elections—

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public relations like polls—gave everyone an equal chance of participating, and an equal voice in determining the outcome; however, after an election—unlike a poll—no one could say exactly what policies voters had endorsed. More recently, opinion polls conducted by polling organisations have been joined by polls run online or via the web or social media by newspapers, radio stations or television stations. In some cases, the audience is invited to join an ongoing panel; the SMH presents the responses to a series of questions asked of a sub-sample of its panel every Saturday. These devices, dismissed by professional market researchers because the samples are skewed, are devised to boost the engagement of the audience as well as the participants, and to allow the media to better understand its market. These newer forms not only augment polls; they join earlier constructions of public opinion that continue to command space. These include interviews with individuals (‘vox pops’) chosen by journalists because they are ‘typical’ of some much bigger group. They also include linguistic turns that polls are rarely designed to capture—for example, descriptions of voters coming after politicians ‘with baseball bats’, being politically ‘disengaged’ or wishing ‘a plague on both their houses’. Long before the polls, public opinion was seen as a force to which the media needed to respond. The task of the ‘popular press’, in the words of one Australian post-war commentator, Lewis Wilcher, was ‘to find out what the majority of the people are thinking and give expression to it’. Some newspapers are more attuned to this than others. Under the editorship of Col Allan, the Daily Telegraph became a byword for reflecting the priorities and positions of its working-class readership in Sydney’s western suburbs. The media might also shape opinion. Arguing that the press was ‘in a unique position to direct public opinion’, Wilcher went on to ask: ‘for what, after all, is “public opinion” but the views of people in general about the news of the day?’ Media scholars would later distinguish various forms of media influence: (a) determining the issues audiences should think about (agenda setting); (b)  shifting the audience’s position on particular issues (the way media influence is typically understood); and (c) providing the audience with a set of criteria against which to evaluate the actions of those responsible for causing things to go wrong or for fixing them (priming). The media might also influence public opinion by mobilising audiences to take certain actions (such as voting for a particular party) or demobilising audiences by persuading them to not act (refusing to boycott a product, for example). REFs: R. Campbell, Heroes and Lovers (1989); M. Goot, ‘Fudging the Figures: The Split in the Polls, 1955–1975’, in B. Costar et al. (eds), The Great Labor Schism (2005) and ‘“A Worse Importation than Chewing Gum”: American Influences on the Australian Press and their Limits—the Australian Gallup

Poll, 1941–1971’, Historical Jnl of Film, Radio and Television, 30(3) (2010); M. Goot and T. Rowse, Divided Nation? (2007); M. Goot and R. Tiffen, ‘Public Opinion and the Politics of the Polls’, in P. King (ed.), Australia’s Vietnam (1983); J. Schultz, Reviving the Fourth Estate (1998); L. Wilcher, Education, Press, Radio (1948). MURRAY GOOT

P U B LIC R ELATIO N S Despite being an established and expanding industry, there is dissent in the field of public relations (PR) ‘about what the practice is, who it serves, and what its roles and responsibilities are’, according to industry analyst Bruce Berger, while Rex Harlow has found 472 different definitions of PR. Jim Grunig defines PR as ‘the management of communication between an organisation and its publics’ and the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) defines it as a ‘deliberate, planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain mutual understanding between an organisation (or individual) and its (or their) publics’. The confusion surrounding the practice of PR stems from the fact that it is not a single function or activity, but rather a ‘field of practice’ comprising multiple types of communication activity. The most widely recognised PR activity is media publicity, which is generated by liaising with and providing information to journalists (also called media relations). ‘Information subsidies’ provided to the media by PR practitioners are inevitably positive for their employer, resulting in the pejorative term ‘spin’. However, public relations can also involve other communication channels, including organisational publications such as newsletters and reports, events such as launches and openings, videos, speeches and presentations, websites and, increasingly, social media sites. There are also specialised areas of PR beyond media relations, such as shareholder or investor relations, community relations and government relations. Further confusion about PR arises from other terms used to describe similar activities, including ‘public information’, ‘public affairs’, ‘corporate communication’ and ‘corporate relations’. While these terms sometimes refer to public communication practices with a specialised focus (for example, public affairs is mainly focused on relations with government—also referred to as ‘lobbying’) some organisations and practitioners eschew the title ‘public relations’ to avoid the negative connotations that PR has acquired. Nevertheless, ‘public relations’ remains the most widely used term for such public communication practices. A simple way of understanding PR and differentiating it from advertising is the categorisation of three types of media: paid media (advertising), earned media (editorial publicity) and owned media (an organisation’s own

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public relations publications, such as brochures and newsletters, events, videos, websites, blogs, social media sites and so on). PR is the management function that focuses on earned and owned media. Using the PRIA’s definition of PR as an attempt to cultivate ‘mutual understanding’, it could be argued that the public proclamation of the colony of New South Wales on 26 January 1788 marked the inaugural PR event in modern Australian history. Subsequent celebrations of this anniversary have incorporated the use of organised PR activities to influence and galvanise public opinion. From the outset, the use of PR activities was characterised by the field’s diverse practices and aims. Public holidays commemorating the King’s birthday reinforced both the rule of law and the colony’s place within the British empire. Public relations would also become a means by which commercial and political interests could strengthen their cause. Edward Wakefield drummed up support for the South Australian colony through letters to newspapers, presentations to parliament and the creation of societies pledging financial support for the initiative. During the 1840s and 1850s, the Anti-Transportation League similarly utilised public meetings, pamphlets and petitions to achieve its goal. The growth of the press provided new opportunities for PR initiatives to reach a mass audience, particularly in the second half of the 19th century. Politicians recognised the ‘power of the press’, and increasingly engaged with media in order to communicate with the general public. Commercial advertisers similarly recognised this power. While most used advertising columns, some blurred the line between advertisement and editorial content through ‘puff’ pieces and ‘advertorial’. Community groups also looked to the media to promote their interests. The Salvation Army’s Limelight Department produced, arguably, Australia’s first feature film, Soldiers of the Cross, in 1900. It was shown as part of an illustrated lecture to spread the Christian faith and recruit new officers. Initially functioning as collectors of news, by the early 20th century, press agents became disseminators of press releases and publicity seekers, acting on behalf of organisations and individuals. Assuming the title of publicity agents or officers, their role would receive more attention during World War I. Without conscription, Australia’s war effort became increasingly dependent on PR initiatives led by state recruiting committees. Their campaigns included posters, speeches and various public events including parades and concerts. After the war, publicity officers found work in government departments. Overseas, publicity officers in the Australian High Commission in London continued to promote immigration and investment in Australia, while the Australian Fruit Board promoted its produce to British consumers. As the inter-war head of the Victorian

Railways, Harold Clapp initiated PR practices that went beyond publicity, including films and weekly radio talks. The growth of Hollywood and radio entertainment in the inter-war years provided additional outlets for publicity agents. ‘Publicity clubs’ were formed in Sydney and Adelaide in the 1920s, but their members were largely drawn from the advertising fraternity. During World War II, the term ‘public relations’ gained traction. The RAAF established its Public Relations Directorate in 1940. The Army and various government departments followed suit. The arrival of the American General Douglas MacArthur and his own PR unit in 1942 brought Australian PR practitioners into direct contact with the latest American strategies and techniques. Managing the flow of information to the media would prove to be a key lesson. Dedicated PR consultancies emerged in the immediate post-war years. (Sir) Asher Joel’s decision to establish his own consultancy drew on wartime experience with MacArthur’s team, as well as his pre-war experience in promoting major NSW events. Wartime service as well as political connections led Eric White to found Eric White Associates (EWA). The formation of the Public Relations Institute of Australia in 1949 reflects PR’s expansion, although its primary object of making ‘public relations more widely known and accepted’ indicates that it still lacked recognition. The PRIA sought to improve practices by developing a Code of Ethics. The importance of PR was gaining traction in political circles. White had briefly served as the Liberal Party’s inaugural director of PR before establishing EWA. Until their victory at the 1949 election, the Liberals waged a relentless campaign. In addition to building (Sir) Robert Menzies’ image, they also produced radio programs such as John Henry Austral and Country Quiz that sought to convey a political message. The Liberal Party also collaborated with the banking sector’s PR campaign against bank nationalisation. Upon victory, government PR sought to consolidate power through media relations. During the 1950s and 1960s, the government’s relationship with journalists was driven by Prime Minister Menzies’ personal idiosyncrasies. In the 1950s, the number of PR consultancies grew from three in Sydney to some 60 Australia-wide. Such expansion reflected the growing awareness of PR and the changing media scene. By the end of the decade, EWA had emerged as Australia’s largest consultancy, with offices in each capital city and in London and Asia. By the late 1960s, an estimated $12 million was being spent on PR annually. Notable campaigns included the Commonwealth’s decimalisation of currency and Made in Australia promotions, and the staging of Lyndon B. Johnson’s visit to Australia in 1966. However, Sir Frank Packer’s banning of PR people entering the Daily Telegraph indicated that PR still had

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public relations a dubious reputation. Predicting that it would be ‘harder for newspapers to be written competently’ and that ‘editors will be charmed or gulled into printing as news an increasing amount of informal advertising’, Ken Inglis’s observations of the growing number of journalists entering PR in the early 1960s underscored the level of unease about the growth of PR. The PR industry in the 1960s increasingly expanded beyond publicity and developed a more holistic and sophisticated understanding of PR practice. The first university lecture on PR was reportedly delivered at the University of Sydney in the early 1950s, and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology introduced the first PR certificate course in Australia in 1964. PR courses were also introduced at the South Australian Institute of Technology (SAIT) in 1967 and short courses in PR were offered at the NSW Institute of Technology from 1965, before the most widely cited university PR course was launched at the Mitchell College of Advanced Education, Bathurst by pioneering PR academic David Potts in the early 1970s. Potts published one of Australia’s first PR textbooks, Public Relations Practice in Australia (1976). PRIA publications examined practical PR issues from reconceptualising and segmenting ‘publics’ to embracing research. As well as gaining new competitors, the sale of EWA to American giant Hill & Knowlton in 1974 brought Australian PR practitioners into direct contact with international practice. This American presence would accelerate in the 1980s, as the overall size and scope of the PR industry underwent a rapid expansion. In 1986, Australia was home to 270 consultancies. Large multinational agencies, such as Burson Marsteller and Edelman, opened offices in Australia, offering integrated global campaigns, while publicists such as Harry M. Miller and Max Markson promised to capitalise on fame—however fleeting. In 1988, the top eight PR companies were earning an estimated $32 million. Government investment in PR continued to grow. Determined to avoid the media relations disasters that had undermined his predecessor, Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition government adopted a more aggressive attitude towards its relationship with the news media. Fraser’s press secretary kept the media in check by playing ‘favourites’ with journalists. However, it was the Hawke Labor government that took this relationship to new levels, investing heavily in media advisers. The number of media advisers employed by subsequent governments at both the Commonwealth and state levels has continued to grow. The growth of the PR industry in the 1980s also coincided with a changing demographic within the industry’s ranks. Following the American pattern, Australian PR agencies were less likely to take on ex-journalists, and more likely to employ women with professional qualifications. By the 1990s, the industry had ef-

fectively been ‘feminised’, with female PR agents vastly outnumbering their male counterparts. Today, PR is a substantial and growing industry in Australia. Commonwealth statistics revealed that there were 21,600 PR professionals employed in the private and public sector in 2010—up from 18,700 in 2009 and 14,000 in 2008. The government’s Job Outlook data shows that employment of public relations professionals increased ‘strongly’ over the previous 10 years, and is predicted to continue to grow strongly to 2015–16. Globally, PR spending was estimated at more than $10 billion a year industry in 2008–09, growing at around 10 per cent a year. Australia’s PR industry was described by Bob Burton in 2007 as a $1 billion a year industry. With Australia having some of the highest usage rates of social media in the world, it is not surprising that the PR industry today has expanded is range of media channels to reach stakeholders and incorporated corporate blogging, microblogging (for example, Twitter), social media sites such as Facebook pages, online video sites such as YouTube, and photo distribution via sites such as Flickr. This bypassing of media ‘gatekeepers’ is seen as both positive in creating more direct organisation– public communication and problematic in that it allows inaccurate and biased information and misinformation to be distributed. The PR industry in Australia consists of PR professionals employed ‘in house’ by companies, government bodies and organisations, as well as an estimated 1150 PR consultancy firms available for hire on a retainer or project basis. Most of the leading international PR agencies have offices in Australia, including Edelman, Hill & Knowlton and Burson Marsteller (owned by the WPP Group), Porter Novelli and Gavin Anderson (owned by the Omnicom Group) and Weber Shandwick (owned by the Interpublic Group). Additionally, there are many hundreds of locally owned PR firms, ranging from sole operators to leading Australian agencies such as Professional Public Relations. Despite frequent denials by journalists, public relations has a significant influence on the media and on politics, as shown in a number of studies in Australia and internationally. A 2010 study by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism found that almost 55 per cent of the stories in the 10 leading Australian newspapers were the result of some form of PR activity. The influence of PR on content ranged from 42 per cent in the Sydney Morning Herald over a five-day working week to 70 per cent in the Daily Telegraph. This confirmed earlier studies that found between 30 and 70 per cent of media content contributed by PR sources, and was consistent with findings from British studies on newspaper content. Media studies scholars and journalists complain that PR has cluttered the channels of public communication with pseudo-events and

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publishers australia excellence awards publicity stunts. Eric Louw has also critically reported on the ‘PR-isation of politics’, in which political debate is reduced to ‘sound bites’ and policy-making is managed by ‘spin doctors’. This concern was examined further by Ian Ward in his analysis of the ‘Australian PR state’, which drew on widely cited research by David Deacon and Peter Golding in the United States that first identified the rise of the ‘public relations state’ through government use of ‘media minders’, media units and public affairs staff. However, PR practitioners and scholars argue that PR, when conducted ethically, is an important and beneficial form of public communication in which organisations ranging from corporations to government agencies, NGOs (non-government organisations) and not-for-profit organisations such as charities keep the public informed, engage with citizens in dialogue, and build and maintain relationships. According to theories and models of PR taught in university courses, public relations is a ‘two-way street’. First outlined by Princeton historian and adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Eric Goldman, in 1948, this concept is embodied in the ‘two-way symmetrical’ model of PR and excellence theory of public relations developed by Jim Grunig and his colleagues in the United States. This argues that PR includes representing the views of publics to management to orientate organisations to their environment, as well as representing organisations to their publics and seeking to orientate publics’ attitudes to the organisation. This process of co-orientation is best served through dialogue and building and maintaining relationships, which are central concepts of modern public relations, according to scholars. The Public Relations Institute of Australia requires its 3000 plus members to comply with a PRIA Code of Ethics, and Australian PR consultancies registered through the PRIA have adopted a Registered Consultancy Code of Practice. Furthermore, the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, which represents 80 PR practitioner bodies internationally, has adopted a Global Protocol on Ethics in Public Relations. These codes and protocols are only voluntary; moreover, many PR practitioners are not members of the PRIA. Critics remain sceptical about PR, pointing to concerns about ‘spin’, ethics, propaganda and power inequities. Despite its use by a wide range of groups, including environmentalists, community and consumer groups, charities and NGOs, PR is most commonly used by the organisations and government agencies with the deepest pockets, and the dominant paradigm of PR practice is theorised as ‘strategic communication’ within strategic management theory, which critics say privileges organisational objectives and discourses. On the other hand, proponents say that public relations is part of free speech—and even necessary in pluralist democracies to ensure the representation of all views.

REFs: R. Crawford and J. Macnamara, ‘An Agent of Change: Public Relations in Early-20th Century Australia’, in B. St John et al. (eds), Pathways to Public Relations (2014); K. Demetrious, Speaking Up (2013); J. Johnston and M. Sheehan (eds), Public Relations Theory and Practice (2014); J. Macnamara, Public Relations Theories, Practices, Critiques (2012). JIM MACNAMARA and ROBERT CRAWFORD

P U B LISH ER S AU STR ALIA EXC ELLEN C E AWAR D S The Publishers Australia Excellence Awards is the current name for the national awards of excellence for Australian magazine publishing. In 1995, a meeting of the Australian Business Publishers (ABP), formerly known as the Australian Association of Business and Specialist Publishers (est. 1964), decided that awards for excellence, initially in business publishing, would be a way to create value for members and focus on the small but important business-to-business (B2B) publishing sector. The aim was not only to provide publicity and recognition for individual publishing excellence, but also to generate income for the association as members paid an entry fee to participate. The awards were originally called the ABP Bell Awards, after David Johnson Bell, one of the founders of the ABP. In the early years, they were Sydney-centric, as was the ABP, but chapters expanded through the 1990s to include other major Australian cities. In 2001, the association expanded to include specialist publishers, and changed its name to the Australian Business and Specialist Publishers Association (ABSP). The awards became the ABSP Bell Awards. In 2005, the association changed its name again, to Publishers Australia, aiming to reflect the broader scope of magazine publishing (consumer, custom, specialist and business), and especially the impact of digital publishing. The Publishers Australia Excellence Awards have grown since this date, and are now the recognition of achievement in the industry, representing magazines from all sectors of magazine publishing. As a result of the Magazine Publishers of Australia (MPA) gaining representation on the board of Publishers Australia in 2011, MPA member titles—representing many of the high-circulation consumer magazines—are eligible for the award. By the 17th awards in 2013, there were a total of 28 awards for journalists, editors and designers, and for best launches, marketing strategies, websites and apps. Magazines are judged via category as best magazine of the year, and an overall winner is chosen for the Publishers Australia Excellence Award. A Hall of Fame has also been introduced. REF: http://magazines.org.au. MEGAN LE MASURIER

PUBL IS HING A ND BROA DCA S T ING LT D see Australian Consolidated Press; Packer family

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Q Q U E E NS LAND ME DI A CLUB The Queensland Media Club is the successor body to the Queensland Press Forum, started in 2003 and by which name it was known until 2005. It is a joint venture of the Queensland Parliamentary Media Gallery and the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). It is reliant on various levels of sponsorship from both commercial and non-commercial entities. The club’s principal activity is hosting an annual season of lunches (usually seven a year), with invited speakers selected from among business leaders, decision-makers and politicians. Since 2003, the lunches have attracted an average of 300 guests, with some having audiences of up to 900. The overwhelming majority of speakers at the lunches were politicians, including all three prime ministers holding office during the club’s existence—John Howard in 2003, and Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in 2010—and many Cabinet ministers. The club also hosted the leaders’ debates during Queensland state elections in 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012. Money raised through these events provides prizes for two Queensland journalism students—one metropolitan-based and one regional/rural recipient. These ‘most outstanding’ prizes are administered through the MEAA’s annual Queensland Clarion Awards for journalistic excellence. The MEAA devotes funds raised through the club to professional development and welfare programs for members. REF: http://www.queenslandmediaclub.com.au MICHAEL BROMLEY

Q U E E NS LAND T I MES The Queensland Times (QT) was first published as the Ipswich Herald on 4 July 1859, the eve of Queensland’s separation from New South Wales. Its initial mandate was to campaign for a separate colony of Queensland, and for Ipswich as its capital. It is the state’s oldest surviving provincial newspaper. The Herald was launched by Walter Gray, H.M. Cockburn, John Rankin and Arthur Macalister (who became premier). In 1861, editor Edmund Gregory moved to the Moreton Bay Courier, which eventually became the Courier-Mail. The Herald was bought by Hugh Parkinson, Francis Kidner and J. Bowring Sloman,

former employees of Ipswich’s first newspaper, the North Australian (1855), begun by Arthur Sidney Lyon. Lyon is also credited with establishing the Moreton Bay Courier (1846), the failed Moreton Bay Free Press (1850) and the Darling Downs Gazette (1858), later absorbed by the Toowoomba Chronicle. The new Ipswich Herald editor, J.C. Thompson, rechristened the paper the Queensland Times on 8 October 1861. The QT represented not only the people of Ipswich but the ‘vast interior’ of the state, against what it called Brisbane’s centralisation. The QT and its predecessor, the Ipswich Herald, competed with the North Australian from 1855 until the latter’s move to Brisbane in 1863. The North Australian closed in 1867. In the lead-up to Queensland’s 2 September 1899 referendum, the QT actively agitated against Federation, and Ipswich resoundingly voted against it. The newspaper displayed the latest polling results on a screen outside the newspaper office, using the new technology of a telephone to access results. The QT became a daily on 1 October 1908. It faced competition over the years, partly due to the close proximity of Brisbane. With the exception of a printers’ strike in 1972, the QT never missed a scheduled edition—despite fires, technical hitches and three major floods—in 1893, 1974 and 2011. On 28 January 1974, the QT told readers it had managed to print the day’s edition on almost the last of the newsprint, having lost its stocks in the suburb of Bundamba. For much of its life, the paper was a family affair, run by several generations of Stephensons, Parkinsons, Kippens and Cooks. In 1968, the newspaper interests (including the QT) of three Ipswich families merged with other historic provincial mastheads to form Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd (PNQ). Irish interests took over PNQ in 1988, and the company eventually became APN News and Media in 1988. Under APN ownership, the QT appointed its first female editor, Natalie Gauld, in 2006. In 2013, the QT’s circulation was 8470 on weekdays and 11,720 on Saturdays. REFs: G. Harrison (ed.), Jubilee History of Ipswich (1910); QT, 4 July 1899 and 12 June 1918. KASUN UBAYASIRI and LINDA BRADY

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R RADI O A US TRALIA From the 1960s to at least the 1980s, Radio Australia had the biggest audience of any Australian media organisation. At its peak, its international audience exceeded Australia’s total population, yet few Australians had heard of the ABC’s international broadcaster. Short-wave broadcasting works because, unlike other radio wavelengths, when high frequency signals hit the ionosphere they are reflected back to earth, and can be heard by those in the footprint where they land. Short-wave can often be heard more than half a world away. From the discovery in the 1930s of the long distances short-wave radio signals could travel, international broadcasting showed immediate and rapid growth fuelled by international competition and national pride. When short-wave international broadcasting reached its peak in the late 1980s, more than 100 countries had their own international short-wave operations. As a vehicle for international political communication, short-wave had many advantages: it could be transmitted over huge distances; it required only cheap, easily accessible equipment; and it could cross national boundaries unhindered—evading national censors. In the age of satellite television and the internet, shortwave radio has become an antiquated medium, but for more than half a century, it was a vital source of information and entertainment for hundreds of millions of listeners. Radio Australia began in December 1939, a few months after the outbreak of World War II. After a decade or so of institutional instability, it became part of the ABC in 1950, and international broadcasting eventually became one of that organisation’s charter activities. Radio Australia expanded its language services and programming output from the mid1950s as the government viewed it as a Cold War weapon. Its first languages were principally European, but gradually it acquired an AsiaPacific focus. By the 1980s, it broadcast in English, French, Mandarin and Cantonese, Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese and Tok Pisin (to Papua New Guinea). Khmer and Burmese were added later. In the late 1980s, Radio Australia ranked 13th among international broadcasters in terms of hours of output.

Estimates of audience size varied widely. The ABC claimed to the Dix Committee in 1980 that the ‘best estimates suggest that the total audience is in the vicinity of one hundred million’, claiming audiences of 30 million in Indonesia and 25 million in China. Radio Australia played a pivotal role in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, where the undeveloped state of local media meant that it had a very important role in informing indigenous audiences. Most international broadcasters were propaganda arms of their governments, and so lacked credibility among all but partisan audiences. In contrast, the BBC World Service had established and maintained a degree of independence from the government of the day. Radio Australia aspired to a similar reputation for independence, but faced an uphill battle to establish this. There were two broad phases in this troubled relationship: during the Cold War phase, Radio Australia’s editorial independence was frequently threatened and often compromised. Many in that generation of diplomats were hostile towards anything not directly under government control. From the 1970s, however, a new generation of diplomats was more willing to accept a more limited government role within the totality of international relations. But then a new threat to Radio Australia’s role arose with the Australian government’s sensitivity to anything that upset relations with Suharto’s New Order regime in Indonesia. From the mid-1970s, the Australian media became a contentious element in this relationship. As a result, some influential figures started to assert that Radio Australia was doing more harm than good to Australia’s national interest. Some even argued that broadcasting into another country in their own language was an invasion of sovereignty. This group was never strong enough to close Radio Australia, but it did impede its growth. In particular, Radio Australia’s transmission capacity fell behind in the 1980s. As other international broadcasters expanded their capacity, Radio Australia was unable to match them. In the 1990s, the importance of international short-wave broadcasting declined substantially. This was partly because the end of the Cold War reduced the intensity of global propaganda

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radio comedy battles. More fundamentally, the changing media mix increasingly marginalised short-wave among audience preferences. By the 1990s, many developing countries had undergone an entertainment liberalisation—if not a political one. Moreover, a generation raised on FM radio was less tolerant of the uncertain reception of short-wave. Although the relative importance of different media was changing, international communication overall was growing enormously, and analysts proclaimed (or decried) the advent of media globalisation. Satellite television increasingly had the large broadcasting footprints of short-wave radio, and with digitalisation becoming more common by the turn of the century, each satellite could carry many channels. Similarly, the internet had revolutionised access to international sources of information. The audience for short-wave radio was only a fraction of what it had been. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 had mandated that it broadcast internationally in both radio and television. While Radio Australia fulfilled this requirement in radio, no parallel activity was undertaken in television. No one seemed bothered by the fact that the ABC was largely ignoring its legal obligations, and no government money was forthcoming to help it do so. Finally, at the initiative of the ABC under David Hill, Australia Television began in 1993. As the Labor government was reluctant to fund this new activity, the agreement was that it would basically be self-supporting. It thus became the first ABC service to carry advertising. Because of this, and because there was a widespread suspicion that it would divert resources from domestic services and from Radio Australia, Australia Television was viewed with suspicion by many in the ABC. However, after an uncertain and troubled start, it had begun to achieve stability and to build up its audiences (and advertisers) when in 1996 the Howard Coalition government announced it would be sold to the private sector. The government also announced the Mansfield Inquiry into the role of the ABC, and implemented funding cuts of $56  million immediately and more in the future. Submissions to the Mansfield Inquiry showed that the government had unleashed a massive vote of public confidence in the ABC. Bob Mansfield did not address Radio Australia’s position directly—at this time, it was reaching an estimated four to five million listeners weekly at a total cost of $25 million a year. Rather, Mansfield’s simple mantra was to assert that international broadcasting came at the cost of the domestic broadcasting, and that the latter should be the priority. Minister Richard Alston immediately endorsed the Mansfield report; however, Radio Australia survived the onslaught. There was a vigorous campaign in its support, but more importantly, because the government lacked

control of the Senate, there was no attempt to alter the ABC Act in line with Mansfield’s recommendations. Instead, the government simply removed most of the international broadcaster’s resources. Radio Australia survived, but as a shell of its former self. Radio Australia has shown considerable resilience in the years since, and has moved into different delivery technologies. It continues today with a smaller range of services, and its capacity for new ventures in the dynamic international media environment is extremely limited by severe resource constraints. As an established international broadcaster, with a high level of goodwill and credibility, and extensive multilingual broadcasting skills, it should have been well placed to move into the emerging delivery platforms. Within a few years, following the fall of President Suharto’s regime in Indonesia and the outbreak of conflict in East Timor, the Australian government started to rediscover its interest in international broadcasting. The Seven Network, which had taken over Australia Television, announced that it would close the service. Soon afterwards, the government announced tenders for a new television service, and when the ABC was not among the initial applicants, approached it to become involved. ABC Asia-Pacific received more government financial support than the old Australia Television ever did. The service, now known as the Australia Network, was put out to tender, with Sky News Australia challenging the ABC for the contract. After a chaotic policy process, the tender was abandoned, and in December 2011 it was announced the service would remain with the ABC. REFs: K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983) and Whose ABC? (2006); S. Revill and R. Tiffen, The Decline and Fall of Radio Australia (1997), http://www.rodneytiffen.com.au. RODNEY TIFFEN

R AD IO C O M ED Y Radio comedy in Australia showed clear evidence of its origins in two older forms of mass media: theatre and film. The broad, laconic view of life that had come to be seen as distinctively Australian translated well to radio from the beginning. One early radio success, Dad and Dave (1937–53), started life as a book before becoming a stage show and a series of movies 40 years before the George Edwards Players brought the characters to commercial radio. Though most Australians were urban and suburban dwellers by the time the radio program went to air, the image of the battlers on the land remained a cherished part of rural mythology, and their alleged shrewdness, dry humour and puncturing of city pretensions were all good for a laugh. Another strand of theatre—vaudeville— also worked well on radio, especially when

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radio comedy performed and recorded in front of a live audience. During and immediately after World War  II, stage comedian Roy Rene brought his persona of Mo, the leering, spluttering master of double entendre, to radio as part of the variety show Calling the Stars (1942–52). Radio extended Rene’s career, and many of his catchphrases entered the language, including ‘Strike me lucky’, ‘Cop this, young Harry’ and ‘You little trimmer’. Something of Mo’s style and persona were transferred to television by Graham Kennedy: an important link here was Fred Parsons, who wrote scripts for them both. George Wallace Junior was another stage comedian whose work transferred successfully to radio—in his case, via several feature films. Unlike Rene, Wallace was primarily a physical comedian and dancer, and he found radio challenging. Unable to use his physical skills, Wallace’s comedy depended on puns and his deliberately irritating persona as the working-class larrikin George ‘Wallaby’ Wallace, chief identity of the small town of Bullamakanka (a name that has survived to signify the back of beyond) in such programs as the George Wallace Road Show during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Traditional stage pantomime gained a new audience with the radio domestic comedy Mrs ’Obbs (1940–50), created by and starring the English-born vaudeville comedian Dan Agar. Mrs ’Obbs came straight from the tradition of pantomime dames. The show’s plotlines were simple, with the strongest running gag being the determination of Mrs ’Obbs’ husband Alfie (Owen Ainley) to remain unemployed. Alfie supplied the working-class comedy while Mrs ’Obbs specialised in malapropisms. A spin-off from the schoolroom sketch, a hardy perennial that had long been a staple of stage vaudeville, was Yes, What?, written by Rex ‘Wacka’ Dawe. It was made between 1936 and 1941, and repeated endlessly through the 1950s and on some regional stations into the 1980s. This classroom comedy featured a fussy schoolmaster and his class, consisting of three students: Rupert Bottomly, Cuthbert Horace Greenbottle and Ronald George Stanforth. What made it date less quickly than other forms of gag comedy was the quality and variety of the jokes, ranging from puns and fast one-liners to Bottomly’s long, almost surreal explanations of his failure to do his homework. Bottomly was played by Ralph Peterson, later a well-known comedy scriptwriter and playwright. In the early 1950s, the big vaudeville and variety shows went into recess as sponsors turned their attention to stunt and game shows such as Can You Take It?, Cop The Lot and It Pays to Be Funny, which were much cheaper to write and produce. With the promise of cash prizes, members of the studio audience agreed to perform various stunts in public, such as trying to give away pound notes for 10-shilling ones, or wheeling a dwarf in a pram through the streets

of Sydney at lunchtime. The masters of the audience stunt shows were Bob Dyer and Jack Davey, whose radio programs—with their mixture of quiz and comedy—lasted until the late 1950s, when television began to supplant radio as Australia’s major source of entertainment. Yet situation and domestic comedy persisted. An important feature of radio programs in the United States and Britain, such programs were also extremely popular in Australia. One of the earliest and most genteel local examples, which went through several changes of name during the 21 years of its existence, was Fred and Maggie, first broadcast in 1932. This was a light-hearted soap opera based around ordinary family life, and its humour came from the guilelessness of the main characters rather than the script’s verbal wit. Its stars, Edward Howell and Therese Desmond, had settled in Australia from England, and there was very little that was overtly Australian in their style or presentation. Fred and Maggie (and its other incarnations, including Fred and Maggie Everybody and Mr and Mrs Everybody) was heard on more than 50 radio stations across Australia in its heyday, and more than 3000 episodes were produced: Edward Howell was the original writer before yielding the typewriter to Gwen Meredith, who subsequently wrote Australia’s longest-running serial, the ABC’s Blue Hills. Howell and Desmond were well-known in both New Zealand and Australia. Another hugely popular Australian situation comedy was derived from two of the best-known comedy characters in the United States, and subsequently the world. Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead, together with their children and Dagwood’s boss, Mr Dithers, had been part of a syndicated comic strip since the 1930s. A series of feature films starring Blondie and Dagwood were made in the 1940s, and there was also a successful US radio series. Australian producer Ron Beck reworked some of the American scripts for Australian radio in 1952, but received a letter threatening legal action from the agent of Chic Young, the creator of the comic strip and the characters. The Australian show, Blondie, folded. However, Willie Fennell, who had played Dagwood, reworked the original idea into a show based on an Australian family: the bumbling and henpecked Dexter Dutton, his wife Jessie, his children, Ashley and Janeie, and Dexter’s boss and his wife, the Wilmots. He wrote and produced Life With Dexter (1953–64) and employed the cast, maintaining control over one of the most successful situation comedies of the 1950s. What kept the show on the air was the fact that the Dutton family were embroiled in situations that resonated with many suburban Australians. A departure from this kind of comedy was the occasionally surreal Idiot Weekly (1958– 62). With the huge popularity of the BBC’s

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radio documentary The Goon Show among Australian listeners, the ABC decided it wanted something similar, so Spike Milligan was hired to write an Australian version. The Goon Show had ceased production in the United Kingdom some years before, and Milligan’s scripts for the new program displayed much of the same absurdity and surrealism. Some of Milligan’s Goon Show characters also appeared in the Australian version. However, Idiot Weekly was consciously local, with references to topical events and political figures of the time. With the coming of television in 1956, a lot of comedy migrated to the new medium: it was no longer possible to have a career solely as a radio comedy writer, as so many writers—Jack Davey, George Foster, Rex Dawe, Hal Lashwood, Dorothy Foster and many others—had done. The craft had created its own discipline and its own legends. Jack Davey, one of the most prolific gag writers the medium produced, as well as arguably being radio’s greatest ad-lib comedian, would pull the page of a script from his typewriter, grab a ruler and say: ‘There has to be a gag in every inch of this’. And actor and writer Dorothy Foster (who wrote in and starred in the long-running radio series Ada and Elsie with Rita Pauncefort and wrote much else) said as late as the 1980s that she always wrote a joke a day to keep her hand in. From the 1960s onwards, comedy programs on radio became short sketches and quick-fire gags, usually delivered by popular announcers. Radio comedy became sharper and more satirical, with shows such as Mike Carlton’s Friday News Review (1980s) and How Green Was My Cactus (1986– ) ridiculing the politics and politicians of the day. Comedian satirists such as Roy and HG (John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver), Fred Dagg (John Clarke) and Merrick and Rosso (Tim Watts and Merrick Ross) honed their acts on FM radio during the 1980s, often on the ABC’s Triple J network rather than commercial stations. So too did writers Gary Reilly and Tony Sattler, whose RS Productions wrote and put together several very successful comedy series for ABC Radio, including Chuck Chunder of the Space Patrol (1975), Doctors and Nurses (1976) and The Naked Vicar Show (1976–77), which later moved to television. Reilly and Sattler excelled in sending up the clichés of entertainment genres. One multimedia star was Captain Goodvibes, The Pig of Steel, an icon of 1970s surfing culture and the brainchild of cartoonist Tony Edwards. He and Tony Barrell brought The Pig of Steel to Triple J in the late 1970s. The freedom that radio gives writers to invent whole worlds of imagination has made it ideal for comedy, and the forms of comedy have shape-shifted over the years. So have Australians’ perceptions of what is funny: early jokes about Aboriginal people, gays and women characteristic of the 1940s ‘big’ vaudeville shows

are now considered tiresome, if not downright offensive. With the increasing globalisation of media—and perhaps shorter attention spans— quick-fire parody and satire are much more obvious features of radio comedy in the 21st century. At the same time, it seems, gag comedy will never go out of style. REF: J. Kent, Out of the Bakelite Box (1983). JACQUELINE KENT

R AD IO D O C U M EN TARY We can chart a rich history of the development of documentary in purely audio form within radio broadcasting, acknowledging that this evolution runs parallel to that of film (and later television). In 1930, the documentary film had become an acknowledged category. Radio documentary was largely still in its infancy, however. The most notable of the pioneering experiments in ‘actuality’ and new ‘feature’ broadcasting came from the fledgling BBC and its Radio Research Unit. It was here that the earliest ‘feature’ documentary and reportage forms in radio were trialled, although in Berlin radio we find the first expressive usage of recorded actuality edited together to create a ‘hear picture’ (Weekend, 1931). In Australia, very little programming could be regarded as documentary in form in this sense until at least the end of World War II, although we find the beginnings of documentary expression in radio emerging in some early special ‘features’, or radio dramas based on real events and ‘actualities’, and in ‘radio pictures’, ‘reports’ and ‘panoramas’ made possible with the introduction, in 1938, of the first mobile recording studios and vans. Early Australian radio documentary can be traced to various ‘descriptive broadcasts’ made by the ABC and commercial radio stations, and in dramatised ‘feature’ programs that continued to evolve throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The term ‘features’ was adopted in Australian radio to refer to documentaries. At the ABC, features and documentary productions were heavily influenced before 1970 by BBC models and approaches. In 1948, senior BBC features producer D.G. Bridson visited Australia, assisting and advising in the establishment of the ABC’s first Features Department. In Australia, he made several dramatic documentaries, working with actor Peter Finch and composer John Antill. Commercial stations and production houses also produced features before the war: examples of US-influenced documentary series included The March of Time and Here are the Facts. During the war, the role of talks and features became more important: many of the earliest examples served to boost morale and were mildly propagandistic. Other forms of feature emerged in protean forms: they offered the first

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radio documentary ‘radio movies’ to be composed of large ‘scenes’ of recorded actuality. In early 1941, Lawrence H. Cecil, a distinguished radio drama producer, and the pioneering war correspondent Chester Wilmot were present when the Australians attacked Bardia. They recorded the battle for the ABC’s ‘Field Broadcasting Unit’, possibly a world first. In the immediate post-war period, war correspondent Frank Legg, assisted by James J. Donnelly, and Bill MacFarlane of the ABC Mobile Unit delivered a notable series, Theirs Be The Glory (December 1945), obtaining first-hand witness of battles in the New Guinea campaign. From the inauguration of the ABC’s Feature Department, increasing numbers of feature programs were made over the next decade, written by an expanding group of talented authors nurtured by the ABC, including Ruth Park, D’Arcy Niland, Dymphna Cusack, Diana and Mungo MacCallum, Charmian Clift, George Johnston, Ralph Petersen and Colin Free. In one year (1948-49), the number of hours devoted to features made by the ABC increased tenfold. Colin Simpson was one of the voices heard in a new series, Australian Walkabout, which commenced in 1947. It was notable for its early usage of wire recorders capturing selections of actuality. Simpson recorded these expressly ‘authoritative’ documentaries all over Australia before he left the ABC. In Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands, Aboriginal rituals and songs never before heard on Australian radio were captured, along with Australian birdlife. Ivan Smith’s ‘documentary’ voice and music composition Death of a Wombat won the ABC its first Prix Italia (1959). The ABC was not unique in producing documentaries in the ‘golden age’ of radio. In Sydney in 1946, Tom Jacobs joined 2SM as its first news editor, but experimented with sound pictures about Alcoholics Anonymous, life in prison, an emergency ward operation and life inside a mental institution. In 1949, he travelled to 28 countries over six months, recording features, and interviews with George Bernard Shaw, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Pandit Nehru and General Franco. The real opportunity for documentary on radio came with the invention of high-quality manipulable tape and the portable tape recorder. But by this time, television was stealing audiences from radio. John Thompson was recognised in the 1950s and 1960s for editing together hundreds of hours of taped interviews into detailed audio portraits of mostly literary figures and politicians for the ABC. These montages continue to speak vividly and intimately to us in the present. While the 1970s saw huge leaps forward in the documentary form, aligned with new recording developments and a zeitgeist change that saw broadcasters intent on breaking free of the studio and the more literary ‘written fea-

tures’, only the public broadcasters continued to nurture the craft of documentaries and features into the 1980s and beyond. The growth of news and tape had opened the way for a few commercial stations to experiment with current affairs documentaries in the 1970s (such as Steve Liebmann at 2SM and the Walkley Award-winning Stephen Sailah at 2WS), but this was short lived. A ‘new wave’, echoing developments in cinema-verité techniques and styles, finally allowed radio documentarians to become more like the auteurs of documentary film. The first feature-length radio documentaries to showcase ‘wild sound’ were made in Australia in the 1970s and into the 1980s. Influenced by developments in Europe, they discovered that sound could now speak for itself. The artifice of this new art form lay in making ‘real’ events into crafted, intelligible works of art. Key figures in this period included a number of ABC producers. Former ABC AM presenter Robert Peach’s The World of JK (the first Australian radio documentary to be broadcast in stereo, recreating the world of an 11-year-old Deaf boy) won the 1974 Prix Italia. Andrew McLennan introduced stereo features to ABC Classic FM. Tim (with the historian Hank Nelson) and Ros Bowden created a new Social History Unit at the ABC, almost single-handedly pioneering the oral history format for large documentary series. Richard Connolly modelled the 1970s Sunday Night Radio Two program on a French experimental radio show. Kaye Mortley’s deeply considered and beautifully rendered documentary ‘reality-fictions’ have made her one of the leading practitioners in Europe today, earning her numerous awards. Jane Ulman, working with Philip Ulman and Russell Stapleton, has produced a huge body of outstanding documentaries and dramas. Tony Barrell was a highly skilled communicator of ideas, making features of all kinds. All have a popular although never patronising approach. Barrell famously railed against what he called ‘hospital radio’ and ‘featureless radio’. His Tokyo’s Burning won a Prix Italia (Radio Documentary) for the ABC in 1995. Today, the only substantial centre for supported documentary radio production is the ABC, although the reach of these documentaries is being expanded through an international revitalisation of the field, enabled by internet distribution. Key programs where radio documentaries can be experienced, and accessed as podcasts on the ABC, include ABC Radio National’s 360documentaries; Hindsight; Encounter; Background Briefing; Sound. Music. Word; Radio Eye; Street Stories; Long Story Short; and The Listening Room. From 2014, Radio National’s Creative Audio Unit offers Soundproof and Radiotonic. Many current or retired ABC producer-authors, such as Sherre DeLys, Natalie Kestecher, Sharon Davis, Eurydice Aroney, Michelle

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radio drama Rayner, Bill Bunbury, Jane Connors, Tony MacGregor, Virginia Madsen, Andrew McLennan, Robyn Ravlich, Roz Cheney, Nick Franklin, Lyn Gallacher and Cathy Peters, have played either leadership roles or produced critically acclaimed or influential exemplars of the genre. Independent producers (and some internationals like Jean-Claude Kuner and Gregory Whitehead) have always figured in this field, and recent notable independent work has come from Kyla Brettle, Siobhán McHugh, Martin Thomas, Tom Morton, John Rose, Hamish Sewell and Alana Valentine. Community radio has always made radio documentaries, but generally the high points of the art form have not been reached consistently on any one program, although good documentary craft has been in evidence across the sector since the 1980s. The program All the Best on Sydney’s FBi offers many innovative and creative examples of reality-based audio storytelling. Like most of these programs in Australia, the work is now open to a new accessibility because of podcasting, and on-demand streaming. A second new wave or renaissance has been in evidence since the 2000s around the world because of the expanded digital environment for radio and high-content programs through streaming and download, although those who allocate the funding may still not yet appreciate the ‘long tail’ rewards of this genre, or the potential future value of the ‘documentary imagination’ as derived from a rich sound culture developed over 80 years within Australian radio. REFs: T. Barrell, ‘Torque Radio: The Radio Feature’, in S. Ahern (ed.), Making Radio (2011); V. Madsen, ‘A Call to Listen: The “New” Documentary in Radio— Encountering “Wild Sound” and the Film Sonore’, Historical Jnl of Film, Radio and Television, 30(3) (2010) and ‘Written in Air: Experiments in Radio’, in G. Priest (ed.), Experimental Music (2009). VIRGINIA MADSEN

R A D IO DRAMA Radio drama is a form of (mostly) scripted, dramatic storytelling, rendered through exclusively acoustic means; it depends on narration, dialogue, music and sound effects to tell the story, establish character, create mood and engage listeners. Radio drama was a core element from the very beginning of radio broadcasting in Australia across both the commercial sector and the ABC, and from the mid-1930s through to the late 1950s was the dominant form of popular entertainment in Australia and internationally. By 1931, small radio drama groups were working out of the studios of the Australian Broadcasting Company (the commercial precursor to the Australian Broadcasting Commission) in Melbourne and Sydney, performing a mix of popular stage scripts, variety shows

and occasional original radio dramas scripted by local writers. The establishment of the ABC in 1932 saw a substantial increase in the production of radio drama. By 1935, the ABC was broadcasting more than 930 hours of radio plays annually. Many of the plays were radio versions of stage works or adaptations of novels and stories, but also included works by new local writers. The ABC also ran many hours of popular serials; while many were adapted from popular novels, original scripts by staff writers (such as Edmund Barclay) were also popular. These were genre entertainments—dramatised court trials, historical dramas, adventure stories and family sagas. Developments on commercial radio followed a similar trajectory, with a rapid growth in the production of plays and serials through the 1930s. In Sydney, former vaudevillian George Edwards and his assistant, Nell Stirling, a onetime chorus dancer and his future wife, were the first stars of the medium. By 1934 George Edwards Players was responsible for writing and performing five hugely popular serials six days a week on Sydney’s 2GB; in 1937 came their most popular serial, Dad and Dave. Actors playing the lead characters of popular serials became household names. Through the 1930s and 1940s, and into the 1950s, serials with complex storylines, presented in daily 15-minute episodes, anchored the schedules of commercial broadcasters. Dr Paul, based on the American original, lightly rewritten for local consumption, and produced by Grace Gibson Productions, was heard daily on commercial radio stations around Australia from 1949 to 1971. On ABC Radio, Blue Hills, a multi-generational rural family saga, ran from 1949 to 1976, with all 5795 episodes written by Gwen Meredith. By the late 1930s, radio drama was showbusiness—and it was a big business, underwritten by advertising. Large advertising agencies like J. Walter Thompson, George Patterson and Lintas set up radio production units and owned the major radio theatres (where companies like George Edwards Players performed), which were branded by a key sponsor, such as Lux, Colgate-Palmolive or Lever—hence the designation ‘soap opera’. While Sydney and Melbourne were the main production centres, writers were active across the country. Stories abound of episodes for serials being written in a day and going live to air without even a perfunctory rehearsal. Successful actors had constant work, frequently recording or going live to air with several shows a day. The gossip, glamour and hyperactivity of the world of commercial radio drama was brilliantly satirised by Sumner Locke Elliott in his stage play Invisible Circus (1946). Before the rise of radio drama, the evolution of ‘a national theatre’ had been haphazard and fragmentary, with only a handful of works of

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radio drama substance enduring for long. Access to live theatre was limited by the capacity of theatres, touring schedules and the stamina of the performers. While cinema was popular, access was again physically limited, and overwhelmingly the films were imports: no Australian writer or actor could make a living in the local film industry. With the development of the radio drama industry came opportunities for hundreds of actors and writers. And while much of what went to air was adapted from scripts imported from the United States or Britain, dozens of new plays were also being written, and a mass Australian audience was hearing Australian stories told in Australian accents for the first time. These developments meant writers and actors were able to trade on skills and popularity gained in radio to enable the production of new Australian plays. In many instances, original dramas had their first production on the radio; sometimes the radio production was the only one, and regular radio commissions provided writers of all kinds with good fees and large audiences. Sumner Locke Elliott was one such writer, beginning his career with George Edwards Players, and he gained fame writing and acting in a number of successful radio serials. He went on to enjoy a successful writing and acting career in New York. The development of a support infrastructure for writers and a national theatre is inseparable from the burgeoning of radio drama. The Playwrights Advisory Board (PAB), established in 1938, was the brainchild of two young writers, Rex Rienits and Leslie Rees, the ABC’s first federal drama editor. The PAB helped negotiate fees for writers, provided professional assessment of scripts, ran competitions and advocated for writers and the theatre, notably in a number of prominent cases of censorship. Nearly all of the PAB membership wrote both for stage and radio. There was intense lobbying (notably by H.C. Coombs) through he 1950s for government support for the theatre. In 1954, Coombs led the establishment of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust, with the aim of supporting the development of Australian theatre through its own productions but also by arranging tours of theatre from overseas. Its first director, Hugh Hunt, was imported from England. His successor was another Englishman, Neil Hutchison, head of drama and features at the ABC. Among the thousands of radio dramas written in Australia in the ‘golden age’ of radio are works by writers whose reputations rest on their work as novelists, poets, stage writers and actors: Ruth Park, George Johnston, Hal Porter, Betty Roland, Ernestine Hill, M. Barnard Eldershaw, Coral Lansbury, Colin Thiele and Jessica Anderson all wrote radio plays between 1934 and 1960. Overwhelmingly, their work was heard on ABC Radio. With its mandate to ‘educate, inform and entertain’ and to encourage the performing

arts, and its independence from commercial imperatives, the ABC took on a more explicitly ‘cultural’ character. This didn’t preclude popular success, but providing popular access to literature, music and ideas was equally important; in the mid-1930s, the ABC produced all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays. The ABC’s cultural ambition was not simply to reproduce the canonical, as was clear from the appointment of Leslie Rees as federal drama editor in 1936. Rees ran writing competitions, and secured new works from overseas for Australian production, such as Archibald MacLeish’s ambitious verse drama Fall of the City. In Australia, the work that has come to represent successful writing for radio with enduring literary value was The Fire on the Snow, written by Douglas Stewart and first broadcast by the ABC in 1941. Its subject is the doomed expedition to the South Pole led by Robert Scott in 1912. Fire on the Snow and Stewart’s other verse play, Ned Kelly (broadcast on ABC Radio in 1942) are widely acknowledge as masterpieces of radio writing. With the arrival of television in Australia in 1956, radio drama rapidly lost its mass market appeal and its commercial viability; by the 1970s, only ABC Radio was seriously involved in the production of radio drama, and the form evolved a more exclusively literary character. In May 1964, 2UW Sydney took all its remaining radio drama programs off air, and the rest of the commercials followed soon after, with the exception of one or two serials. Through the 1970s, radio drama remained a strong presence on the ABC, with several slots each week for full-length drama, a well as the daily serial (until 1976) and book readings. But by the 1980s, the position of drama on ABC Radio was less certain. While the ABC maintained its commitment to radio drama, budgets were steadily reduced, and the number and duration of timeslots for drama diminished; audience numbers also shrank. At the same time, ABC producers and writers, taking cues from developments internationally, were trying new approaches and new techniques, and a number of writers as well as performers and other artists embraced the creative possibilities of the medium and the freedom to experiment afforded by the relatively marginal status and low cost of radio production. In 1981, producer Kaye Mortley and writer-performer Gillian Jones won the Prix Futura (a prestigious radio competition held each year in Berlin) for The Flight. These sometimes radical developments did not always sit comfortably alongside the more conventional offerings that continued to make up the majority of the drama output, and audiences were divided between those seeking engagement with the new, and those happy to enjoy the familiar radio plays of the recent past.

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radio magazines But the best of the new work met with critical acclaim and peer recognition. The ABC won the prestigious international radio competition the Prix Italia three times in the 1990s: with Summer of the Aliens by Louis Nowra (1990), Lights of Jericho by Haya Husseini (1994) and Rita’s Lullaby by Merlinda Bobis (1997). This critical success didn’t translate into audience growth. Further budget and staff reductions meant that by the early 2000s it was not possible to sustain local, original drama, offer extended script development or engage the best local writers on a regular basis. In relative terms, radio drama was by now an expensive product. With one weekly drama slot remaining (on ABC Radio National) and a small production staff, the ABC made the decision to disband the Radio Drama Unit at the end of 2012, ending 80 years of regular production and broadcast of radio drama on the ABC. However, contemporary radio drama continues to be produced on a more occasional basis, in the context of the broader creative brief of Radio National’s Creative Audio Unit (est. 2014), which commissions, produces and broadcasts a range of performance and text-based audio work. REFs: R. Lane and National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, The Golden Age of Australian Radio Drama 1923–1960 (1994); L. Rees, The Making of Australian Drama (1973). TONY MACGREGOR

R A D IO MA GA Z I NES In the years before World War I, more than 250 radio periodicals were available at one time or another in Australia. Most early radio stations were of an amateur experimental nature, and a large number of magazines promoted this advancing technology. Radio pioneers formed peer organisations, which often produced their own periodicals. Wireless in Australia, a ‘callbook’-style listing of known Australian transmitters, including approximately 400 amateur experimental stations, 300 ship stations and 30 land or government stations, was published in 1914 by the Wireless Society of Victoria. Sea, Land and Air was published monthly in Sydney from 1918 until 1923, when it became Radio in Australia and New Zealand, which continued until 1927. This publication was the official journal of the world’s oldest national radio society, the Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA), founded in 1910 to represent the interests of wireless experimenters. Australia’s first female electrical engineer, (Florence) Violet McKenzie (1890–1922), launched Wireless Weekly from her radio shop in the Royal Arcade, Sydney. The first edition, published on 4 August 1922, described itself as a ‘journal devoted to the interests of Wireless Enthusiasts both Amateur and Professional’. The magazine carried technical information,

news from radio clubs, details of WIA meetings and program listings. A dominant radio magazine in Melbourne was the Listener In, launched by the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) in 1925 as a weekly of ‘wireless news from all quarters’. There were occasional competitors, such as Radio Times (1936–c.1950), previously the Australasian Electrical Times, created by a former Herald journalist, Harry Drysdale Bett. Tasmanian radio programs were published in the short-lived Tasmanian Radio-Talk as well as in Victorian newspapers. Queensland Radio News appeared on 2 February 1925, approximately six months before Aand B-class broadcasting began in Queensland, and continued until 1934. Produced by the Queensland Radio Transmitters League before becoming an ‘official organ’ of the WIA, QTC (1927–31) was named after the Morse Code for ‘I have messages for you’. There were several different types of radio magazines. Among those for amateurs and enthusiasts were the Boys’ Wireless News (1924– 25), published in Sydney, and C.Q. (‘calling any station’), published by the Australian Radio Transmitters League in the late 1920s. Major newspaper groups—particularly the HWT and its affiliates—continued to move into radio publishing, as demonstrated by Teleradio (est. 1933) in Brisbane, the Broadcaster (est. 1935) in Perth and Radio Call (est. 1937) in Adelaide. Technical magazines, affiliated with the new electronics manufacturing, servicing and training organisations, included the Amalgamated Wireless Valve Company’s Radiotronics (1935–69), Mullard Outlook (1958–1970) and Philips Electrical Industries’ Miniwatt Digest (1961–70). An engineer and founder of a radio college, Oswald Mingay (1895–1973), embraced all aspects of radio publishing, producing the Radio Retailer of Australia (est. 1933, now known as Tech Trader), Broadcasting Business (1934–48), which became the unofficial voice of the commercial radio sector, and radio yearbooks. The Hollywood-inspired Radio Pictorial of Australia (1935–52) focused on ‘personalities’ and ‘stars’. In 1939, Sydney’s daily newspapers refused to continue publishing details of ABC programs for free, prompting the launch of the broadcaster’s own ABC Weekly, which continued until 1959. Also in 1939, Wireless Weekly became a purely program weekly and its technical articles were separated into a monthly magazine, Radio and Hobbies. There were signs that some Australian radio magazines were already in decline before the advent of television in 1956. Dedicated radio magazines either closed down—partly because people increasingly looked to daily newspapers for radio programs—or were merged with television magazines. The Listener In became Listener In-TV in 1955, and interstate editions of TV-Radio Week were launched through the period 1957–58.

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radio news commentators By the 1960s, Radio and Hobbies was describing itself as ‘a national magazine of radio, television, hobbies and popular science’, and even reporting on the latest developments in the ‘space race’. It morphed into Electronics Australia in 1965, which was published until 2001, making it one of the longest-running radio magazines in the world, with many loyal readers who collected extensive libraries of Australia’s premier popular electronics magazine. The WIA continues to publish an annual callbook and 11 issues annually of Amateur Radio (first published in 1933). The magazine includes projects to build, reviews of equipment, updates on regulations, news from each of the states and contributions from readers. It features historical accounts and profiles, as well as regular obituaries with the gently euphemistic title of ‘Silent Key’. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); C. Jones, Something in the Air (1995); W. McGhie, Amateur Radio Magazines 1933–1939 (CD) (2008). ANDREW MASON

RADI O NE W S C OM M ENTATORS Australian news commentators, a feature of both the ABC and commercial radio, typically focused on domestic politics and international affairs. They were drawn from a variety of backgrounds, including journalism and universities; Wireless Weekly ruminated in 1936 that ‘playful professors were pleased to be let off the academic chain’. Some commentators had diverse on-air roles: Captain J.M. Prentice, a former Army officer, was familiar to Sydney children as ‘Uncle Jack’ on 2BL and 2UW. He presented classical music along with anti-communist and pro-Japanese talks. Offering limited news services during the inter-war years, stations encouraged the art of news commentary. Some of this was anonymous. The News Behind the News began on national ABC relay from Melbourne in 1932. ‘The Watchman’ was E.A. Mann, who in the 1929 federal election had lost the seat of Perth after helping to bring down the leader of the Nationalists, S.M. Bruce. What became the ABC appointed a ‘lectures manager’, but he was an early casualty of the Depression and was replaced by a National Talks Advisory Committee, composed of academics who were experienced in speaking on air. In the commercial sector, Dr W.G. Goddard emerged as a prominent commentator. On 4BC Brisbane and other Queensland stations from 1934, Goddard advocated that listeners establish ‘Round Table Clubs’ for the discussion of international affairs. In 1935, the Workers’ Weekly accused another commentator (‘A Plan Speaking Man’), on Sydney’s Catholic station 2SM, of encouraging the formation of a fascist state. The 2GB News Review, heard nightly from 1937, was promoted as ‘fearless in exposing hypocrisy, sham, and subterfuge’. Truth exposed 2GB’s ‘Reviewer’ as the editor of the

Sunday Sun, Eric Baume. R.G. Watt, secretary of the Australian League of Nations Union, embraced radio’s role in his almost Wellsian mission of ‘world education’, and his talks on Sydney ABC and commercial radio were discursive rather than opinionated. According to Percy Spender, assistant federal Treasurer, commentators were ‘men of ability’ who were in ‘direct touch with the people’. Baume and 2GB’s Charles Cousens were open about being provocative. ‘At least when people attack me, I have made them think,’ remarked Baume. In 1938, ‘The Sentinel’ (Major-General Sir Thomas Blamey) began presenting Sunday-night commentaries on 3UZ Melbourne. Blamey warned of the dangers posed by Germany and Japan until October 1939, when he resigned to take command of the Second AIF. He had obviously been signed to compete with ‘The Watchman’, whose booming voice and denunciations of appeasement were well known throughout the nation. By late 1938, Baume’s condemnation of appeasement were attracting, in the words of a nervous Associated Newspapers Ltd executive, ‘a lot of criticism in Canberra’, as well as complaints from the German consul-general. Associated Newspapers responded by refusing its editors the right to broadcast. In December, the Postmaster-General (PMG), A.G. Cameron, briefly revoked the licence of Sydney labour station 2KY after objecting to J.K. Morley’s criticism of the Lyons Coalition government’s action over the strike of wharf labourers at Port Kembla, and his allegations of government interference with trade union communications. From September 1939, Mann was subject to censorship on the orders of the Menzies Coalition government. Goddard’s wartime talks, which criticised Australia’s defence preparedness, also came under surveillance. The PMG floated the possibility of a regulation that would compel all news commentators to reveal their identities. In late 1940, having been named in parliament and deprived of his regular session, Mann resigned from the ABC—and was immediately snapped up by 3UZ and affiliated stations. A 1943 survey showed that half the people in Sydney listened to ‘The Watchman’ at lunchtime on 2UW, compared with 28 per cent who tuned in to his more temperate successors on 2FC. That year, the ABC launched News Review, modelled on the BBC’s program of the same name. It featured recordings from war correspondents, interviews and short commentaries. During the war, the voices of women became more prominent on air. In 1939–40, Joseph Lyons’ widow, Dame Enid, presented Sunday-night talks on the Macquarie Network. In 1942, former Prime Minister (Sir) Robert Menzies turned to 2UE Sydney and 3AW Melbourne to keep himself before the public and refine his political philosophy, famously speaking about ‘The Forgotten People’ in 1944.

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radio, australian capital territory After a period in military intelligence during the war, Captain Prentice wrote bulletins for a proto-fascist auxiliary and returned to 2UW, where he despatched letters on ‘J.M. Prentice—World Affairs’ letterhead. W.G. Goddard’s commentaries seem to have continued on 2UW and 4BC until the early 1950s, but his campaign for an honour in recognition of his wartime broadcasting activities was ignored by the Menzies government. Regardless of their political leanings, intelligence connections and shameless self-promotion, the pair’s interests in Asia brought a unique perspective to Australia’s commercial airwaves for three decades. In 1952, Eric Baume returned to 2GB to present This I Believe. The ‘talk jockeys’ profiled by the Bulletin in 1965, including Baume and Frank Chamberlain (who presented Canberra Comment on the Macquarie Network) and newer recruits like Carolyn Bernsten and Dorothy Gordon Jenner (‘Andrea’), occupied a kind of middle ground between news commentators, disc jockeys and talkback hosts. Two years later, talkback radio was legalised, ushering in a new generation of radio presenters, and new forms of political communication on Australian radio. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

R A D IO, AUST RAL I A N CAPITAL TERRITORY At 8 p.m. on 14 November 1931, P.E. Deane, the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, addressed the fledgling national capital through 2CA, its brand new station. A.J. (Jack) Ryan (1897–1984), an astute engineer, had cobbled together a transmitter from disposal stores, defunct receivers, T-model Ford parts and a specimen jar from the Institute of Anatomy. The entire 2CA operation was crammed into a small room behind Ryan’s radio and electrical store in suburban Kingston. The famous, the powerful and the quirky gravitated to the only broadcast microphone in Canberra. Charles Kingsford Smith flew down in June 1932 to receive his knighthood, and 2CA listeners were delighted to be told ‘Just call me Smithy’. Ryan juggled store and station precariously for a little over a year before taking on a 16-year-old farm lad as a broadcast cadet. George Barlin (1916– ) was an unexpected success, and together they built a following. Ryan broadcast from inside the lion’s cage of Wirth’s Circus and relayed the Melbourne Cup down an illegal landline. The teenage Barlin scripted Ben and Sam, one of radio’s very early serials, performed most of the voices and wrote 2CA’s daily horoscope. Their versions of Dad and Dave and The Hospital Hour pre-dated better known clones on the ABC and Sydney’s 2GB. With a tenfold power increase to 500 watts in 1933, the station was moved to Molonglo (now

Fyshwick). In its tiny building on a knoll soon called Radio Hill, Barlin grew in confidence and competence. When Denison Estates Ltd bought out Jack Ryan’s controlling interest in late 1936, Barlin and Ryan remained. The station’s power would increase again to 2000 watts in 1938, and it would become a showpiece for Denison’s Macquarie Network. On 23 December 1938, the ABC opened its new regional station, 2CY, in Canberra. At the same time, Macquarie was making a major splash—and major losses—on 2CA, and a disheartened Ryan left in 1941. 2CA chairman Clive Ogilvy took a punt and invited the 25-year-old Barlin to manage his Canberra flagship. It paid off. Through the war years and beyond, George Barlin built 2CA into a thriving enterprise, as well as rescuing other struggling regionals for Macquarie. The ABC Commissioners had long sought funding for a second network, but in vain— until an exception was made for Canberra, where the ABC opened 2CN (now 666 ABC) in January 1953. Parliamentary broadcasting had begun in 1946, so Canberrans could now join the public gallery without leaving home. And so the capital airwaves remained until 31  October 1975, when a second commercial station, 2CC, went to air. The new energy of the Whitlam Labor government catalysed change. Community radio was opening up, and students at the Australian National University were quick to extend their on-campus station. 2XX went to air on 2 July 1976, a heady mix of experimental music and student opinion. In 2000 it converted to FM. Community radio would be first to benefit from the new FM band. Canberra’s ArtSound 92.7 began broadcasting in the early 1980s as Canberra Stereo Public Radio. Other community stations followed early in the new millennium, including the multilingual service CMS 91.1, which had used 2XX and ArtSound until being granted its own full licence in 2001. Valley FM 89.5 serves the Tuggeranong Valley, while 1WAY FM Christian community station first went to air 15 July 2000. A stayer on the old AM band was 1RPH (Radio for the Print Handicapped), broadcasting from 5 October 1992. The commercial radio landscape had also tilted in the meantime. The Supplementary Licence scheme, announced with a bang in 1980, had ended in a whimper. The plan was to offer supplementary FM licences to existing AM stations. In the end, the winners were few, but included both 2CA and 2CC. Each opened their new FM stations at 8 a.m. on 27 February 1988, adding excitement and colour to Canberra’s airwaves during the Bicentennial year. 2CA’s new station, FM104 (now 104.7), specialised in recent and contemporary hits. Along with 2CA, it was taken over by Austereo in April that year. 2CC’s supplementary licence resulted in a new FM station, KIX106, identified since 1995

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radio, new south wales as MIX106.3. Its playlist was designed for a similar demographic to FM104’s, and the two have long enjoyed a ratings battle with 666 ABC. The Australian Radio Network, owners of 2CC and MIX106.3, joined forces with Austereo in the mid-1990s to blend the two successful FM stations into a joint venture ownership, while selling off 2CC and 2CA to the Capital Radio Network. Meanwhile, choice continues to grow on both bands. ABC Classic FM, Triple J and NewsRadio have been added to the original ABC services (now Canberra 846AM and 666  ABC Canberra). SBS’s Radio One and Radio Two can also be heard on the AM and FM bands respectively. And finally, if these options do not satisfy, the internet and digital radio bring many simulcast and new program options to the avid listener today. Wireless in the Australian Capital Territory has come a long way from Jack Ryan’s anatomy jar. REFs: G. Barlin, A Quirk of Fate (2002); B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); K. Inglis, This is The ABC (1983); W. Mac, Don’t Touch That Dial (2005). RICHARD BEGBIE

RADI O, NE W S O UTH WALES When Miss Dorothy Deering stepped up to the 2SB microphone at 8 p.m. on 23 November 1923, her choice of opening number was unfortunate. ‘Farewell in Desert’ suggested a melancholy ending, rather than the rousing launch of a medium that would dominate Australia’s public conversation within a decade. Experimental broadcast was already well established in New South Wales. Wireless knew no bounds, and the demonstrations of (Sir) Ernest Fisk and Charles MacLurcan had excited interest far beyond the city limits of Sydney. Debate preceding the launch of governmentregulated public broadcast had been dominated by fears of an Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) or federal government monopoly, so when the industry-backed 2SB (soon to change its call-sign to 2BL) finally went to air as the nation’s first official station, attention could turn to more pressing matters. Initially, ‘listeners-in’ could only buy a set fixed to one station. Within six weeks, Sydney’s Sun was describing these sealed sets as ‘wireless walls’ and asking why the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) should not allow open-tuning receivers and ‘charge a blanket fee to cover all broadcasting’. A conference at Sydney’s GPO in April 1924 set the course for change, and on 11 July Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce tabled a new set of broadcast regulations. Open sets would become the norm, and broadcast stations were to be designated either A- or B-class. B-class stations would derive all revenue from advertising; A-class

stations, while allowed limited advertising, would be largely financed by government-imposed licence fees. Sydney would have two A-class stations: 2BL and 2FC. Oswald Mingay, the energetic radio manager of Sydney’s Burgin Electric Company, always claimed the company station 2BE as the nation’s first B-class station, giving an opening date of 7 November 1924. Contemporary news reports suggest the date was nearer to mid-1925. Like many similar ventures, 2BE would not endure. The B-class broadcasters depended mainly on sales of radios and parts for survival, struggling with restrictions on transmitting power, and especially with retail reluctance to spend on advertising. In January 1925, 2UE began operating from C.V. Stevenson’s Maroubra home, and today remains the nation’s oldest surviving commercial station. That month, the first regional station in New South Wales—2HD Newcastle—was also in action. Then, in February, Otto Sandel launched 2UW, while in October 2KY went to air, the first in the world, it bragged, to be owned and operated by the labour movement. The last of the early Sydney stations, the Theosophical Society’s 2GB, began operations in August 1926. Royalty demands from AWA (on patents and equipment) and from the Australasian Performing Right Association (on performance fees) plagued the cash-strapped industry, and widespread agitation yielded a Royal Commission on Wireless. A stay was issued on new B-class licences in late 1926, before the Royal Commission examined Australian broadcasting ‘in all its aspects’ in early 1927. In 1928, a handful of the B-class stations formed an organisation that would become the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (FARB, now Commercial Radio Australia), and as the freeze on B-class licences was lifted in 1930, NSW regional stations multiplied. Bathurst station 2MK had been licensed in August 1926, and in 1930–31 stations also appeared in Albury, Moss Vale, Gunnedah, Wollongong, Broken Hill and Goulburn. The Sydney dial changed further when Archbishop Michael Kelly opened 2SM in December 1931. Change was afoot for the A-class stations as well. As licence renewals loomed, the government decided to offer all A-class licences by tender to a single company for three years. The winner would be financed from listener licence fees, and the PMG would provide all technical services. A Sydney consortium of theatre, cinema and music publishing interests formed the Australian Broadcasting Company and won the contract. By the end of 1930, this company, headquartered in Sydney, had taken over all A-class stations. Staples like sport, music, lectures and drama were already well established, and religious programming remained prominent. ‘Personalities’ were already emerging. Another performer

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radio, new south wales on 2SB’s first night, G.A. Saunders, as ‘Uncle George’, would become one of a galaxy of radio ‘Uncles’ and ‘Aunts’. Saunders’ broadcasts from Sydney’s King’s Hall launched another early favourite: community singing concerts. The company’s decision to buy 2UW rather than renew its contract suited the new Lyons Coalition government, and on 17 May 1932 the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932 passed into law. On the evening of 1 July, Conrad Charlton announced to every state in the Commonwealth, ‘This is the Australian Broadcasting Commission’. The federal government was in control of the ABC. Sydney would remain the Commission’s base, with (Sir) Charles Lloyd Jones in the chair. National programs could now be heard alongside city stations and regional broadcasting. In 1930, Oswald Anderson pioneered a commercial radio network: the Federal Radio Network, later renamed the Commonwealth Broadcasting Network. The sharing of landline and copyright charges, and especially the allure to advertisers of a larger audience, all made sense. Throughout the 1930s, the B-class stations— by now occasionally called ‘commercials’—grew in reach and number. 2UW’s power was increased from 500 to 1500 watts, while the NSW Council of Churches was allowed 1000 watts for its new 2CH transmitter. Regional stations sprang up across the state—in Wagga Wagga, Grafton, Broken Hill, Tamworth, Katoomba, Orange, Armidale, Dubbo, Griffith, Parkes, Young and Bega (which took over Burgin Electric’s original 2BE call sign). By the outbreak of war, Lithgow, Mudgee and Muswellbrook had stations of their own. The power of advertisers was growing too. J. Walter Thompson and George Patterson Pty Ltd were the dominant advertising agencies, cooperating to fracture network loyalties and squeeze individual stations. By mid-1938, both commercial networks (the Commonwealth Broadcasting Network had been joined by the Major Network) were struggling with these conditions. Sir Hugh Denison’s new Macquarie Network would be different. While maintaining a stout independence, Macquarie affiliates would co-operate to ensure sponsored programs reached all the network’s stations, countering in some measure the agencies’ manoeuvrings. From a strong Sydney base in 2GB and 2UE, and with federal access through Canberra’s 2CA, Macquarie would become a powerhouse in commercial radio. Between 1930 and 1956, radio overtook cinema as the unchallenged universal medium of entertainment. Vaudeville performers like Jack Davey and Bob Dyer became national stars. Ambitious drama productions nurtured other stars, as Macquarie and 2UE established their own troupes of players. Sydney remained central, as Macquarie’s hometown and as base for over half of all ABC employees.

By 1956, radio had brought metropolitan Sydney and the outback into a shared, entertained and informed present. Would television now replace radio? Just when gloomy predictions were loudest, a new electronic marvel emerged. The transistor ensured that miniaturisation and portability would rescue radio. Even as it was being displaced in the living room, radio blossomed in the car, the garden, the teenage bedroom and on the beach, from Bondi to Manly. These were uncertain times. FARB was guarding its turf, and only two new NSW stations were licensed in the 1950s: 2RE Taree and 2VM Moree. Another regional station was giving early hints of a different future. By the mid-1950s, 2RG Griffith’s Continental Music Club had attracted a large following, and underscored the need for ethnic broadcasting. The experimental 2EA would be set up later in Sydney, and in 1976 become part of the new SBS. FM radio had been on the agenda for decades. Quietly undermined by commercial interests, it had got nowhere by the 1960s. But Raymond Allsop, the engineer behind Miss Deering in 1923, was a long-time FM advocate. Representing a push to reopen the case for FM transmission, he was finally granted an experimental licence in 1966. The experiments were successful, and an inquiry in the early 1970s conspired with the 1972 Whitlam election to catalyse real change. The first FM licences would go to community groups—ethnic, educational and fine music interests. On 15 December 1974, Sydney music station 2MBS FM became the country’s first fully licensed FM radio station. When the Whitlam Labor government announced 12 more licences in 1975, one of radio’s earliest ideals—non-commercial, independent community wireless services—was finally being realised. Meanwhile, Sydney’s AM stations had been competing fiercely, especially for a growing teenage audience. In 1958, 2UE introduced the country’s first daily Top 40 program, complete with disc jockeys John Laws and Bob Rogers, and charts for the fans. Ward ‘Pally’ Austin drew teens to 2UW, and by 1963 the Catholic station 2SM had moved to 24-hour programming with its team of ‘Good Guys’. Other stations struggled. In its attempt at a ‘new’ 2GB, Macquarie’s ‘Most Happy Sounds’ theme was hardly groovy. 2KY—always big on sport—could now take refuge in the familiar, and was afforded a measure of stability by its comprehensive horse racing coverage. In 1967, ‘conversation radio’ became legal. Talkback radio (as it was soon called) was never far from controversy. The novelty attracted the powerful, but it was inevitably the hosts themselves who became the stars. For decades, Laws reigned supreme in Sydney, and then across the country. Courted variously by stations 2UE, 2UW and 2GB, not to mention politicians, his morning talkback became influential. Alan Jones would

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radio, northern territory later compete effectively on 2UE and 2GB, and along with Laws would be subject to investigation into ‘cash for comment’. Throughout these years, the ABC continued to pay attention to what it did best: news, background and documentary. By 1972, its first station, 2BL, had become part of the ‘light’ network (Radio One). Then, on 19 January 1975, the ABC unleashed 2JJ on Sydney—or at least the half of Sydney that could receive the new station. The first new Sydney AM licence in 40 years ushered in programming that was radical, irreverent and (for young people) topical. The only other new Sydney station that decade would be 2WS in the west, one of the commercials to convert later to FM. But it was 2JJ that became Sydney’s first mainstream FM broadcaster on 1 August 1980, soon changing its call sign to 2JJJ. As Triple J it would eventually go national. Two new commercial FM licences (2MMM and 2Day) followed in quick succession. FM stations proliferated across regional New South Wales, with some regionals converting AM to FM licences, as did 2WS and 2UW. The larger landscape of media control and consolidation was changing radically, with new alliances of ever more concentrated media ownership. One example in a bewildering field was Austereo, formed in 1980 and expanding through three decades of acquisition, partnership and takeover. By late 2011, it had been taken over by the Southern Cross Media Group (once known as Macquarie Regional RadioWorks) to form Southern Cross Austereo, with metropolitan and regional radio stations across the nation. For New South Wales alone, it meant 17 regional stations now under single ownership. State and regional boundaries were becoming increasingly irrelevant, especially as the potential for radio and its extensions on the internet became evident. From 2009, digital radio began transmission in selected cities, including Sydney. Radio was now on the net, or networked across the country. Yet 2SB, which had become 2BL, and finally 702 ABC Sydney, was still broadcasting locally. There was still music and sport, news and commentary, talk and local information. Perhaps things were not quite so different as people had begun to imagine. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); K. Inglis, This is the ABC (2006) and Whose ABC? (2006); I.K. Mackay, Broadcasting in Australia (1957). RICHARD BEGBIE

RADI O, NORTHERN TERRITORY 5DR Darwin was established by the Australian Army to entertain thousands of Allied troops passing through the Top End during World War II. Army personnel broadcast an eclectic mix of

local talent, popular music, live plays, and BBC and ABC news. Closed in 1946, 5DR was relocated and reopened as a ‘national’ service by the ABC in 1947. Local programs included a weekly news round-up hosted by the Northern Standard, Mrs Richardson’s Diet Talks and Sunday religious services. City programs were flown to Darwin on disc or relayed via short-wave transmitters. Locals complained that detailed news reports from Melbourne were of little relevance, while others observed that Port Moresby had local radio before Darwin. Outside Darwin, Territorians struggled to listen to Radio Australia on short-wave radio sets. In 1948, 5DR became a ‘regional’ station when it was connected via one of the longest landlines in the world to ABC Adelaide. The new cable, which followed the route of the Overland Telegraph Line (1872), enabled the ABC to open the Territory’s second radio station, 5AL Alice Springs. Government officials noted that the history of radio in the Territory was closely associated with the work of Alf Traeger OBE, the radio engineer whose wireless experiments established the world’s first aerial ambulance service. The role of radio in overcoming the isolation of the outback through entertainment and education was praised. Why the Territory’s first broadcast stations were given South Australian call-signs of ‘5’, even though Traeger had used Territory call-signs designated by the numeral ‘8’ during his famous experiments in Central Australia in the 1920s, was not recorded. The ‘8’ returned to Territory call-signs in 1960 when 5DR was renamed 8DR, the ABC reached Tennant Creek (8TC) and Katherine (8KN), and 8DN, Darwin’s first commercial radio station, opened. Eleven years later, the Territory’s second commercial station, 8HA (Heart of Australia), was established in Alice Springs by a consortium of businessmen who considered the ABC’s reporting ‘negative and slanted’. One of those involved was Paul Everingham, the Territory’s first chief minister. When Cyclone Tracy hit Darwin on Christmas Day 1974, the ABC and then 8DN were cut off. It was impossible to communicate with residents for 34 hours, until the ABC transmitter was repaired, and 8HA lent 8DN an emergency transmitter. Two thousand transistor radios were flown in. In 1978, when the Northern Territory attained self-government, one-quarter of its 100,000 citizens had no access to telephone or radio services. In 1979, the ABC’s Education Broadcasting Advisory Committee called the extension of radio services to the Territory’s remote communities a matter of the ‘highest priority’, describing radio as essential to the education of Indigenous adults and their children. But the extension of broadcasting in the Territory was beset by ‘special problems’: the Territory’s size, its small and scattered population and its

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radio, queensland remoteness from Australia’s other cities. While acknowledging the ‘special needs’ of Australians who had ‘few if any alternative forms of entertainment or sources of information’, the ABC was concerned about the effect of diverting ‘scarce’ resources away from the majority of the Australian population. In Alice Springs, newly established Aboriginal organisations were concerned about the impact of television—which had begun to spread to remote communities when Australia’s first satellite was launched in 1985—on those Indigenous languages and cultures thriving in media isolation. Freda Glynn, a founder of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), compared the media’s potentially destructive effects with the devastation of alcohol. The solution, agreed academics and Aboriginal activists, was Aboriginal control of the media itself—a perspective consistent with the federal government’s policy of self-determination. The result was the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS), a Department of Aboriginal Affairs project that, with assistance from the ABC, delivered community, government and commercial radio and television, plus the capacity to produce local content, to the Territory’s most remote Indigenous communities. Although some academics have criticised BRACS for disrupting traditional culture, the idea that radio was an essential tool in cultural and linguistic maintenance spread. After the advent of CAAMA in 1989, the Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association provided tertiary training in radio broadcasting for Indigenous announcers. In 1998, Radio Larrakia (8KNB), which promotes Larrakia language and culture to Darwin, was established; since 2006, it has also broadcast in Greek, Timorese and Filipino. PAW Media (established in 2001) broadcasts from Yuendumu in four languages while Yolgnu Radio (2006) promotes Yolgnu language and culture throughout the Top End. Most of these broadcasters also collect oral histories and produce language-based educational resources. Since 1980, geographically focused community radio stations like 8TOPFM Darwin (established in 1981), 8KTR Katherine (1982), 8CCC Alice Springs (1982) and Tennant Creek (1986–2010, relaunched in 2013), and 8EAR Gove (1992) have opened in the Territory’s economic hubs. A locally based non-denominational Christian radio station, Rhema, opened in Darwin in 1993. Since 1999, the Vision Radio Network, a Queensland-based narrowcast Christian service, has established 17 relay stations in Territory towns, with nine in remote Top End communities. Meanwhile, in 1997 the 50th anniversary of the ABC in the Territory was marked by the performance and broadcast of ‘Let’s Celebrate’, a musical by Peter Forrest.

Economies of scale have hindered the spread of the Territory’s commercial radio networks. While 8DN reached Katherine in 1981 and 8HA reached Uluru in 1987, it was not until the 2000s that commercial radio was heard in places like Tennant Creek (Flow FM). The 8DN licence was surrendered in 1992 when its owners launched 8HOT-FM and found themselves in breach of laws prohibiting the ownership of more than one station in any geographical area. A few months later, the laws were changed, enabling 8HA to open SUN-FM in Alice Springs. The Tops End’s commercial stations are now owned by the Grant family, which started digital radio trials in 2010. Though a diversity of radio stations are now heard in most Territory settlements, conventional car radios still cannot pick up radio signals on the majority of Territory roads. REFs: Northern Territory Background Briefing Paper on ABC Operations, July 1979 (courtesy ABC); http:// www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/indigenous/ broadcasting/; http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/aboutus/ history_OZ-radio.pdf. MEGG KELHAM

R AD IO , Q U EEN SLAN D Official development of radio in Queensland occurred later than in other states, with A-class station 4QG being established in Brisbane in July 1925, under the guise of Queensland Radio Services, run by the Queensland government. Radio development in the state was influenced heavily by the size of the state, and its associated population distribution. Radio stations in major regional centres were established initially in the commercial sector, with some of these being later drawn into the ABC network, and the early role of many of these regional stations was simply to relay Brisbane-based programming. Demand for more local programming has, however, driven development and expansion in radio in Queensland, and a mix of local and networked programming is now seen in most sectors. Two of Queensland’s early stations, 4QG and 4RK in Rockhampton, were included in the first 12 Australian stations incorporated into the ABC network in 1932. Initially, the network relied on relay programs broadcast from metropolitan stations. For example, 4QN was established in 1936 in Townsville to relay news to the North Queensland region, and 4RK Rockhampton (1932) was the relay point for information to central and northern parts of the state. As the network expanded, infrastructure grew in key regional cities, and the inclusion of local regional programming became increasingly important. Expansion of the ABC Local Radio network grew in stages. During the 1930s, the network grew from 4RK and 4QN to include 4QS Toowoomba (1939). There was then limited

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radio, queensland expansion in Queensland until after World War II, when 4QL Longreach (1947), 4QB Bundaberg (1948), 4QY Cairns (1950) and 4QA Mackay (1951) were established. They were followed by 4SO Gold Coast (1983) and 4MI Mt Isa (1986), and Sunshine Coast-based 90.3 and 95.3 FM in the 1990s. In 2000, all local radio stations in Queensland stopped using their call-signs and were rebranded with their regional name: ABC Brisbane (612 Brisbane), ABC Capricornia (Rockhampton, formerly 4RK), ABC Coast FM (Gold Coast and Northern Rivers, 4SO), ABC Far North (Cairns, 4QY), ABC North Queensland (Townsville, 4QN), ABC North West Queensland (Mt Isa, 4MI), ABC Southern Queensland (Toowoomba, 4QS), ABC Sunshine Coast (Sunshine Coast, 90.3 and 95.3), ABC Tropical North (Mackay, 4QA), ABC Western Queensland (Longreach, 4QL), and ABC Wide Bay (Bundaberg, 4QB). Within the ABC Local Radio network, ABC Brisbane, ABC Coast FM and ABC Sunshine Coast target more urban populations, while all other stations include regionally specific local programming as well as networked country programs such as The Country Hour. Many ABC stations, particularly those in the north of the state, are located in areas prone to natural disasters such as cyclones. In these areas, ABC Radio plays a vital emergency role, particularly to regional communities, as noted in a number of significant reports, such as the 1997 Mansfield Report, The Challenge of a Better ABC. The birth of commercial radio in Queensland was concentrated in Brisbane, with 4BC and 4BK (1930), 4BH (1931), 4IP (now Radio TAB, 1935) being early commercial AM stations. The only AM station established in Brisbane post-World War II, the labour station 4KQ, began broadcasting in 1947. The push for FM commercial stations commenced in 1980 with the birth of Triple M 104.5 FM. In 1990, 4BK moved to the FM band, changing its call-sign to 4BBB (using the on-air name of B105). Triple M and B105 remained unchallenged in the Brisbane metropolitan commercial market until developments in the 2000s saw the arrival of a community station, 97.3fm (2001), and Nova 106.9 (2004). Toowoomba and Townsville were two centres outside Brisbane that saw the establishment of more than one commercial station in the 1930s. In Toowoomba, 4AK and 4WK were established in 1935 after 4GR in 1925. 4GR remains the longest-running commercial station in Queensland. 4TO Townsville was established in 1931, and has been heard on the FM as well as the AM band since 1999. Other early commercial stations included 4MK Mackay (1931), 4FC Maryborough (1932, now Radio TAB), 4RO Rockhampton (1932), 4BU Bundaberg (1935), 4LG Longreach (1936), 4CA Cairns (1936), 4VL Charleville (1936), 4ZR Roma

(1937) and 4SB Kingaroy (1938, now known as 1071 AM). Queensland is a vast state, and the need to network or create associations was recognised early. For example, the Queensland Broadcasting Network of the 1940s comprised 4BC, 4SB, 4GR, 4RO and 4MB. This network shared programming, but at the same time was concerned to ensure programming was localised for regional audiences. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a significant expansion in FM broadcasting occurred, and commercial radio was dominated initially by DMG Radio and RG Capital Radio before most stations were acquired by Macquarie Regional RadioWorks (later Southern Cross Austereo) and Prime Radio, with DMG retaining a stake in Brisbane’s Nova. Smaller network interests included Grant Broadcasters Pty Ltd, an independent company that bought Fairfax Media’s interests in Bundaberg Broadcasters Pty Ltd in 2011. Most commercial stations in Queensland are therefore part of a network, with a very small number remaining privately or independently owned. The development of radio in Queensland had a number of innovative aspects, particularly in community radio. For example, 4ZZ (now 4ZZZ) was one of the first community radio stations to be granted a licence to broadcast by the federal government. In Queensland, it was the first station to be heard on the FM band, commencing broadcasting on 8 December 1975 from premises based at the University of Queensland. It is also noteworthy as having been the first community broadcaster to use journalists accredited by the Australian Journalists’ Association (later the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance), and has had a history of political agitation in Queensland. 4ZZZ was followed by fine music station 4MBS in 1977, and 4EB, an ethnic broadcasting station, in 1979. All were based in Brisbane. The first community licence to a non-metropolitan area was granted to the Darling Downs Broadcasting Society, which established 4DDB in 1979, followed by 103.9 triple t in Townsville (1982), 4CRB, a community station targeting senior citizens on the Gold Coast (1984), 4CBL in Logan (1988), 4YOU in Rockhampton (1989) and Classic Country 4OUR in Caboolture (1990). Aside from the development of Indigenous community radio, which expanded rapidly during the early 1990s, the development of community radio in Queensland remained largely static until the late 1990s and early 2000s. The majority of non-Indigenous community broadcast licences in Queensland were granted between 1997 and 2001, and just under half of all community licences in Queensland are currently operated by Indigenous broadcasters. Brisbane was the location of the first Indigenous capital-city community radio station. Originating as the Murri Hour on 4ZZZ in the 1980s, the Brisbane Indigenous

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radio, south australia Media Association (BIMA) applied for a licence in 1991, and commenced broadcasting on 6 April 1993 on 98.9 FM. In regional areas, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander broadcasting expanded rapidly courtesy of the Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Scheme (RIBS) in 1991, which replaced the Broadcasting from Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS), established in 1987. Some 24 Indigenous community stations were established in regional and remote Queensland in 1992. Of these, one station, 4K1G, had an established callsign, having been established in 1972, and was run by the Townsville Aboriginal and Islander Media Association (TAIMA). The rest were relay stations run by local regional councils throughout Queensland. These were joined by 4MOB Mt Isa (1997), 4MW Torres Strait (1997), Bumma Bippera Media 98.7 FM Cairns (1999), 4US Rockhampton (1999), 4RR FM Charleville (2005) and Murri FM 105.9 Mackay (2006). Queensland Remote Aboriginal Media (QRAM) commenced operation in 2007, based out of Cairns. It supports radio stations in remote Queensland communities in the Cape York and Gulf of Carpentaria regions that are able to access its Black Star radio network and program support service. The National Indigenous Radio Service (NRIS), which operates out of Brisbane, also supports Indigenous programming through distribution of its radio programs. Open narrowcasting in Queensland began in 1993 in the regional towns of Barcaldine, Cloncurry, Cooktown, St George, Mount Isa, Normanton, Thursday Island and Weipa, and expanded again in the late 1990s and mid-2000s. Open narrowcast licences have limited reception under section 18 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, and there are now almost as many open narrowcast licences in Queensland as there are community licences, with almost all licences dedicated to regional areas. Open narrowcasting in Queensland, as in other Australian states, is dominated by Radio TAB, which broadcasts horse racing throughout Australia through commercial AM, FM and open narrowcasting licences, and the Vision Radio Network, a Christian FM network that also broadcasts from a number of regional centres throughout the state. These stations are reliant on networked programming with limited or no local content. REFs: ACMA, List of Licensed Broadcasters (2014); Australian Government, Review of Local Content Requirements for Regional Commercial Radio, Final Report (2011); J. Deger, Shimmering Screens (2006). KATE AMES

R A D IO, SOUT H AUST RALIA The Adelaide Advertiser reported on 21 August 1924 that the South Australian Radio and Broadcasting Company had successfully transmitted from the Grosvenor Hotel. Central Broadcasters

was registered on 4  November that year, and received the call-sign 5CL on 20 November. In 1928, it was integrated into what became the ABC. Amateur radio experiments produced 5DN (1924), 5KA (1927) and 5AD (1930). 5DN was originally broadcast from the home of its founder, radio enthusiast Ernest James Hume (1870–1929). Ernest’s wife, Stella (1882–1954), was more than an announcer: she also produced and directed programs. Guests included Adelaide-based performer Roy Rene (‘Mo’), and with 5DN licensed to do 24-hour broadcasts, the station was even heard in the eastern states. Stella Hume produced the station’s first radio play, Lilies of the Field, in November 1924. Later owned by the Methodist Church, 5KA is best remembered for having been closed down in 1941 as a result of its connections with its Jehovah’s Witness owners. An inquiry by Port Adelaide Intelligence Officers led to accusations that it might be sending coded information to enemy agents. Fuelled by popular sentiment against the Jehovah’s Witness anti-war stance, particularly from Smith’s Weekly and Truth, 5KA was attacked as unpatriotic and seditious. In July 1940, it was informed that its scripts were to be censored, that no extempore comment was to be allowed—and that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were to pay the costs of the monitoring of their own broadcasts. In the 1980s, 5KA moved to FM, reformatting first to country music, then in 1990 becoming KAFM, having bid $5.5 million for an FM licence. Its AM frequency went to community station 5RPH, providing information services for the print handicapped. In 1993, Hoyts Media, which owned the Triple M network, bought 5KA, transitioning it to Triple M 104.7. The call-sign of 5AD stood for its Advertiser owners; the station commanded huge loyalty. In the 1930s and 1940s, it produced the radio comedy series Yes, What?, with hundreds of episodes written and performed. Between the 1950s to the 1980s, disc jockey and later talkback shockjock Bob Francis and broadcaster-jazz musician Keith Conlon were among 5AD’s stars, as were breakfast-shift duo ‘Baz and Pilko’ (Barry Ion and Tony Pilkington). During the 1980s, 5AD was winning all timeslots with its ‘Rhythm of the City’ branding until Baz and Pilko defected to rival 5KA. The pattern repeated in the mid-1990s, when the station won 50 consecutive rating surveys with Jeff Sunderland and Keith Conlon—only to have them leave for Triple M. Even stations established much later in the history of broadcasting experienced dramatic format redesign in the 1980s. 5AA, founded in 1976 as a ‘Beautiful Music’ station, was an instant hit. However, it was sold five years later to the TAB for horse and dog racing calls, and then again in the mid-1990s as part of the SA government’s asset sales. It was caught up

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radio, tasmania in the succession of networks built by Paul Thompson. In 1980, he established Double SA-FM, now SAFM, the first commercial FM station in Adelaide. It became the highest rating Adelaide station in the 1980s and early 1990s, but when its Austereo network merged with Triple M’s Village Roadshow in 1995, Thompson regrouped with DMG Radio Australia, rebranding 5AA to ‘Interactive Radio FIVEaa’ in 2000, and establishing Nova 91.9 in 2004 as part of a new national network. SAFM’s dominance saw constant call-sign swapping, simulcasting of signal, rebranding and endless experimentation. When the early FM licences became available in the 1980s, 5KA and 5DN became the new licensees. The shift proved problematic for 5DN, which had been a popular sports and entertainment service, broadcasting the first ball-by-ball cricket from 1930; providing South Australia’s first independent news service from 1938; producing popular variety shows such as Merv Hill’s Under the Stars and Radio Canteen; and airing the first South Australian talkback radio with Rev. Neil Adcock in 1969. FM music broadcasting was to prove a step too far. In 1990, 5DN rebadged to FM Radio 102 FM, with a Classic Hits formula promoted as ‘Sounds Like Adelaide to Me’. It reformatted in 1992 to X102 (Adult Rock) and was then sold to 5AD, as Warwick Fairfax Junior divested himself of the Macquarie Network. Radio’s difficulties ran along the fracture lines between FM music formats and AM talk, perhaps best revealed in the story of 5AD. Once outbid by 5DN for the first 1980s FM licences, it was bought by Montclair Investments, a group including 5DN talk host Jeremy Cordeaux. When the federal government allowed ownership of more than one station in a metropolitan market, Montclair bought 102.3FM, hoping to shift across its 5AD audiences to an Easy Listening Hits and Memories format by simulcasting programming on to its 5AD AM signal—but was forced to close when it was judged to have an unfair audience reach. With its old rival 5DN now itself identified as an FM music station, Montclair re-launched 5AD into an AM Hybrid Talk station, Radio 1323, with Cordeaux, Nan Witcomb and Bob Byrne. But audiences had shifted to FIVEaa and ABC Local Radio’s 5AN. In the 1990s, both 1323 and 102.3FM were bought by the ARN (Australian Radio Network), only to close in 2004, their licences leased to SEN Melbourne (Sports and Entertainment Network). Embarrassingly, 1323 AM dropped from a 6.7 audience share in 2004 to near nil by 2005. SEN returned the licence to ARN, which simulcast as MIX 102.3 FM. Finally, the AM service was rebadged and reformatted as Cruise 1323 Easy Listening, and in 2012 joined ARN’s Classic Hits Network. South Australia has proven most innovative in the community radio sector. Radio Adelaide

(5UV), which began in 1972, became the first and longest-established community broadcaster in Australia, with over 500 volunteer programmers and an exemplary community training provision, winning the Outstanding Training Provider of the Year Award in 1999. With a commitment to student radio and a creative urge that led to the founding of community station 5EBI (Ethnic Broadcasting) in 1979, it has provided a superb training ground for broadcasters. Three D Radio (5DDD) began as a radical music station in 1979, and had the advantage of having first badged itself as ‘5MMM’—a callsign it sold to Austereo’s Triple M commercial network. The station remains known for its music policy, playing 40 per cent Australian music, and its many ‘cult’ shows. One distinctive specialist sector within community broadcasting involves Indigenous services, including Port Augusta’s 5UMA Umeewarra Radio. The more remote Radio 5NPY was inaugurated in 1988. It serves 11 communities in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands, linked through a Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities (BRACS) network centred in Umuwa. Throughout these developments, ABC Radio continued to serve South Australia, through networked national services—Radio National, NewsRadio and Classic FM—and 5AN, which began in 1937. In 1974, the ABC opened a production and transmission complex, later managed by David Hill. The building remains an Adelaide landmark. The importance of 5AN to Adelaide audiences was recognised when Afternoons host Carole Whitelock became the first ABC broadcaster to out-rate her commercial rivals. By 2013, South Australia had 61 radio stations for a population of 1.65 million people: four FM and two AM metropolitan commercials; six AM and four FM regional commercials; 18 FM and one AM community regionals and eight FM and one AM community metropolitans, with the ABC providing eight AM regional stations, six FM national streams and two AM, as well as 891 ABC Adelaide (formerly 5AN). REFs: J.F. Ross, A History of Radio in South Australia 1897–1977 (1978); P. Strawhan, ‘The Closure of Radio 5KA, January 1941’, Historical Studies, 21(85) (1985); D.J. Towler, The First Sixty Years 1924–1984 5DN 972 (1984). JACKIE COOK

R AD IO , TASM AN IA ‘Hullo, 7ZL here’. With these words, broadcast on 18 December 1924, radio arrived in Tasmania. But the fledgling Launceston station struggled technically and financially. The 1927 Royal Commission on Wireless heard numerous complaints about 7ZL, and was asked to consider whether a state as small as Tasmania had

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radio, tasmania sufficient resources to support radio. Despite the rocky start, however, several Tasmanian-owned companies would play a significant role in shaping the state’s radio industry. Commercial radio began in 1930 with the opening of 7HO Hobart and 7LA Launceston by music company Findlays Pty Ltd (later Commercial Broadcasters Pty Ltd). The company went on to establish a statewide network of stations, affiliated with the Macquarie Network, at Burnie (7BU), Queenstown (7QT) and Derby (7DY). Hobart’s second commercial station, 7HT, was also associated with a music company. Brothers Edward and Bernard McCann were both musicians with an interest in radio. Edward established an orchestra associated with the ABC, becoming first program director and then Tasmanian manager (1946–53), while Bernard established and managed Hobart’s 7HT. 7HT and 7HO remained the only two commercial stations in Hobart for 53 years. In 1938, W.R. Rolph & Sons Pty Ltd, owners of the Launceston Examiner, expanded into broadcasting. Prime Minister Joseph Lyons (a Tasmanian) presided over the opening of 7EX. In the 1960s, both Commercial Broadcasters, the owner of 7HO, and W.R. Rolph & Sons established television stations. Commercial Broadcasters’ subsidiary, Tasmanian Television Ltd (TTL), gained the licence for Hobart station TVT6, which opened on 23 May 1960. The close relationship between radio and television was evidenced by the co-location of 7HO and TVT6, an arrangement that included a bimedia newsroom—one of the first in commercial media. Edmund Rouse, managing director of the Examiner, established Northern TV Pty Ltd in 1962, gaining the licence for TNT9. In 1965, Northern TV and The Examiner Pty Ltd merged to become Examiner-Northern Television Ltd (subsequently ENT Ltd). Following a hostile takeover of TNT6 in 1982, ENT became the dominant player in Tasmanian media. The company acquired a second Tasmanian radio station, 7HT, in 1983, as well as several interstate and overseas radio stations. The company controlled the Examiner, the statewide Tasmanian Mail, 7HT and 7EX, and commercial television in Tasmania. The ABC offered Tasmania an alternative to ENT. 7ZL became part of the ABC’s national network, and 7ZR (Hobart) and 7NT (Launceston) provided local content. In the late 1980s, when ABC Radio National had offices in each state capital, Hobart produced several programs, including Sandy McCutcheon’s adult education show Connexions. On the state stations, a number of long-serving presenters attracted a loyal audience. Ric Patterson, who began broadcasting on 7ZR in 1969, inaugurated the Hobart Christmas Pageant, as well as the annual Giving Tree Walk in which ABC staff walk from Burnie to Hobart to raise money for charity.

By the time television arrived, commercial radio had come to depend on local advertising for 80 per cent of its revenue. Towards the end of the 1980s, this began to impact on the industry. Facing falling returns from its radio stations, ENT centralised the news departments of 7HT and 7EX, and diversified into retail, opening a string of record bars. Hobart’s 7HO underwent a substantial format change, abandoning horse racing—which had been a staple part of the station’s programming—in favour of music programs. The arrival of FM radio added further pressure, with increased competition from community stations. Hobart’s first FM station, established in 1977, was 7CAE FM (now Hobart FM), under the auspices of the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. In 1979, 7RGY (Regional Geevston Youth, now Huon FM), was established to serve the Huon Valley with equipment donated from 7HO. In North Launceston, City Park Radio began broadcasting in 1986. There are now 14 community radio stations throughout the state. ENT failed in its bid for a commercial FM licence in Hobart and, with the arrival of the first commercial FM station, 7TTT, in July 1990, further rationalised its radio operations. ENT’s troubles were compounded by the actions of former managing director Edmund Rouse, who was found guilty of attempting to bribe a Labor MP in 1989. The scandal surrounding Rouse’s conviction sealed the fate of the former media conglomerate. ENT engaged in asset sales, selling both its Hobart radio stations in 1991 before being taken over by WIN Television in 1994. In 1989, Reg Grundy’s RG Capital Radio began to invest heavily in Tasmanian radio. The Findlay family, which had retained a controlling interest in a number of regional stations, left the industry, selling 7LA, 7AD Devonport, 7BU and 7SD Scottsdale to RG Capital. RG Capital continued its acquisition of Tasmanian stations, with the purchase of 7TTT in 2000 making it the dominant player in Tasmanian radio. In 2004, the RG Capital stations came under the control of Macquarie Regional RadioWorks and changed hands again in 2007 to comply with media ownership legislation following Macquarie’s takeover of Southern Cross Media. Grant Broadcasters Pty Ltd, through its subsidiary Tasmanian Broadcasters Pty Ltd, bought the stations in 2007 and now has a portfolio of 14 stations throughout the state, including 7AD Devonport, 7BU, 7HO, 7LA, 7SD and 7XS Queenstown and 90.1 Chilli FM (originally 7EX, relaunched as a Launceston youth station in 2011). Tasmanian Broadcasters also owns Sea FM branded stations in Devonport, Burnie and on the north-east and west coasts. While digital radio has been available in mainland metropolitan areas since 2009, it is not yet available in Tasmania. A 2011 application to

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radio, victoria the federal government’s Regional Development Fund by Commercial Radio Australia for a rollout of digital radio in Hobart and Launceston was unsuccessful. As with other regional areas, technological and policy issues stand in the way of a digital rollout in Tasmania, and the cost of such a rollout is also a significant factor. REFs: A. Alexander, ‘The Companion to Tasmanian History: Radio’, http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/R/Radio.htm (2006); S. Tanner, ‘The Rise and Fall of Edmund Rouse’, Australian Studies in Journalism, 4 (1995). KATE NASH

RADI O, V I CT ORIA Radio in Victoria began on 26 January 1924, when 3AR went to air in Melbourne. Along with 3LO, which was launched later that year, 3AR was part of the ‘sealed set scheme’, whereby stations were funded by fee-paying subscribers whose sets were sealed to the station’s frequency by the Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG). However, the system held limited appeal for consumers, and by July 1924 the federal government had agreed upon a two-tier system of licences. A-class licences were essentially financed by listeners’ licence fees, which were imposed and collected by the government. The first of these licences were granted to 3AR and 3LO. Following the Australian government’s Royal Commission on Wireless in 1927, A-class licensees were encouraged to amalgamate in order to maximise efficiencies and maintain standards. By 1929, the government had nationalised the transmission facilities and contracted the provision of programming to the Australian Broadcasting Company, a consortium of entertainment interests. This company was nationalised by the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932, with funding coming exclusively from radio listeners’ licences, a system that would continue until the 1970s. 3AR became part of what would become ABC Radio National, and 3LO part of ABC Local Radio. B-class licences were offered to anyone else who wanted to broadcast and could generate their own revenue through advertising. Melbourne’s first B-class licences were awarded to 3UZ (1925) and 3DB (1927), followed by a labour station, 3KZ (1930), 3AK (1931), 3AW (1932) and 3XY (1935), which was aligned with conservative political interests. Victoria’s first regional commercial stations, in 1930, were 3BA Ballarat, 3TR (later 3GV) Sale and 3GL Geelong. The government had initially planned to issue a number of C-class licences to station owners wishing to exclusively advertise their company’s products. The PMG and the Akron Tyre Co. engaged in discussions relating to the issuance of a C-class licence to the Akron-owned station 3AK; however, the station was ultimately

granted a B-class licence, making it Melbourne’s fourth commercial station. Special conditions imposed on 3AK meant it was only permitted to broadcast for limited hours when other Melbourne stations were off the air to avoid creating interference. The station lobbied relentlessly for this key restriction to be overturned until, in 1944, the PMG restated a refusal to allow other Melbourne stations to broadcast from midnight-to-dawn to compete with 3AK. A decade later, 3AK was finally allowed to broadcast during the day and 3DB, followed by other Melbourne stations, entered the midnight-to-dawn market. Melbourne press owners were initially threatened by radio; however, while voicing public opposition to the ABC establishing an independent news service, print media groups moved quickly to establish their own radio holdings. (Sir) Keith Murdoch’s Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) (which had launched Victoria’s leading radio magazine, the Listener In, in 1925), acquired 3DB in 1929. The press also attempted to protect its privileged access to sports coverage, and from 1930 to 1936 there was a ban on the broadcasting of all football and horse racing in Melbourne. By the 1940s, the radio broadcasting environment had changed completely, with live coverage of cricket Tests and the Melbourne Cup widely available. This ushered in the ‘golden age’ of radio, under which the two-tiered system was well established in the media landscape. On the one hand, the ABC had developed a commitment to news, education and culture, and from 1947, also broadcast federal parliament. On the other hand, the commercial sector was focused on local issues and business, as well as more popular entertainment. Unlike in Sydney, religious interests did not obtain their own licences in Melbourne. Stars included ‘Nicky’ (Clifford Nicholls Whitta) and ‘Nancy Lee’ (Kathleen Lindgren) on Chatterbox Corner (3AW), and the versatile Norman Banks, one of the pioneers of a natural conversation style of commercial radio. The introduction of television in 1956 brought vast changes to the radio industry, with many of radio’s mainstays—such as serial dramas and variety and game shows—proving to have less appeal to listeners when they could watch similar formats on television. Some Melbourne radio stars, most notably Graham Kennedy (3UZ), also moved to television. Bert Newton, who had joined 3XY in 1954, would return to radio as the manager of 3DB in the 1980s. Commercial radio licensees invested in the new medium themselves, with 3XY and 3UZ aligned with GTV9 and the HWT with HSV7. While there were the inevitable predictions that television would be the death of radio, the established medium found two areas where it could effectively compete with television: music and news. In 1967, a third niche emerged in

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radio, victoria the form of talkback radio. Stations including 3AK tested the regulatory unease with this form of radio by introducing a device called the ‘beep-a-phone’ to their programming to record calls in 1964. The talk radio formula presented a number of advantages, including broad audience appeal, cheap production costs and a format that was not easily transferable to television. 3DB was one of the first stations to embrace talkback when it was legalised in April 1967, with programs hosted by Barry Jones and Pat Jarrett (whose listeners called in to talk to Premier Sir Henry Bolte). Some 50 years after the first talkback shows on Victorian radio, talk radio continues to be a popular and influential part of radio programming in Victoria. Unlike in Sydney, where John Laws and Alan Jones came to rule, the leading talkback radio personality to emerge in Melbourne in the 1980s was a journalist, Neil Mitchell (1951– ). Still at 3AW, he remains an influential figure. During the 1970s, two other important developments impacted the Australian radio industry: the establishment of community radio and the long-awaited introduction of FM radio in both the national and commercial sectors. The first experimental FM broadcasts began in Victoria in 1947, some 14 years after the system was patented by American electrical engineer and inventor Edwin H. Armstrong. However, FM was not welcomed by Victoria’s commercial broadcasters, who were concerned about costs and competition, and by 1961 FM transmissions were closed down completely to allow for the expansion of the television frequency band. The re-emergence of FM broadcasting was the result of a series of socio-political and cultural transformations that occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first related to the closure of experimental FM stations, which mobilised considerable numbers of fine music enthusiasts seeking high-quality audio broadcasting. Simultaneously, there was a growing interest from the broader community in accessing the public airwaves controlled by government and commercial interests. Universities lobbied to be allowed to broadcast educational material. Australia’s ethnic communities, as well as other organised groups of social and political activists, wanted a voice of their own on radio. Australia had not developed the same history of pirate radio as Britain, but in 1971 the anti-Vietnam War movement inspired two pirate radio stations based on Melbourne university campuses: 3DR (Radio Draft Resistor) at the University of Melbourne and 3PR (People’s Radio) at Monash University. Both of these unlicensed and unauthorised stations broadcast messages of dissidence and resistance to the broader community, and were short lived, with 3DR’s equipment smashed in a police raid and 3DR shut down by electronically jamming its signal.

In 1970–72, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board’s report into the introduction of FM radio recommended the introduction of public access stations to meet the needs of educational, religious, professional, musical and other special interests. During this turbulent period, Melbourne’s stable commercial radio environment was shaken up by the award of a new licence in the nearby Mornington Peninsula (3MP, 1976). In 1975, three public access stations were granted licences to broadcast in Melbourne, with fine music station 3MBS FM the first Victorian public radio station to broadcast on the FM band in July 1975. In October, 3CR was awarded a restricted licence, and commenced broadcasting the following year. Ethnic broadcasting also commenced in 1975, when the community-run and ABC-owned 3ZZ was born, with 20 ethnic communities being the first to broadcast in their ethnic languages through the national broadcaster. Later that year, 3EA began as an experimental station and the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) was established in 1977. In May 1976, 3RMT, based at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, was granted an experimental educational licence to broadcast, becoming 3RRRFM (also known as Triple R) in October 1978. Since the late 1970s, Triple R has relied upon Melbourne’s arts and cultural community and listener subscriptions for support, and currently has more than 11,000 active subscribers. In 1978, 3PBS was granted a special ‘S’ licence to broadcast music. While Sydney’s 2JJ had been established in 1975, the ABC’s youth network did not commence broadcasting (as the Triple J network) until 1989. Until 1980, 3RRR and 3PBS were the only youth-oriented FM broadcasters in Melbourne. Broadcasters on 3RRR initiated innovative program formats, with the station becoming the unofficial training ground for the national and commercial sectors. Community radio has grown rapidly, with over 70 licensed stations now operating across Victoria. The most recent Melbourne-wide community radio licences were granted to Student Youth Network (SYN), Triple Seven Communications, the South Eastern Indigenous Media Association and Joy Melbourne. Their associated communities of interest—youth, Christian, Indigenous, and gay and lesbian—reflect the diversity of community stations across Victoria. Commercial radio stations, which had missed the opportunity to establish themselves on the FM band in the early 1970s, began pushing for access, arguing that all AM stations should have the right to simulcast on FM. Instead, two licences were given in Melbourne to ‘new players’ rather than existing stations. EON-FM (later to become 3MMM) was the first Australian commercial FM station to broadcast (in July 1980), followed in Melbourne by 3FOX. FM conversions occurred by auction, organised

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radio, western australia under the National Radio Plan. This period saw prices paid for conversion peaking with 3KZ’s bid of $31.569 million in 1989. 3KZ became 104.3fm in 1990. Commercial FM stations currently servicing Melbourne are 3FOX (better known as FOX-FM), GOLD104.3, Mix 101.1 (formerly 3DB), 3MMM, Nova 100 and smoothfm 91.5. However, AM radio in Melbourne continues to attract a wide listener base with talk stations 3AW and 774 ABC vying for the highest market share across both AM and FM bands. The advent of digital technologies changed the game for radio, with the very technologies that eased methods of production also putting colleagues out of work. The ways people used radio changed too, as did the relationship between audiences and producers. The move to digital has been a relatively slow process in Victoria. Although testing of digital radio occurred as early as 1999, using the Eureka 147 platform, it was not until 2009 that Melbourne commercial and national stations commenced transmissions. The community sector launched its digital services in 2011. By 2013, ABC and SBS offered 19 services, with the commercial and community broadcasters a combined 37 services on two Melbourne multiplexes. These services are a combination of AM or FM simulcasts and a similar number of digital-only services. Over recent years, the medium has been forced to adapt to become part of a networked media environment. The delays in introducing digital radio and being limited to the Melbourne metropolitan area have seen the simultaneous development of online services. Virtually all Victorian AM and FM radio stations are using online services as an adjunct to the material broadcast over their conventional transmissions. REFs: B. Carty, Australian Radio History (2011); M. Phillips, Radio City (2006); P. Thornley, ‘Broadcasting Policy in Australia: Political Influences and the Federal Government’s Role in the Establishment and Development of Public/Community Broadcasting in Australia—A History 1939 to 1992’ (PhD thesis, 1999); http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01220b.htm. BRUCE BERRYMAN

RADI O, W E S TERN AUSTRALIA Radio formally began in Western Australia with the launch of 6WF in 1924. The station was the brainchild of John Thomson, who worked for Westralian Farmers Ltd, from which the station took its name. He recognised the value of broadcasting for transmitting timely and accurate information about market prices and trends to the company’s widely dispersed clientele. The company built studios on the top floor of its own premises, and on 4 June 1924 6WF was launched. Licences were sold under the sealed set system, which delivered broadcasts of orchestral concerts,

specialist talks on topics such as politics and automobiles, recorded stories, and market and weather reports. When the dual system of ‘A’ (licence funded) and ‘B’ (commercially funded) stations was introduced, 6WF became an A-class station. It was taken over by the fledgling national network, the Australian Broadcasting Company, in September 1929. The creation of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in 1932 brought all the A-class stations together under a single broadcasting entity. Perth had to wait until 1938 before a second ABC station, 6WN, opened. 6WF evolved into the local service, offering a flow format of popular music and talks programs, while 6WN became part of the national network carrying block programming featuring classical music, plays, specialist talks and educational programs relayed from the eastern states. The ABC network of WA regional stations began with the opening of 6WA in Wagin in 1936 and continued to expand over the following decades. 6WF became the state branch of the national network of ABC stations. Over half of its airtime was devoted to music programming in the form of orchestra and dance band concerts. In 1934, the Perth Symphony Orchestra became Western Australia’s contribution to the ABC’s ‘six orchestra’ policy. That same year, drama began to appear, along with church services on Sundays, and talks by local intellectuals such as Professor Walter Murdoch. One early feature of 6WF programming was an occasional talk on topics of interest to women. This evolved into the women’s session initiated by Dorothy Graham in 1929, which became a staple of the daily schedule, featuring broadcasters of the calibre of Irene Greenwood, Kitty Gillies, and Catherine King (Murdoch’s daughter). School broadcasts began in Western Australia in 1935 and the state was responsible for introducing the Kindergarten of the Air in 1942; when the national version of the program began in 1943, Western Australia’s version was retained, protected by the two-hour time difference. Meanwhile, commercial radio was developing parallel to the ABC. As elsewhere, stations were often started up by companies with something to sell. Single stations often diversified into regional relay stations, ultimately amalgamating into nationwide networks. Perth’s first B-class station, 6ML, run by music company Musgroves Ltd, started broadcasting in 1930, before becoming part of the Federal Radio Network, later renamed the Commonwealth Broadcasting Network. It ceased broadcasting in May 1943. 6PR, originally owned by another music company, Nicholsons Ltd, started broadcasting in October 1931, later becoming part of the Major Network before joining the Macquarie

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ramsey, alan (1938– ) Network. In November 1933, 6IX launched a joint venture by West Australian Newspapers and Musgroves under the WA Broadcasters Ltd umbrella; it was later incorporated into the Major Network. 6PM went to air in April 1937, part of the Whitford Broadcasting Network, which was a grouping of 6PM and regional stations 6AM Northam, 6GE Geraldton and 6KG Kalgoorlie. 6KY was launched in October 1941, an initiative of the People’s Printing and Publishing Company of Western Australia Ltd. It was affiliated with the ALP, which invested in labour broadcasting nationally in response to what it perceived as a rightwing bias in the media. The Broadcaster (est. 1935) was the state’s main radio magazine. Thus, by 1941, all the players in Perth radio were in place. The market did not change until the 1970s, with the coming of community stations, and the 1990s with the arrival of FM radio. While local stations were able to receive syndicated talk material from other states, it was only in 1933 that the technology was developed that enabled music content to be transmitted across the continent. As in other states, the nature and tone of the content differed between the ABC and the commercial stations, with 6WF and later 6WN pursuing their mission to inform and entertain, while the B-class stations, pushed by their advertising remit, targeted mass audiences via a more entertainment-based mix. Their offerings also included children’s concerts, women’s sessions and quiz shows. For example, 6IX featured Jess Robertson as ‘Phoebe the Early Cook’ and as ‘Aunty Judy’ in the Children’s Session. On 6PM, children’s programs aimed at ‘listeners of today’ and ‘buyers of tomorrow’ included the Willie Weeties Club, a live singalong program sponsored by Weeties. There was also a lunchtime singalong ladies’ concert program, John Luke’s Shopping Basket. By the 1970s, the local commercial stations offered variations of popular music formats based on strong local identities such as Lionel Lewis (6KY), Gordon O’Byrne (6PM) and Eoin Cameron (6IX). In 1977, 6PR became Perth’s racing station through an agreement with the TAB. It then introduced a talk/sport format, which in 1984 evolved into the news/talk format that it has retained ever since. Though the coming of television to Perth in 1959 ended the dominance of radio, the advent of FM radio in the 1970s gave the industry an edge by offering better sound quality. By the end of the decade, Perth was receiving the ABC FM fine music station, which had begun broadcasting in 1976 in Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney. The ABC’s youth station, Triple J, arrived in 1989. In the commercial sector, 96FM was inaugurated as Perth’s first commercial FM music station in August 1980. The station had the FM band to itself from 1980 to 1991, dominating the ratings.

Community radio arrived in Perth in October 1976 with the opening of 6NR, based at the then Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). The following year saw the launch of 6UWA FM (later 6UVS), Western Australia’s first FM station, based at the University of Western Australia. 6NR focused on community access programming, while 6UVS was more of a specialist arts and music station. The sector expanded over subsequent decades with the addition of stations for the print handicapped (6RPH), ethnic communities (6EBA) and the Aboriginal community (6AR, relaunched under new management in 2009 as Noongar Radio). The advent of satellite transmission enabled remote Western Australian Aboriginal communities in the Pilbara and Kimberley regions to benefit from the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities scheme. From 1985, this service broadcast programs provided by the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association as well as the ABC. In the 1980s, media deregulation and the opening up of the FM band had an impact on the local radio market. While the talk station 6PR and the ‘Golden Oldie’ stations remained on the AM band, in 1991 6PM became the first Perth AM station to move on to the FM band, followed later in the year by 6KY. In 1997, the Austereo network bought both stations, now branded 92.9FM and 94.5FM respectively. With 92.9 targeting younger audiences and 94.5 (later MIX94.5) appealing to the more mature audiences, they soon dominated the ratings in Perth. Needing to divest itself of a surplus station Austereo sold 96FM to the Southern Cross Network, then owner of 6PR. The Perth market remained relatively stable until 2002, when new player Nova arrived, targeting the 18–24 years age group. This resulted in an adjustment of music formats by all the rival commercial music stations, with Nova building a strong presence in a turbulent local market. The station affiliations in 2014 are: Fairfax Media—6PR and 96fm; Capital Radio Network—6IX; Southern Cross Austereo—92.9 FM and MIX 94.5FM; and Nova Entertainment—Nova 93.7. The arrival of DAB+ digital broadcasting in 2011 provided local access to national digital radio services as well as a new platform for local stations. REFs: L. Lewis, On Air (1979); I.K. Mackay, Broadcasting in Australia (1957); B. Shoesmith and L. Edmonds, ‘Making Culture Out of the Air’, in G. Bolton et al. (eds), Farewell Cinderella (2003). GAIL PHILLIPS

R AM SEY, ALAN C (1938– ) Alan Ramsey joined Sydney’s Daily Telegraph as a 15-year-old copy boy in 1953. Just two years later, working on the Mt Isa Mail, he

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readers scored his first scoop, talking his way into the guarded hospital room of Michael Jorgensen, who had been bashed in a police cell and who would later die of his injuries. Ramsey’s dogged reporting of the case led to an internal inquiry and a Commission of Inquiry. Ramsey went on to report for the Northern Territory News, and from Papua New Guinea and London for Australian Associated Press. He was one of a handful of journalists who accompanied the first Australian troops to Vietnam in 1965. Ramsey lived with the troops at their airbase, never losing his conviction that a war correspondent’s duty was to tell the truth about the conditions and dangers faced by the troops. During his time in Vietnam, his reporting consistently got under the skin of military authorities, including that on substandard equipment given to the troops. In 1965 he was thrown off the airbase. When he joined the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for the Australian in 1966, Ramsey was just 28, but with 13 years of journalistic experience. His famous shout of ‘You liar!’ from the gallery of the House of Representatives in 1971 followed a story Ramsey had written setting the scene for the demise of Prime Minister (Sir) John Gorton and the ascension of (Sir) William McMahon. Ramsey was deputy editor of the Australian from 1969 to 1971 under his good friend Adrian Deamer. After falling foul of Rupert Murdoch, he worked at Nation Review, the National Times and Time Australia. From 1978 to 1983, he was a speechwriter for Labor leader Bill Hayden. Ramsey joined the Sydney Morning Herald as a political columnist in 1987. Until his retirement in 2008, his Saturday column was a must-read for political junkies, often summing up what Ramsey believed were the most interesting, scandalous or inspiring things said in politics that week. It provided a window for the rest of the country into the hot-house of politics, often in the subject’s own words. Throughout his 43 years in the Press Gallery, Ramsey never lost his passionate commitment to what he believed was best in Australia. He never held back from arguing for it, nor did he ever refrain from railing against those he believed were letting the country down. Selections of Ramsey’s columns were compiled in A Matter of Opinion (2009) and The Way They Were (2011). JOHN FAULKNER

R ATI N G S see audience research

READERS The readers of the first printed media in New South Wales were the officers, soldiers and free settlers who consulted the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (1803–42) for official information and reports. In Tasmania,

the Hobart Town Gazette had a similar audience. As the number of free settlers grew, they demanded and eventually obtained a free press by the 1830s—mainly through the advocacy of Edward Smith Hall and his newspaper, the Monitor (1826–60). The 1830s also saw new audiences for print media in the recently established colonies of Port Phillip, South Australia and Western Australia, all founded as free colonies, with higher literacy levels—especially in South Australia. But reading material was scarce, mainly due to the lack of printing equipment. As these colonies grew, new settlements were created and more newspapers became available. Additional reading matter came with the mail ships from England, bringing the Times and English quarterlies such as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Gentleman’s Magazine. These titles would have been read in places like the Australian Subscription Library, established in Sydney in 1826, and gentlemen’s clubs such as the Melbourne Club, founded in 1838. The huge growth of the population resulting from the gold rushes created a further new audience and outlets for newspapers. As towns sprang up where gold was found, newspapers (and hotels) were among the first businesses established. Those who came searching for gold were generally industrious and literate or at least semi-literate. The opening of the Melbourne Public Library in 1856, with its policy of self-education through reading and free entry to anyone over 14, gave readers access to historical works, quality literature, and newspapers and magazines. It was the forerunner of an eventual Australia-wide publicly funded free library system. New readers and outlets followed the opening up of the land through the Selection Acts in the 1860s and 1870s, as service towns were founded around the small farm holdings. Many of these towns established mechanics institutes or schools of arts as reading and self-education venues for their residents. And the readership of printed matter of all kinds was strengthened by the passing of Compulsory Education Acts in the major Australian colonies in the 1870s. By this time, most of the major dailies had weekly and some monthly stablemates. Their distribution and readership outside the capital cities were greatly facilitated by the spread of railway lines throughout the country. Weekly newspapers were aimed at country audiences as much as city ones, while the illustrated monthlies, modelled on the Illustrated London News, were aimed at a middle-class urban and country audience. With their woodblock engravings, they provided their readers ready access to images of material progress, civic progress and rural life. By 1901, with the wide utilisation of linotype and the half-tone process for reproducing photographic images, sectional readers and

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readers audiences could readily be targeted. The Bulletin (1880–2008), with its mix of literature and Australianisms, catered for both an urban and rural ‘nationalistic’ audience, and soon became known as the ‘Bushman’s Bible’. The paper interacted with its readers by publishing their poems and stories, and through an ‘Answers to Correspondents’ section. With the introduction of radio in the 1920s, followed by ‘talkies’ around 1930, audiences now had alternatives to print media for their information and entertainment. Coupled with this were sophisticated printing techniques that allowed for more colour in magazines, including the Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ) and Man (1936–1974). The Weekly created a whole new audience of female readers and also had a strong male readership, particularly during World War II. The inter-war period saw the development of what could be described as middlebrow audiences. Magazines like Art in Australia (1916–42) and its sister publication, the Home (1920–42), catered for a financially well-off urban middle class. The working class had its own sporting, racing and scandal rags. Truth, first launched in Sydney in 1890, and Beckett’s Budget (1927–30) in Sydney were prime examples. But sporting papers suitable for the general home such as the Referee (1886–1939) in Sydney and the Sporting Globe (1922–88) in Melbourne also had large readerships. The readers of Smith’s Weekly (1919–50) were predominantly returned soldiers. In Melbourne, the tabloid Sun News-Pictorial (1922–90) tapped into a huge market with a circulation of over 500,000 by the mid-1950s. Compared with its broadsheet rivals, the Age (1854– ) and the Argus (1846–1957)—the latter catering for a conservative readership—it was ideal to read on the train. A cartoon in the Sydney Truth on 10  August 1919 neatly depicted the class basis of audiences and their preferred newspaper: seated on the right-hand side of a Sydney tram are three businessmen in top hats and polished shoes reading, respectively, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Daily Telegraph and the Evening News, while seated opposite them are three booted workers with their heads buried in the Australian Worker. The businessman would most likely have had their paper home-delivered—a sure sign of a middle-class readership—while the workers would have bought theirs on the way to work. The various school papers and special weekly sections of the major dailies such as the Junior Argus (1933–39), published by its namesake in Melbourne, provided reading material for children. They also encouraged contributions from their young readers through prizes and competitions. There was an influx of comics from the 1950s onwards, mainly from America, but there were also many produced in Australia.

The major city dailies usually targeted special-interest readers through regular feature writing or columns on specific topics such as gardening, radio, television and social pages. And readers had their favourite columnists: Keith Dunstan’s ‘A Place in the Sun’, published from 1958 to 1978 in the Sun News-Pictorial, had a dedicated and large following, while Charmian Clift’s essay-style column in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Herald from 1964 until her death in 1969 attracted a loyal body of readers. Following the American model, confessional magazines emerged, including True Confessions (c.  1947–66) and K.G. Murray’s True Story (1947–77), True Romance (c. 1947–78) and True Experience (1957–77). The Gestetner printer or duplicating machines helped to create and serve new audiences in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These were used extensively by those involved in what could be loosely called the counter-culture/protest movement to cheaply produce leaflets, newsletters, rock music papers and ‘little magazines’. The xerox machine and print-on-demand publishing were later to play a similar role. The ability to print glossy colour saw a plethora of magazines such as Dolly (1970– ), aimed at teenage girls, Cleo (1972– ) and Cosmopolitan (1973– ) emerge. They took over some of the established audiences for magazines such as the Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day (1949– ). They were the forerunners of the lifestyle magazines that now aggressively compete for readers at newsstands and on airport magazine racks. Colour and satellite television greatly influenced the audience for daily newspapers, especially afternoon newspapers, many of which folded by the end of the 20th century. Their introduction also soon killed off papers like Truth and the Sporting Globe. Morning dailies have been under enormous pressure since the advent of the internet—especially since Web 2.0 and the subsequent exponential growth in social media. Readers have moved away from mainstream media, turning to blogs and online journalism, and have themselves become providers of online information. The dividing line between providers of information, media producers and their readers is now blurred. This is perhaps reflected in the appointment in 2011 at the Sydney Morning Herald of Judy Prisk as Readers’ Editor, to act as an in-house advocate for the paper’s readers—the first such appointment in Australia. REFs: J. Arnold, ‘Newspapers and Daily Reading’, in M. Lyons and J. Arnold (eds), A History of the Book in Australia, 1891–1945 (2001); M. Lyons and L. Taska, Australian Readers Remember (1992); J. Prisk, ‘Birthday Time for the Good, Bad, Whimsical’, SMH, 22 August 2012. JOHN ARNOLD

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reality television REAL I TY T EL EVISION Reality television shows have become a staple of the Australian media diet. Big Brother, Survivor, Australia’s Next Top Model, The Farmer Wants a Wife, Bondi Vet, RPA, Australian Idol, MasterChef Australia and The Block are just some of the shows that have dominated prime-time commercial television viewing in the early years of the 21st century. ‘Reality television’ is an umbrella term that encompasses documentary-style programs that follow people (famous and unknown); game show-based programs in which contestants survive challenges to compete for a prize; talent contests; self- and home-improvement programs; and programs that use footage shot for another purpose (for example, police work) to take viewers ‘behind the scenes’. The genre exhibits all or some of the following characteristics: the use of ordinary people as opposed to professional actors; editing that emphasises character and multi-strand narratives; game show-style competitions and contrived locations; documentary footage, voiceovers and pieces to camera delivered by contestants; and audience involvement. In sum, reality television is a promiscuous mix of entertainment and information-based television genres. Reality television is often portrayed as mindlessly simplistic, if not morally corrupting. It is, however, a complex genre that bears witness to the evolution of Australian television and its audiences, and is very diverse in both its format and approach to viewers. Australian reality television is also a hybrid of locally bred and imported shows. The prominence of the genre in Australia dates back to the first series of Big Brother (2001–08), a show in which strangers are placed in a house, cut off from contact with the outside world and voted off until just one person remains, with the winner receiving a large cash prize. In Australia, housemates nominated the person they most wanted to evict each week and the audience voted. The show, devised by Dutch production company Endemol, first aired on Network Ten in 2001. It ran for 12 weeks, with eight shows a week, and averaged ratings of 1.4 million viewers. From the outset, Big Brother attracted vitriolic criticism, typified by Australian feminist Germaine Greer’s comment that the show appealed to ‘people who like watching torture’. In 2006, a female housemate was held down by two male housemates while one rubbed his genitals in her face (known as ‘turkey slapping’). The men were evicted and the footage was not shown on Ten, although it surfaced on the internet. Reality television has often been portrayed as an exemplar of the moral decline of modern popular culture and the degraded nature of its audiences. It is, however, a genre with a long history. The term ‘reality television’ entered popular parlance in the early 1990s as shorthand for

US programs pioneered by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Network, which utilised surveillance and hidden camera footage. This use of raw footage, edited to emphasise a narrative and embellished with a voiceover, reveals the genre’s roots in earlier ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary programs such as the 1974 UK series, The Family, directed by Paul Watson, which documented the lives of the Wilkins family. Watson went on to direct the infamous Australian program Sylvania Waters (1992), which chronicled the interpersonal conflicts of the Donaher family. Both The Family and Sylvania Waters were promoted as having sociological merit—as offering viewers a better understanding of the dynamics of the lives of ‘ordinary’ families—and both traded on the fact that, while participants were aware of the presence of cameras, they quickly began to act as if the cameras weren’t there. The first season of Big Brother in Australia was followed by a plethora of reality television shows, both local and international in origin. Locally produced and conceived reality vehicles of notable success include the Nine Network’s The Block (2003–04; 2010– ) and the Seven Network’s My Kitchen Rules (2010– ). Both programs brought the reality genre to bear on cooking and renovation lifestyle formats that were already popular with Australian audiences. Other successful reality shows have included Network Ten’s Australian Idol (2003–09), The Biggest Loser (2006–14) and MasterChef Australia (2009– ), and FOX8’s Australia’s Next Top Model (2005– ). In 2008, following the cancellation of Big Brother, there was widespread speculation by media analysts that reality television was in decline. However, new and revived reality programs have subsequently continued to flourish in Australia—albeit with reduced audiences, reflecting a general decline in free-to-air television ratings. In the second decade of the 21st century, reality shows remain an attractive proposition for producers and advertisers because they are cheaper to produce than drama or sit-coms, and they are ready made for product placement. To give one example, The Block—which was revived in 2010—has included product placement for companies advertising cars, whitegoods, home entertainment systems, hardware, food and toothpaste. While reality television programs often trade on their claim to show ‘real’ life or people, they are reliant on televisual conventions to simulate naturalism, actuality and authenticity. The contrast between this claim to represent reality and the contrived and heavily edited nature of reality shows has given rise to the criticism that reality shows manipulate and dupe viewers as well as contestants. Researcher John Hartley refutes this, arguing that Big Brother audiences were more than aware of the highly artificial nature of the program while still able to ‘observe

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recording technologies and participate in human emotions, stratagems, characters, and relationships’ in a manner that amounted to the producers sharing ‘the authorial function with the audience’. As Toni Johnson-Woods notes, Big Brother was the first Australian show that married the medium of television with the internet to allow viewers 24-hour access to footage, the ability to vote and the potential to customise their interaction with the show. More broadly, the genre proved adept at leveraging marketing and cross-media promotion opportunities. In Graeme Turner’s words, the format can be promoted ‘as news, as a cultural phenomenon, as the launching pad for a raft of new celebrities, as a contest to be played over the phone or through SMS and, finally, as just television’. A criticism of reality television is that the programs elevate ‘nobodies’, and in the process give them unrealistic expectations of their lives and personal worth. In their book Fame Games, Graeme Turner, Frances Bonner and David Marshall document the vast industry now devoted to manufacturing famous individuals, which spans public relations, agents, stylists, managers and media practitioners. Fame is a central commodity in late capitalist economies, but is not necessarily related to natural ability. Viewed in this light, reality television was a logical next step in the evolution of the fame industry: it offered a vehicle for ordinary people to move to the other side of the screen and create their own televisual personas. Reality television might be understood as a bridge from the everyday world into the mediated one. As Turner observes, at a semiotic level, reality television shows us the centrality of mediated representations to our lives and our sense of selves. REFs: J. Hartley, Television Truths (2008); T. Johnson-Woods, Big Bother (2002); K. Murphy, TV Land (2006); G. Turner, Understanding Celebrity (2004); G. Turner, F. Bonner and P.D. Marshall, Fame Games (2000). CATHARINE LUMBY

R E C ORDI NG T ECHNOLOGIES Recording devices are integral elements of our media systems: they enable the preservation, collection, distribution and re-use of content. Their history traces a recurrent pattern of technical innovation, industry disruption and contentious cultural diffusion. New recording technologies have successively transformed Australia’s media. Before World War II, radio broadcasting relied on a few sources of content: live performance, familiar gramophone discs and the ‘transcription discs’ used to distribute programs. But discs were difficult to produce quickly and reliably. Broadcasters needed devices that could record and play back interviews, talks and performances more rapidly, and a variety of machines for these purposes began to appear in Australian radio production studios from the 1930s onwards.

From the perspective of later technologies, these early systems seem very limited, but they represented dramatic extensions in the capability of broadcasting and audio production. The ABC acquired a few disc-based devices, and by 1936 it had a Marconi-Stille recorder that used metal tape. While disc recordings were of relatively high quality, they were limited to only a few minutes for each of the side of the disc, and could not be edited. Metal tapebased systems were more useful, but also more technically complex. The Marconi machine, for example, could record programs up to 30 minutes. The metal tape could be wiped and reused, cut, spliced and soldered back together, although this editing process weakened the tape, and breakages were a frequent problem. Early recording technologies for post-war television were just as complicated and cumbersome, with specialised film cameras (‘Kinetoscopes’), used to capture audio-visual content. Plastic tape-based recording transformed both radio and television in the 1950s and 1960s, with dramatic improvements in the cost, quality, reliability and immediacy of recording. Editing was dramatically improved. Tape became the medium for advertising and made possible all kinds of repetitive program elements. Histories of recording technologies often emphasise two over-arching trajectories: the first a rising curve representing continuous improvements in quality, and the second a line falling equally quickly, representing reductions in cost. The significance of this dynamic cannot be under-estimated for the industry, politics and cultural aspects of broadcasting. A simple example is the appearance of the community radio sector in the 1970s, which would not have been possible without the falling costs of professional-quality tape-based broadcasting. Two further elements of this evolution draw out the importance of these changes for our media history. The first is mobility and portability. While the first tape and wire recorders and the Kinetoscopes gave broadcasters some control over the process within the studio, plastic tape and the technologies around it helped to take media production and news-gathering out of the studio. Solid-state electronics enabled smaller, more mobile devices. In the 1970s, the analogue video ‘Portapak’ emerged as a cheaper, more flexible alternative to 16mm cameras, creating the conditions not only for a self-conscious brand of ‘eyewitness’ journalism, but also for a wave of activist, social documentary, known in Australia as ‘process video’. In the same period, Marantz produced a series of lightweight professional-quality audio recorders using compact cassettes. The second is a related transformation, where the technologies of video and audio recording migrated from specialised professional markets for media production into a new world of media consumption. Consumer devices for recording

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regional broadcasting media began to proliferate in households in the second half of the 1970s. They are important in the history of Australian media for many reasons. Along with the other ‘new television technologies’ of the period—among them cassette-based early home computers and games consoles, and optical disc drives—they began to open up television to new sources and kinds of content. In Australia, the earliest recording devices to achieve widespread diffusion were audiocassette recorders, from the early 1970s, and then the video-cassette recorder (VCR), introduced in 1978. VCR ownership in Australian metropolitan households climbed steeply through the 1980s, reaching a mid-80 per cent level by 1996, and a high point of 89 per cent in 2002. VCRs changed television in unexpected ways. They gave viewers a form of local storage, and a new format for sharing, rental, purchase and exchange: the book-sized, plastic cassette. Initially bitterly resisted by producers and rights holders, the video market became a vital additional revenue stream for the producers of movies and television shows, if not for the broadcasters. Almost incidentally, VCRs gave viewers remote controls, which enabled them to jump between channels, avoiding, muting or fast-forwarding through advertisements. So VCRs began a larger redefinition of television, from a single-source device designed and dedicated to broadcast television to a general-purpose domestic audiovisual display. A final phase of transformation is important to note. The turn-of-the-century switch to digital household media, in the form of CDs and DVDs, represented a deliberate step back from consumer recording: these were for playback only. The same can be said of the more recent internet-based streaming media, including the on-demand services offered by broadcasters, and the platforms controlled by Apple, Amazon and other digital behemoths. An interesting feature of this new media environment is the flourishing, alongside these new systems for controlling content, of a remarkably resilient and vibrant informal economy of household recording, sharing and exchange—an economy that remains the subject of sustained controversy, both within and beyond our media. REFs: D. Morton, Off the Record (1999); J.F. Ross, Radio Broadcasting Technology (1998). JULIAN THOMAS

REGI ONA L BROADCASTING The physical size of Australia and its dispersed distribution of population influenced the development of regional broadcasting, and the term ‘network’ has become synonymous with regional radio and television rollout to nonmetropolitan audiences. The challenge of how to broadcast to communities located outside metropolitan areas was

considered in the first decade of radio. The first official radio network belonged to the Australian Broadcasting Company, formed in 1929 as a result of the amalgamation of the A-class stations after a recommendation by the 1927 Royal Commission on Wireless. The Australian Broadcasting Company was nationalised when the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) was established through the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932. The ABC incorporated 12 stations, which in turn incorporated four regional stations as relay stations: 2NC Newcastle and 2CO Corowa (New South Wales), 4RK Rockhampton (Queensland) and 5CK Crystal Brook (South Australia). At the time, there were 43 commercial radio stations. The two earliest surviving B-class (later known as commercial) stations to emerge were 2HD Newcastle and 4GR Toowoomba, both established in 1925. By 1930, most B-class licences, awarded for an initial period of five years, were coming up for renewal. Early in 1930, the freeze on new licences ended, and both metropolitan and regional applicants were awarded new licences, including for 2CZ (later 2LM) Lismore and 3BA Ballarat. Within five years, there were more than 60 commercial radio stations, with regional stations broadcasting a range of services, from weather reports to the condition of stock routes. By 1939, there were at least 117 clubs affiliated with commercial radio stations, including the Smile Clubs of 2AY Albury, 2GF Grafton and 3BO Bendigo; the Junior Country Service Club of 2GZ Orange, the Women’s Club of 3SH Swan Hill and the Chums’ Club of 7QT Queenstown. Programming on the ABC’s network was initially shared between metropolitan stations and distributed programming to regional areas; the latter became the cornerstone of the ABC, as it pursued an agenda of service and education to those living in regional Australia. Accordingly, it had a very high profile in rural and regional areas, and in many cases was the only option for those outside large regional or metropolitan centres. The ABC’s Rural Department was established in 1945, and significant rural programs have included The Country Hour (1945– ), Blue Hills (1949–76) and Australia All Over (originating in the 1960s), although these traditionally have been broadcast from metropolitan stations (primarily Sydney). Current affairs programs AM and PM are also broadcast throughout the regional network. The ABC’s radio services to regional Australia expanded as a result of the Second Regional Radio Network project in 1986. This project resulted in the separation of the ABC’s regional and national service, and significant expansion of regional services, including Classic FM. In 1989, Triple J (which had commenced broadcast as 2JJ in Sydney in 1975) was networked to metropolitan cities; four years later, the rollout of Triple J began to regional areas.

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regional broadcasting During the 2000s, most major ABC radio networks became available to regional listeners: Local Radio, Radio National, Classic FM, Triple J, and NewsRadio (which also broadcasts federal parliament). These services have been complemented by a strong online and, more recently, digital presence. In contrast to the relationship between the ABC and regional Australia, deployment of the SBS Radio service to the regions has been recent, despite the establishment of SBS as a multicultural broadcaster in 1977. SBS Television broadcast to metropolitan audiences for the first time in 1980, but did not become available to regional areas until after 1993, when it was rolled out more widely. Programming on SBS has always been centrally created, with no localised programs; in contrast, the ABC broadcasts state-based programming within its national television network. The period between 1990 and 2010 saw expansion into regional areas in both television and radio. For radio in particular, huge growth in the community and commercial sector occurred during this period. The community radio sector was established in the 1970s. While the initial drive for a participatory broadcasting model did not come from those in regional or remote areas, the uptake of community radio outside metropolitan areas was rapid and transformative, and developments in satellite technology enhanced the ability of regional and remote audiences to access and share programming. The launch of AUSSAT1 in 1985 facilitated the expansion of television and radio to remote parts of Australia, and the Optus Satellite remains the means by which non-metropolitan audiences receive program distribution via broadcast networks. Additionally, the Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) scheme was rolled out in 2010, enabling those who weren’t able to receive terrestrial reception access to free-to-air digital television channels. Community radio also benefited from advances in satellite technology. In 1993, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) established a satellite known as ComRadSat, which allowed network programming to be accessed by community radio stations around Australia. Through the satellite, community radio stations have been able to subscribe to a range of services to complement local programming. These include the National Indigenous Radio Service, Radio for the Print Handicapped Australia, the BBC World Service and the Community Radio Network (CRN). The CRN is complemented by the Digital Delivery Network (DDN), which enables automated program ordering and distribution from the CRN satellite channel, and this is managed by Community Broadcasting Online. Programming that can be accessed via this network includes National Radio News (NRN), the National

Indigenous News Service (NINS), The Wire (current affairs) and The Daily Interview. Supported by the development of satellite technology, a number of schemes were established during the 1980s and 1990s that increased the ability of Indigenous, public and commercial broadcasters to access audiences in remote regions. For example, the Broadcasting from Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS) was established in 1987. It supplied technology to community broadcasters that would allow them to promote Indigenous culture, and contribute to a network that linked to Darwin and Alice Springs based on the use of self-help retransmission facilities. BRACS was replaced by the Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Scheme (RIBS) in 1991. The Remote Area Broadcast Scheme (RABS) was also established to support distribution of television broadcasting services through the analogue network via satellite; it enabled access to ABC, SBS and commercial networks Imparja Television (Central), Seven Central (NE), Golden West and WIN West (Western). Networks of significance to develop during this period were the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) in 1980 and Imparja in 1988, both based in Alice Springs. The success and longevity of these networks are due to their ability to mix local and imported programming to meet the needs of a diverse audience. Community radio has also benefited from technology that has facilitated a mix of local and networked programming, and between 1990 and 2010, the sector grew from over 80 stations to more than 350. In 2014, there were 358 community radio licences, 91 temporary broadcast licences and 38 long-term free-to-air digital services. Most community broadcasting services are located outside metropolitan areas. While these stations provide locally produced content (indeed, community stations are often the only source of local programs for their communities), the ability to access networked programming has supported a dramatic growth in the sector. The commercial sector also saw huge growth in the latter stages of the 20th century. Development of new commercial radio licences had been relatively static between the late 1930s and the early 1980s, when metropolitan FM stations in capital cities were launched. Most regional commercial stations prior to 2000 were on the AM band, and within this group of stations, some significant networks were established, such as the Queensland Broadcasting Network during the 1940s. Significant growth in commercial regional broadcasting commenced in the mid-1990s, driven initially by regional investment by RG Capital Radio and DMG. New station launches on the FM band in the early 2000s marked the beginning of regional commercial networks on a national scale. In 2004, Macquarie Regional

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regional broadcasting RadioWorks took over RG Capital Radio, and at the same time, DMG turned its attention to the metropolitan market, purchasing nine new FM radio licenses and launching the Nova network that focused on metropolitan cities. DMG sold its regional stations to the Macquarie Media Group in 2005, and refocused its attention to metro and digital stations, retaining an interest in only one regional radio station, Star 104.5 FM on the NSW Central Coast. Macquarie Regional RadioWorks (subsequently the Southern Cross Media Group) therefore dominated regional radio broadcasting in latter stages of the 2000s but, due to breach of ownership regulations, it was required to divest itself of some of its regionally based commercial stations. Macquarie was therefore joined in the regional radio broadcasting space by the Prime Media Group when Prime Radio acquired a number of commercial regional stations in Queensland from the Macquarie Radio Network in 2005, and launched Zinc Radio stations on the FM band in 2008. Prime’s strategy included retaining three heritage AM stations, with a long history in their local communities. These stations, which were not renamed, were 4CA Cairns, 4MK Mackay and 4RO Rockhampton. These changes in ownership enabled regional listeners to access high-profile breakfast and drive programming. For example, Southern Cross Austereo generated high-profile metropolitan-generated drive programs throughout Australia. In turn, Prime Radio built a networking facility on the Sunshine Coast in 2008, from which it produced daily local and national news bulletins for its stations across regional Queensland. Easy access to syndicated programming on commercial radio stations allowed well-known ‘metropolitan’ voices to be heard around Australia—for example, talkback hosts John Laws and Alan Jones could be heard on the AM band, and breakfast and drive host teams on the FM band. However, while networking allowed a significant degree of program-sharing across the network, commercial stations incorporated local programming that connected the stations with their local communities. In particular, breakfast programming in regional areas has remained firmly ‘local’, or broadcast from a large regional centre, as opposed to being networked from city-based stations. Conversely, drive programs are usually networked from metropolitan areas. In addition to community and commercial networks servicing regional and remote Australia, the Vision Radio Network, comprising open narrowcast licences, has emerged as a significant player for non-metropolitan audiences. Based out of Brisbane, Vision commenced broadcasting in 1999, and is operated by the United Christian Broadcasters of Australia (UCB). It comprises 500

open narrowcast licences, based primarily in regional towns and cities, that operate as relay stations for single-source programming across the network. Radio TAB also operates a significant network throughout Australia via open narrowcast licences serviced by the National Racing Service. Like commercial radio networks in regional areas, television commenced in regional areas primarily through independent station ownership that concentrated on local programming, with some content provided by metropolitan stations through loose affiliations. Regional television ownership was impacted by the policy of aggregation in the late 1980s. Prior to aggregation, regional areas received the ABC and one commercial network, in addition to local station content. After aggregation, ownership changes allowed major networks to reach much greater proportions of the Australian population. WIN Television, Southern Cross Television and Prime Television emerged from this period, and have been dominant in regional television from the 2000s. News services to regional areas increased, but were often generated from central production centres. This has prompted debate about consolidation of ownership and the impact on the production of local news. For larger regional centres, the amount of local news and the options available to listeners have generally increased; however, while the amount of local regional news appeared to increase, this news was collected from within a larger geographic area. For many small communities, the consolidation of ownership in regional broadcasting resulted in a loss of visibility of local issues. Policy development in the area of networking in both television and radio has therefore been torn between expansion and protection—that is, enabling people throughout the country to have access to the same level of service (and thus services), while at the same time seeking to protect local services (and culture). In summary, the dominant themes related to networking and programming in regional broadcasting have been access to technology to enable broadcast across a vast physical space; consolidation of ownership; and the need to balance local programming with that accessed from a network. REFs: ABC, ‘Submission to the Inquiry into the Adequacy of Radio Services in Non-Metropolitan Australia’ (2000); ACMA, ‘List of Licensed Broadcasters’ (2014); Australian Government, ‘Indigenous Broadcasting’ (2014); J. Bailey, The Country’s Finest Hour (2005). KATE AMES

[RE GIONA L ] RE MOT E INDIGE NOUS ME DIA ORGA NIS AT IONS see Broadcasting for Remote

Aboriginal Communities Scheme

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regional press R E G IONAL PRESS The first newspapers published outside the capitals of the emerging Australian colonies reflected the ephemeral nature of the pioneering Australian press. In three of the six colonies (Tasmania, New South Wales and Western Australia), the first country newspaper survived six months or less, in South Australia the paper appeared only seven times in 17 months, while in Queensland it lasted 10 years. Only in Victoria did the first country title survive until the 21st century. Tasmania’s second city of Launceston was the cradle of the Australian regional press, with the first seven provincial titles launched there. The first, the Tasmanian and Port Dalrymple Advertiser, appeared in January 1825 and the next six titles between February 1829 and March 1839. The other colonies followed: a spasmodic Port Lincoln Herald (SA) emerged in April 1839, the Geelong Advertiser (Vic) in November 1840, the Hunter River Gazette, Maitland (NSW) in December 1841, the North Australian, Ipswich (Qld) in October 1855, and the King George’s Sound Observer, Albany (WA) in August 1868. By 1850, a total of 30 newspaper titles had come off the hand-operated presses in Australian provincial towns. Only 12 of the titles survived until 1850, and only three of those—all dailies—are still being published: the Geelong Advertiser (est. 21 November 1840), the Examiner (Launceston, 12 March 1842) and the Maitland Mercury (7 January 1843). The regional press expanded rapidly from the 1850s to the 1890s, with the number of newspapers increasing 30-fold to 475 in 1890—or one newspaper for every 4300 country dwellers. Seventy per cent of the papers were published in New South Wales and Victoria. Expansion was prompted initially by the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s. A writer in the Review of Reviews in 1907 observed that the goldfield gave the Australian country press ‘its first great impetus’. The geographic spread of newspaper sites was most noticeable in Victoria, where there had been only four provincial newspapers at 1 January 1850 but 34 at the start of 1860. The number of newspaper publication centres had jumped from three to 22, with eight publishing more than one newspaper. Most of the new immigrants headed for the mining towns, and the population spiral was soon reflected in the number of new provincial titles—for example, five in 1854, 17 in both 1855 and 1856 (with the introduction and early spread of the electric telegraph), eight in 1857, 14 in 1858 and eight in 1859. In New South Wales, in the decade from 1850, when three provincial newspapers were in print, 22 new titles were established, and 21 were in print as of 1 January 1860. In the emerging colony of Queensland, only three provincial titles emerged in the 1850s and each was still in print in 1860. No provincial titles emerged

in South Australia and Western Australia in the 1850s. Solid development began in South Australia in the 1860s, and in Western Australia and Tasmania in the 1890s. Studies of the sale prices and valuations of country newspapers in the 19th century suggest that a weekly newspaper could be started for somewhere between £300 and £600 ($600 and $1200). The tri-weekly Maitland Mercury was valued at £12,791 in 1860 and, after being mismanaged for several years, £10,150 in 1874. Thomas Garrett, founder of newspapers at Wollongong, Kiandra and Cooma, told the NSW parliament in 1872 that £200 was sufficient to start the average country paper if the proprietor were reporter, editor, typesetter and printer. The coming of the linotype at century’s end added £500 or £600 to the cost of establishing a country paper, but reduced the costs of producing it because less labour was needed. A case study of the introductory editorial statements that 25 pioneering NSW provincial press proprietors published from 1843 to 1910 found only limited indications of fourth estate or ‘watchdog’ principles. However, in at least one important aspect, the study found the provincial press met Henry Reeve’s fourth estate concept: it consisted of ‘many organs, representing every variety and nuance of sentiment which prevails in the community’. These publications were also credible movers of information and opinion, with a desire to serve the people at large—even if later, with the advent of local government, dominant interests became more influential. A readiness in small communities to attack local newspaper proprietors tended to circumscribe press freedom. The overwhelming theme of the introductory statements was the material and social advancement of town and district and the enlargement of the district’s political power. The establishment of a daily newspaper became a status symbol for an Australian town. Daily newspaper publication in regional areas was much more prolific from 1849 to 1900 than in the period between 1901 and 2000 because of the gold rushes and the relative cheapness of printing technology. From 1849, when the Geelong Advertiser became the first provincial daily, until the close of 1900, 121 dailies were published in 47 provincial centres in the six colonies. Victoria was the most prolific colony, with 44 dailies published in 13 centres; New South Wales had 31 dailies in 14 centres, Queensland 25 in eight, Western Australia 13 in six, Tasmania seven in five and South Australia just one. By 1 January 1850, there had been and was only one Australian provincial daily. By 1 January 1860, 11 provincial dailies had been published in Victoria—three at each of Geelong, Ballarat and Sandhurst, and two at Beechworth; and one in New South Wales—at Braidwood. Queensland gained its first provincial daily in January 1873, South Australia its first in June

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regional press 1873, Tasmania its first in December 1877 and Western Australia its first, in the form of a free advertising sheet, around March 1890. The most remarkable aspect of 19th and early 20th century daily publication in regional Australian was the smallness of the populations. In Queensland, Rockhampton had a population of 6300 in 1875 and two daily newspapers. In New South Wales, Bathurst had 9000 residents in 1889 with three dailies, while Orange had 4220 residents in 1911 and two dailies. Technology was an important influence on the pace of newspaper development in a vast colony such as Queensland. From the mid1860s, the electric telegraph and the railway, gradually pushing out from port to hinterland up the north coast, helped lift the tempo of newspaper development and competition. By 1870, the newspaper centres linked to Brisbane by the telegraph were Ipswich, Toowoomba, Warwick, Dalby, Maryborough, Gympie, Gladstone, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bowen and Townsville. Only Clermont had no telegraphic link. Brisbane had been linked with Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide since 2 November 1861, inspiring one colonist to acclaim the means provided to glean ‘a faint whisper of the doings of the great world far away’. In the 20th century, New South Wales published 41 new daily titles, Queensland 22, Victoria nine, Western Australia three, and South Australia and Tasmania one each. At 2001, only 37 dailies were being published in provincial Australia: 14 in New South Wales, 14 in Queensland, six in Victoria, two in Tasmania and one in Western Australia. In December 2011, two NSW north coast dailies became non-dailies. In the face of sharply dwindling circulation figures, the Daily News (Tweed Heads) changed to a weekly paid print edition with a digital daily, and the Coffs Coast Advocate (Coffs Harbour)—previously free two days and ‘paid’ on four others—also ceased daily issue, and appeared only on Wednesdays and Saturdays (free both days). Busy towns such as Armidale and Port Macquarie (NSW), Horsham and Sale (Vic), and Bunbury and Albany (WA) have never hosted a daily. In 2002, a newspaper war broke out at Gosford-Wyong on the NSW Central Coast. John Fairfax Holdings launched the Central Coast Herald as a daily on 28 September, drawing partly on the resources of its long-established Newcastle Herald. News Limited countered by inserting a ‘Central Coast Extra’ supplement in the Sydney Daily Telegraph from 27 September, making its bi-weekly Express Advocate a free daily from 30 September, and halving the cover price of the Daily Telegraph on the Central Coast and in Newcastle and the Hunter. News Limited won the war, with the Central Coast Herald dropping its ‘Central Coast’ tag from the masthead in June 2003 and ceasing publication of a designated Central Coast edition in June 2004.

Key influences on regional newspaper development in the 20th century were the World Wars, the Great Depression, the advent of radio news from the 1930s, the beginning of commercial television in regional Australia from the beginning of the 1960s, the two major eras of technological change for newspaper production (at the beginning of the century, to mechanised typesetting and faster presses; and from the 1960s, to web-offset printing and soon after to computerised typesetting) and the advent of colour television in 1975. World War II brought savage restrictions on the use of newsprint, as in the case of the Newcastle Morning Herald, which had to be reduced from 108 to 34 pages per week. Although about 12 per cent of the provincial papers published in five states at the beginning of the war had disappeared by 1943 (some resumed after the war), no country paper missed publication because of the newsprint shortage. The economic impact of war and depression on newspapers meant that amalgamations became commonplace in the first half of the century. Sometimes one centre experienced more than one marriage of newspapers, such as Bathurst, New South Wales in 1904 and 1963, and Toowoomba, Queensland in 1922 and 1970. Other significant amalgamations occurred at Cairns (1918, a daily and a bi-weekly formed a new daily), Mackay (1919, two dailies), Maryborough (1919, two dailies), Warwick (1919, two tri-weeklies became a daily), Bega (1923, three non-dailies), Albury (1925, two dailies), Bundaberg (1925, two dailies), Cootamundra (1928, two dailies), Orange (1945, two tri-weeklies became a daily) and Finley (1970, three non-dailies). The amalgamations made it easier for newspapers carrying no cover price to emerge. So-called free newspapers were an established fact of life by the 1970s in country districts, after earlier being dismissed as ‘advertising sheets’ and refused admission to country press associations. Chains of newspapers emerged in the 20th century. Some comprised nothing but small papers, but others were built around a core of one or more dailies, such as the Elliott group with its Mildura daily, Western Newspapers Ltd with its Bathurst daily and Regional Publishers Pty Ltd with its Maitland daily. Many were built by entrepreneurial families, such as the Dunn family (Qld), Sommerlad and Armati families (NSW), Willson and Taylor families (SA), and McPherson and Yeates families (Victoria). Others were institutional enterprises, such as the North Queensland Newspaper Company Ltd, formed in 1910 by the amalgamation of newspaper interests centred on the daily Northern Miner (Charters Towers) and the Townsville Daily Bulletin; Northern Star Holdings Limited of Lismore, with four daily newspapers and interests in radio and television; and Rural Press Limited, built from the cornerstone of the weekly NSW farming

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regional press paper the Land to become the biggest regional press enterprise in Australia—it owned newspapers in all six states and dailies in four of them when it merged with Fairfax Media in 2007. Some of the groups defy easy categorisation, such as a chain of small Queensland country weeklies and monthly rural papers built up by Patrick James Leahy (1860–1927), entrepreneur and state politician, from unlikely beginnings at Thargomindah in 1884; a chain of north-western NSW weeklies amassed by Howard Edward Ostler Campbell (1899–1988) at places such as Gilgandra, Coonamble, Wee Waa, Brewarrina and Nyngan; a small chain of western and central-western NSW weeklies developed by the Orange-based Rural Newspapers Ltd in 1946 around its farm-oriented publication, the Western Stock and Station Journal; and a group of three dailies—at Wagga Wagga, Wollongong and Goulburn—put together by R.A.G. Henderson (1896–1986) almost as an afterthought while he focused on his day job as chief executive of John Fairfax & Sons. The Dunn family owned dailies in Maryborough (from 1891), Rockhampton (1911 and 1929, merged in 1941), Warwick (1919–36) and Toowoomba (1922), and a bi-weekly in Nambour (1964). The group became the solid foundation for the merger of the newspaper interests of five other families that resulted in Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd (PNQ) in 1968. PNQ began with six dailies (Maryborough, Rockhampton, Toowoomba, Mackay, Warwick and Ipswich) and interests in a seventh (Bundaberg), but soon owned eight dailies (including Bundaberg and Gladstone) and launched a ninth, the Sunshine Coast Daily, in 1980. In October 1987, only nine months before the O’Reilly family took over PNQ, the company added the four NSW northern rivers dailies (Coffs Harbour, Grafton, Lismore and the Tweed) to its stable during the corporate mayhem that followed the Murdoch takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT). In mid-1960, Sir Frank Packer acquired, through Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd, a majority interest in the Maitland Mercury; he used it as the catalyst for developing a regional newspaper chain that spread throughout the Hunter Valley and north along the coast to Macksville, as well as into the central west of New South Wales. John Armati’s Macquarie Publications Pty Ltd expanded dramatically in the mid-1980s, buying newspapers in a path from the central west through to the south coast, in towns such as Wellington, Grenfell, Young, Canowindra, Cowra, Young, Bega, Eden, Merimbula, Moruya, Batemans Bay, Narooma, Goulburn and Cooma. In November 1985, the HWT bought Consolidated Press’s NSW provincial newspaper groups, Western Newspapers Ltd and Regional Publishers Pty Ltd. Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited took over the HWT in February 1987 and sold off Western Newspapers to Macquarie

Publications, and Regional Publishers to Rural Press. In Victoria, R.D. Elliott used the Sunraysia Daily (Mildura) as the foundation on which to build a provincial press group, known from shortly after his death in 1950 as the Elliott Provincial Newspaper Group and from June 1965 as the Elliott Newspaper Group. Many were struggling papers, such as those at Ouyen, Woomelang and Murrayville. Others, such as the Castlemaine Mail (1932), Shepparton Advertiser (1934) and Swan Hill Guardian (1937), were much more viable concerns. The Gippsland Times (Sale, 1960) and Latrobe Valley Express, (Morwell, 1970) were notable later acquisitions. Today the Elliott group continues solidly, thanks to three generations of control by the Lanyon family. The McPherson family built a small media group based on the Shepparton News, which the family bought in 1888. The News became a daily in July 1972. Progressively, the McPhersons bought papers at nearby towns such as Seymour (1961), Nathalia (1962), Kyabram (1966), Echuca and Rochester (1969), Elmore (1970), Benalla (1986) and Cobram (1988), and over the border at Deniliquin and Finley (1988). The HWT spread its tentacles into the regions in the 1960s and 1970s, buying the Bendigo Advertiser (1963), Kalgoorlie Miner (1970) and Geelong Advertiser (1973). These are now owned by three different companies: Fairfax Media (Bendigo), News Corp Australia (Geelong) and West Australian Newspapers Holdings (Kalgoorlie). In South Australia, Fairfax Media dominates with a chain of newspapers, covering centres such as Ceduna, Clare, Murray Bridge, Naracoorte, Penola, Port Augusta, Port Pirie, Whyalla, Port Lincoln and Victor Harbor, all printed at its Murray Bridge centre. The other major group is based on Renmark, where the Taylor family has owned the Murray Pioneer since 1905. The group includes papers at Loxton, Waikerie, Gawler, Pinnaroo and Burra. In Western Australia, when West Australian Newspapers Holdings Limited (WAN) was floated in January 1992, it owned a chain of country papers, especially the Kalgoorlie daily and significant papers at Bunbury and Albany, as well as 49.9 per cent of the Perth-based Community Newspapers Group. In 2005, WAN made a major acquisition, the tri-weekly at Geraldton. Fairfax Media is the other major player in regional media in Western Australia. In 1968, the Burnie Advocate became the first regional daily to change to web-offset printing. Within about a dozen years, every regional daily had made a similar change. This signalled the end of an era when letterpresses, such as Battle Creek reel-feds and Cossars, were bought from larger newspapers. The cost of the new web-offset equipment and the significantly better production results meant that each regional

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religious broadcasting daily generally became the site of a centralised printery that churned out its own paper as well those smaller papers formerly printed on antiquated letter presses in surrounding towns. It was the snapping of a geographic link between the towns, such as Taree, Chinchilla, Horsham, Home Hill, Port Augusta and Wellington, and where their papers were printed, who printed them and who set the copy deadlines. Now, few regional dailies are printed on their own press. APN News and Media closed newspaper presses progressively from 1998: Maryborough (1998), Warwick (2001), Ipswich (2006), Lismore (2008), Bundaberg and Mackay (both 2011), and Ballina (2013). By 2014, APN produced its 10 Queensland and two NSW dailies from only three print sites: Rockhampton, Yandina and Toowoomba. Fairfax Media, with regional dailies in four states and hundreds of other newspapers scattered over six states, had engaged in similar centralisation of printing and in April 2014 used only 15 newspaper printing sites to print its regional titles. After 12 March 2004, only the Don Dorrigo Gazette (NSW) continued to be produced by hot-metal methods. The circulation of the regional dailies defied the declining metropolitan trends in the 1970s and 1980s, rising by 19.13 per cent from 1975 to 1985. By the 1990s, however, the regional dailies had joined their metropolitan cousins on the downhill slide, with the average regional decline between 1990 and 2000 being 7.19 per cent. From 2000–10, the overall decline was 14.05 per cent. Part of the cause was ease of access to news on the internet. By 2011, however, virtually all country newspapers provided the public with news via regularly updated websites. Only a few, such as the Shepparton News and the Bairnsdale Advertiser, had erected a paywall. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, The Bold Type (2010), ‘Chronic Circulation Decline: Regional Dailies Succumb to Metropolitan Virus’, Australian Studies in Journalism, 9 (2000), Country Conscience (2000) and Purposely Parochial (2008). ROD KIRKPATRICK

disaffection within the Gorton government contributed to the destabilising of that government, and to (Sir) John Gorton’s replacement by (Sir) William McMahon. Born in Liverpool, England, Reid emigrated with his family to Sydney in 1927. After leaving school he drifted between jobs in outback New South Wales and Queensland before being hired as a copy boy on the Sydney Sun by Robert Clyde Packer. In 1937, Reid was sent to Canberra to cover national politics. Although initially critical of John Curtin, he developed a close relationship with him and his successor, Ben Chifley. In 1954, Reid changed employers, moving to the Sydney Daily Telegraph under R.C.  Packer’s son, (Sir) Frank, the Menzies Coalition government’s strongest media supporter. His relationship with Frank Packer was stormy, but it endured. Reid continued working for Kerry Packer until 1985, producing three books on Australian politics as well as a prolific stream of journalism for outlets including the Bulletin and TCN9. Reid has often been characterised as a Machiavellian, interested in power rather than ideology or partisan allegiance. The reality was more complex. Although he moved closer to Menzies after joining the Daily Telegraph, Reid’s own politics always retained traces of the Lang Labor populism he had acquired as a young man during the Great Depression—he despised the ‘trendies’ he thought had taken over the party under Whitlam. And he denied there was a conflict of interest between his professional obligations as a journalist and his membership of the ALP, which he regarded as a private matter and maintained until he was expelled in the party’s post-Split recriminations in 1957. If Reid sometimes straddled the line between players and reporters, willingly or at the behest of publishers, he had no doubt where it lay. REF: R. Fitzgerald and S. Holt, Alan (‘The Red Fox’) Reid (2010). RAY CASSIN

REI D, A LAN (1914–87) Nicknamed the ‘Red Fox’, Alan Reid dominated the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery for more than four decades. Courted and sometimes reviled by politicians, he was often accused of being a player in national politics rather than a reporter. In fact, he revelled in both roles. One of Reid’s stories, revealing the Catholic activist B.A. Santamaria as a hidden manipulator of Labor politics, has been credited with provoking the 1955 Labor Split. Another, depicting Labor leader Arthur Calwell and his deputy, Gough Whitlam, waiting impotently for the decision of Labor’s 1963 special conference on US bases in Australia, coined the phrase ‘faceless men’. Reid’s interventions were not confined to Labor politics: in the late 1960s, his reports on

R ELIG IO U S B R O AD C ASTIN G Some of Australia’s earliest commercial radio licences were awarded to religious bodies (particularly in Sydney), including 2GB (Theosophical) in 1926 and 2SM (Catholic) and 2CH (NSW Council of Churches), both in 1931. Although some Christians were sceptical about radio, others argued that many people were not always able to physically go to church. Several ministers, such as Rev. Reginald Gordon Nichols of Melbourne and Rev.  A.D.  McCutcheon of Adelaide, broadcast on both commercial and ABC radio. From its inception in 1932, the ABC accepted that its charter requirement to provide ‘adequate and comprehensive broadcasting’ to the Australian people demanded a regular schedule of

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religious broadcasting religious broadcasts. ABC religious broadcasting was oriented to the broad sweep of Australians who were not church-goers, but were nonetheless concerned with the spiritual dimensions of life. Guided by census statistics, the programs of the first 10 years or so were almost entirely Christian in content: religious services, Bible readings and non-denominational talks. In World War II, there was an increase in religious broadcasting—with patriotic overtones— on commercial radio, while the Department of Information induced the ABC to schedule a daily minute of prayer. But wartime religious (particularly Lutheran) broadcasts were closely monitored. The most spectacular instance of government intervention in religious broadcasting occurred in 1941, when 5KA Adelaide and three stations controlled by the Jehovah’s Witnesses were closed. Two core values in the ABC charter were independence and promoting national unity. By 1941, the ABC realised that it could not exercise adequate editorial control over its religious programs so long as it depended on clergy in the major Christian churches for their content and presentation. It therefore appointed Rev. Kenneth T. Henderson, an Anglican modernist theologian and experienced journalist, to oversee all religious broadcasts. In 1947, he launched the long-running Plain Christianity: A Word to the Wayfarer, and two years later became the first federal supervisor of a separate Religion Department; by 1953, at his urging, the ABC had established an Advisory Committee of representatives of the mainstream churches to promote ecumenical collaboration. A 1943 inquiry by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Broadcasting established that around half of commercial stations never broadcast religious broadcasts, and about 20 per cent did so only occasionally. The most common form of religious broadcasts on commercial stations was hymns—often heard in a block on Sundays, early on weekday mornings, and at Easter and Christmas. The Broadcasting Act 1948 provided that the new Australian Broadcasting Control Board would be responsible for ensuring that ‘divine worship or other matter of a religious nature’ was broadcast for adequate periods and at appropriate times. Commercial stations struggled to deal with a plethora of denominations, and the poor broadcasting technique and/or lack of reliability of some clergy. Some listeners were also perturbed by sectarianism: Australia’s most famous religious broadcaster, Dr Leslie Rumble (2SM), could be heard up against a trenchant Anglican, Rev. T.C. Hammond (2CH), on Sunday nights. More coordinated commercial radio programming emerged with the formation of the Christian Broadcasting Association (Protestant) in 1953, followed by the National Catholic Radio and Television Centre. One of the most

successful radio ministries in post-war Australia was The Voice of Prophecy, established by the Seventh-day Adventists. Australians heard about the revival in American Pentecostal and charismatic movements partly when they were sponsors on Australian commercial radio. Henderson retired from the ABC in 1956, and was succeeded as head of department by Rev. Dr John Munro, Rev. James Peter, Patrick Kirkwood and Rev. Dr David Millikan until the Religion Department was abolished in 1991. Since then, religious program-makers at the ABC have been incorporated into broader production structures in radio and television, while still retaining their identity as a specialist Religion and Ethics Unit. The 1954 Royal Commission on Television recommended the mandatory broadcasting of religious content on television on a community service basis. Following practices that had been established in radio, the Broadcasting Program Standards positioned station licensees as carriers of the programs, with a church or religious body responsible for their production and provision. This became the standard pattern of religion on commercial television for the next three decades. Following their practice in radio, larger denominations such as the Catholic and Anglican Churches established their own television agencies on a diocesan or state basis, and smaller Protestant denominations mainly combined forces in state-based Christian Television Associations (CTA). Collaboration between church agencies took place on a national level through the Australian Churches Media Association. It suited stations to have churches produce the material they broadcast. Although other community groups sought to broaden the requirement to include minority religions or non-religious topics of social concern, the ‘demographically proportional’ clause of the Standards meant that access to the free-time provision was limited almost totally to the major Christian churches. The resources provided by church bodies for the creation and production of program content were inadequate for such a medium. This limited what could be done, and narrowed the bulk of religious programs to primarily in-studio talking-head monologues, discussions, interviews and seasonal specials. One of the exceptions to the time allocated proportionally to churches by television stations was B.A. Santamaria, the driving force behind the National Civic Council, a conservative Catholic body. Removed as the presenter of the Catholic Church’s regular program on HSV7 after the death of Archbishop Daniel Mannix in 1963, Santamaria was offered a weekly spot on TCN9 and GTV9 by Sir Frank Packer in 1963. For the next 20 years, his Point of View was an influential weekly commentary on political and policy issues. In the 1960s, stations began to challenge the Sunday-morning provision by replacing religious

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religious press programs with their own commercial programs. While some church agencies resisted this, others saw it as an opportunity to get out of ‘the religious ghetto’. In Victoria, Doug Tasker, director of that state’s CTA, renegotiated with stations to replace his Sunday-morning programs with 30- and 60-second religious ‘spots’ scattered through the schedule. This was an international innovation that received local and international awards (and was later adopted by community service programs). From the late 1960s, some commercial radio broadcasters moved more into counselling and talkback as they attempted to reach out to young people. Father Jim McLaren, of 2UW and then 2SM, established Cross Walk Products to supply religious programs to AM and FM stations. Rev. Alan Walker (Methodist) initiated Life Line on 2UE to tie in with a Christian and crisis ministry he had founded, while Rev. Neil Adcock (5DN) developed an off-air counselling service with the help of Baptist Community Services. The 1976 self-regulation inquiry of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) reaffirmed the status quo, but largely left implementation to negotiations between television stations and the churches. This opened the way in the late 1970s for stations to begin replacing local programming with US evangelical/fundamentalist programs, which paid for their airtime with funds solicited from local audiences. By the early 1980s, these accounted for more than 70 per cent of the religious material broadcast by Australian metropolitan stations. With surveys since the 1970s pointing to a significant decline in religious belief among Australians, many religious broadcasters moved to community radio or struggled to maintain a commercial presence. In 1986, the ABT converted a Program Standard requiring one hour of religion per week to a ‘direction’. Religious stations became unsure of their identities: 2SM was sold to Wesgo Holdings Ltd in 1992 and 2CH to John Singleton in 1994. By the end of the century, astrology and advice programs were challenging religious broadcasters’ dominance of the commercial airwaves on Sunday nights. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 included, as a condition of licence, broadcasting of ‘matter of a religious nature during such periods as the ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] determines and, if the ACMA so directs, will do so without charge’, but it has never made such a direction. By this time, the major churches were facing declining membership and resource crises, and by the end of the 1990s most of the major religious production agencies had closed or were minimally active. As Australian society has progressively become more diverse, ABC broadcasts have extended their range to explore diverse religions and expressions of spirituality and values. Encounter (1965– ) and Caroline Jones’ The Search for Meaning (1987–94) on radio and

Compass on television (1988– ), presented since 1998 by Geraldine Doogue, have been publicly acclaimed and received media awards. In 2012, the ABC established an online portal, attracting a global audience to its programs and enabling listener responses and discussion. Fusion Media, which owned and managed community radio stations in Tasmania and regional Victoria, had all but collapsed by the early 2000s. Established in 1999, United Christian Broadcasters’ Vision Radio Network broadcasts from studios in Brisbane via satellite and narrowcasting, and has its own news service. Rhema FM stations are across Australia, with locally programmed Christian content. The longest-running religious program on Australian television, Mass for You at Home, is still broadcast on Channel 11 at 5.30 a.m. on Sundays. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); A. Healey, ‘Spirit and Substance: ABC Religious Broadcasting 1941–91’ (PhD thesis, 1993); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983); D.H. Tasker, ‘The Place of Religion in Commercial Television in Australia from 1956 to 1978’ (PhD thesis, 1980). BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY, ALISON M. HEALEY and PETER HORSFIELD

R ELIG IO U S P R ESS The beginnings of the press in Australia were less than auspicious. The First Fleet carried a printing press, but no one who could operate it. It wasn’t until 5 March 1803, under Governor Philip Gidley King, that the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser was finally published. Grandiose claims were made. On 7 January 1825, the Gazette asked: ‘What makes barbarians civilized, removes the film from the eyes of superstition, and warms the host of degenerate slaves with the hallowed fire which blazed at Marathon?’ Lest there be any misunderstanding, it provided the answer: ‘The Press.’ In the early years of the colony, there was less of a rigid religious-secular distinction in society as a whole, and this was reflected in the press. The first religious magazine in Australia was the Australian Magazine, which appeared in 1821 and lasted for 18 months. It was edited by three Wesleyan missionaries—Rev. Benjamin Carvosso, Walter Lawry and Ralph Mansfield. Its aim was more modest than that of the Gazette: to ‘disseminate useful knowledge, religious principles, and moral habits’. Mansfield was the first editor of the Sydney Herald (later the Sydney Morning Herald), and later Rev. William Curnow filled the same office. Rev. Frederick W. Ward was editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, and Rev. George Woolnough edited the Brisbane Telegraph. The titles of many of the early newspapers do not necessarily indicate their religious character. For example, Rev. Dr John Dunmore Lang published the Colonist (1835–40), and reappeared with the

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religious press Colonial Observer (1841–44) and the Press (1851). C.W. Robertson’s Sydney Standard and Colonial Advocate appeared briefly in 1839 as a Church of England publication. The Sentinel (1845–48) was published as a Protestant organ. The Congregational minister, Rev. John West, helped to establish the Launceston Examiner in 1842, and in 1854 became the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. In 1840, the Port Phillip Herald declared itself ‘strictly Protestant in principle’ but in favour of religious harmony. The short-lived Weekly Free Press and Port Phillip Commercial Advertiser (1841) was a Catholic paper. Rev. James Forbes, a Presbyterian, edited the Port Phillip Christian Herald (1840–55) from 1846 to 1851. The Adelaide Times (1848–58) was edited by the scholarly Baptist minister, Rev. James Allen. Bishop James Quinn took over the Ipswich North Australian (1855–63) and moved it to Brisbane to argue the case for Catholic schools in the 1860s. The cultured and evangelical Presbyterian, Rev. Dr Robert Steel, saw the importance of the influence of Christian journalism. For the next century and more, print dominated the communications of the Australian churches. However, by 1992, only six papers were published weekly—the three Catholic papers from Brisbane, Sydney and Perth, the Anglican Church Scene, the Seventh-day Adventist Australasian Record (c. 1900–87) and the Salvation Army’s War Cry, with different editions published in various states. For Catholics, the Australasian Chronicle (1839–43) was established as Archdeacon John McEncroe’s brainchild, financed by five wealthy Irish Catholics. The editor was W.A. Duncan, a convert from Scottish Presbyterianism. Not all the articles were by Catholics—even Henry Parkes wrote for it—and the tone tended to be socially and politically radical. The VicarGeneral, Francis Murphy, was wary of political radicalism but very Irish, whereas Duncan was the reverse. When Duncan proclaimed, ‘Our religion is neither English nor Irish, but Catholic’ in 1843, he was sacked. McEncroe took over the editorship, but passed it to his nephew, Michael D’Arcy, who changed the paper’s name to the Morning Chronicle, then the Chronicle, before he too was sacked in 1846, and the paper renamed the Sydney Chronicle. In 1848 it merged into the Daily News and Evening Chronicle, and in 1850 became the Freeman’s Journal. It took its name from the major Irish Catholic nationalist daily in Dublin. McEncroe did much of the writing but Freeman’s was never the official organ of the church. By 1914, financial difficulties had forced it to accept a rescue package from the Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society. The Catholic Press was launched as a second Catholic paper in 1895, with 73 of the 169 shareholders being clerics. Its first issue declared that it would not be a religious publication, but

a newspaper with an intensely Catholic tone. It professed impartiality towards Freetraders and Protectionists, but not for ‘the sacred cause of Ireland’s freedom’. Over the years, it pointed out the drawbacks associated with Prohibition, attempted to explain the Great Schism (1378– 1417), approved of Mussolini and Franco, and opposed communism. The Irish leanings of the church were evident, with the Catholic Press claiming in 1901 that ‘from a dance room to hell is not a hairsbreadth’, while the Advocate (1868–1990) in 1925 exempted Irish dances. The Freeman’s Journal and the Catholic Press joined to become the Catholic Weekly in 1942. It campaigned vigorously for state aid. In Melbourne, the Advocate was followed by Tribune (1900–71). The declared aim of the former was that: ‘It will neither foster bigotry nor countenance social division; but preach a common Australian brotherhood, founded upon equal, civil and religious liberty to all.’ In Queensland, there were also two main Catholic papers: the Age (1892–1929) and the Catholic Advocate (1911–38). Now the Catholic Leader (1928– ) holds sway. The Church Commonwealth (1900–12) was launched as a national Anglican paper. However, the Church Standard, founded by high churchmen in 1912, was the first Anglican newspaper to achieve a significant national distribution. In August 1914, it supported the war and lauded ‘the unity of the race’. After World War II, it gave way to the Anglican (1952–70) and Church Scene (1971–97). The Australian Church Record (1879–1987) began in 1880 as a Sydney-based attempt, which continues to this day, to witness to the Reformed heritage of the Anglican Church. In 2004 it switched to becoming available only online. In 1918, the Brisbane Church Chronicle (1891–1971) maintained that, ‘To be British means to give freely, as free men, of our best and of our blood for the common weal.’ After World War I, however, Rev. Sydney James Kirkby of the Bush Church Aid Society repudiated what he called ‘effete Englishmen’, and hence named his monthly journal the Real Australian. The Melbourne Church of England Messenger (1850–66) commenced in January 1850. The Tasmanian Church Chronicle (1852–56) was a monthly supplement to the Hobart Town Courier. In 1862, the Tasmanian Synod began publication of the Church News (now the Tasmanian Anglican, 1862– ), while the Adelaide Church Guardian (1906–2007) has appeared online as the Anglican Guardian since 2008. The weekly Anglican ceased in 1970. The Church Scene began in 1971 as a national Anglican paper, with a small circulation of about 4000, and it ceased in 1997, to be succeeded by the Market-Place, which went online a decade later. In 1961 the Southern Cross appeared as the official publication of the evangelical Sydney Anglicans. It is now a free monthly.

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religious press Wesley’s Arminian Magazine, begun in 1778, was the oldest religious periodical in the world, and Australian Wesleyans were quick to follow his example—hence the Australian Magazine. In 1847, Rev. W.B. Boyce compiled a weekly paper, the Gleaner. It was subsequently incorporated into the Christian Standard (1848–50). Next came the Christian Advocate and Wesleyan Record in 1858, which struggled through unpaid subscriptions. In 1877 its name was changed to the Advocate, and in 1892 it became the Methodist, continuing until 1981. The South Australian Primitive Methodist Record began in 1863, and continued in one form or another until the early 20th century. The monthly Glad Tidings was the organ of the Methodist Holiness Association, beginning in 1886. In 1941 it was taken over by the interdenominational Bible Union, and from 1951 to 1985 it was edited by the staunch Calvinist, Rev. W.R. McEwen. Prior to the formation of the various state Presbyterian Churches—notably Victoria in 1859 and New South Wales in 1865—Presbyterianism was divided in the colonies. Journals and newspapers abounded, but after the union of 1865 in New South Wales there was some order, despite frequent name changes. Publications included the Presbyterian Magazine (1862–66) and the Presbyterian (1871–72), ending as the New South Wales Presbyterian (1926–65). Other states were similar. The national journal, established in 1956, was known as Australian Presbyterian Life from 1966 until 1989 (covering even the period of the formation of the liberal Uniting Church in 1977), and later Australian Presbyterian (1998–2011). During most of this time, the national journal was published monthly, but from 2012 it became known as AP, and is now free and distributed quarterly. The first issue of the Australasian Baptist Magazine appeared in 1858, but it collapsed two years later. W.T. Whitley, the editor of the Southern Baptist, which ran to 1912, tried to argue in 1895 that ‘Higher criticism has got a bad name because of some bad higher critics’. The weekly Australian Baptist began in 1913, lasting for almost 80 years and playing a role in the formation of the Baptist Union of Australia in 1926. By 1975 it was published fortnightly, and by 1989 monthly; it folded in 1991. State Baptist Unions continued with monthly periodicals, and the National Baptist (1988–2002) was free to Baptist families. With a few name changes, the Congregationalist (1875–1975) was the official paper of the NSW Congregational Union, ceasing in anticipation of joining the Uniting Church. Formed in 1977, the Uniting Church began with a subscription publication called Uniting in 1982 but it became the monthly Journey in the late 1980s. However, in 1991 New South Wales launched its own free magazine, Insights, with a circulation of 40,000 in 1992. It is still

published. Five of the church’s state synods have monthly publications. With the Uniting Church’s slide into liberal theology and ethics, the Assembly of Confessing Congregations has published ACCatalyst (2007– ), in an attempt to reverse the trends. The Assemblies of God began the Australian Evangel (1943–2001). There were a number of Lutheran publications, but the Australian Lutheran, which began in 1913, struggled through being identified as German. It has been published as the Lutheran since 1967. The Quaker organ, the Australian Friend, which has been published online since 2011, began in Hobart in 1887 under the editorship of William Benson—indeed, the Benson family provided editors for 32 years. The Baha’i Herald of the South began in 1930 in Adelaide, underwent a couple of name changes, and folded in 1960; it was then published in Sydney (1964–70) and has seen several further incarnations, in 1974–76 and from 1989. The Christadelphian Shield was being published by 1928, continuing until 2002. By 1892, the Seventh-day Adventists were producing Bible Echo, which ceased publication and became Australasian Signs of the Times (1905–1987). Other magazines have appeared, such as Australian Christian World (1885–1953), New Life (est. 1939, online since 2011), the Pentecostal New Day (1943–50) and Renewing Australia (1986–92), the Festival of Light’s Light in the 1970s, which became VoxNews in 2008, On Being (est. 1975, now online as Alive) and Biblical Fundamentalist (c.  1979– ). Challenge, which first appeared in August 1980, is designed as an evangelistic tool and, like Eternity (2009– ), is interdenominational. Women’s issues triggered some publications, notably Women-Church (1987–2007) and the conservative Above Rubies (1977– ). On 27 May 1842, the first issue of the Australian Jewish News was published, in the aftermath of the formation of the first Jewish congregation in Sydney in 1831. By the third issue, it was announcing its demise. In 1895, the Hebrew Standard was launched in Sydney, becoming the Australian Jewish Times in 1953. A new Australian Jewish News was launched in Melbourne in 1935; the Australian Jewish Times was renamed the Sydney edition of the Australian Jewish News in 1990. The first Buddhist newsletter was the Buddhist News, which first appeared in Sydney in 1953. This was changed to Metta in 1959, then to Buddhism Today in 1986. It folded in 2004 but reappeared in 2006. Islam was represented by the Australian Minaret in Adelaide (1965– 68), which then moved to Sydney. The Message (Sydney, 2002– ) and the Crescent Times (Perth, 2008– ) are two other contemporary Islamic newspapers. Newspapers of whatever ilk face a perennial problem, exemplified by the valedictory address

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remote commercial television service of an American printer: ‘Live honestly, love God, and pay for your newspapers.’ In an age where denominationalism seems to be passing, denominational news has tended to attract less interest than local news. The internet has also allowed many publications to go online. Indeed, ‘God’s word is not chained’ (2 Timothy 2: 9b). REFs: J. Bonwick, Early Struggles of the Australian Press (1890); D. Busch, ‘The Christian Press in Australia’, Australian Religion Studies Review, 5(2) (1992); J. Colwell, The Illustrated History of Methodism, Sydney (1904); N. Turner, Catholics in Australia (2 vols) (1992). PETER BARNES

R E M OT E COMMERCI AL TELEVISION SERVICE The Remote Commercial Television Service (RCTS) emerged following the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal’s 1984 Satellite Program Services inquiry into how the proposed launch of the first AUSSAT satellite could best serve Australia’s communication needs. The inquiry recommended the licensing of four Remote Commercial Television Services with satellite footprints covering remote and regional Australia, although only three of the licences offered were taken up. A key concern expressed by Indigenous communities during licence hearings between 1985 and 1986 was that unregulated English-language television programs beaming into remote Indigenous communities would cause further cultural and linguistic damage, particularly to children. By the early 1990s, it was estimated that just 20 of the 250 languages spoken in Australia at the time of the British invasion were being actively transmitted to and being used by children. Two of the RCTS licences—Imparja Television and the northeast zone licensee, QTV—were allocated, with provisions calling for the production of appropriate levels of ‘Aboriginal programming’. The non-binding conditions produced a limited response, even from the Indigenous-owned Imparja Television. Despite its best intentions, Imparja’s economic struggles have meant it has been unable to produce significant levels of Indigenous programming since its launch in 1988. Although all RCTS licensees have struggled financially since their inception, Imparja has suffered more than most, primarily because of a refusal by the Northern Territory government—unlike its state counterparts in Queensland and Western Australia—to cover the station’s soaring satellite transponder costs. The federal government has been supporting Imparja in this regard since the late 1980s. REF: H. Molnar and M. Meadows, Songlines to Satellites (2001). MICHAEL MEADOWS

R EM O TE IN D IG EN O U S B R O AD C ASTIN G SER VIC ES Essentially small community radio and television stations, Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) are media production units servicing around 160 remote Indigenous communities across Australia of more than 100 people. They have the capacity to re-broadcast incoming satellite programming and switch this off when desired, to produce their own locally made radio or video programs. Until the demise of Indigenous Community Television to make way for the new National Indigenous Television (NITV) service in 2007, RIBS communities produced around 300 hours of original television programming annually, often in Indigenous languages. The term ‘RIBS’ emerged around the time of a 2005 review of the federal government’s Indigenous Broadcasting Program, and reflected a shift in emphasis in the funding regime to primarily supporting Indigenous radio production with peripheral attention to video. The review also recognised that many Indigenous communities producing radio (and video) were grouped in regions according to cultural and linguistic criteria. This move coincided with a federal government allocation of $48.5  million over four years for Indigenous television program production, although the bulk of in this was earmarked for NITV. The RIBS network replaced its predecessor, the Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS), established in 1984. Most stations are associated with a Remote Indigenous Media Organisation (RIMO). The following seven key RIMOs have been producing Indigenous radio and television programming for some years: Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media (PAKAM); Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association (TEABBA); Warlpiri Media Association (now expanded into PAW— Pintubi Amatyerre Warlpiri); Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA); Far North Queensland (also termed by some as QRAM—Queensland Remote Aboriginal Media); Ngaanyatjarra Media (NG Media); and Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Media (PY Media). The RIBS communities are represented by the Indigenous Remote Communications Association, although they also fall under the umbrella of the Australian Indigenous Communications Association. REFs: S. Forde, K. Foxwell and M. Meadows, Developing Dialogues (2009); M. Meadows and H. Molnar, ‘Bridging the Gaps: Towards a History of Indigenous Media in Australia’, Media History, 8(1) (2002). MICHAEL MEADOWS

RE PORT ING, A GRICULT URA L see agricultural

reporting

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robertson, connie (1895–1964) R E P O R TI N G , B US IN ES S see business and finance

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , C OU R T see court reporting R E P O R TI N G , C RIM E see crime reporting R E P O R TI N G , E C O N O M IC S see economics reporting R E P O R TI N G , E LE C T IO N see election reporting R E P O R TI N G , E N VIR O N M EN TA L see environmental

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , E TH N IC see ethnic reporting and

representation

R E P O R TI N G , F I N AN C E see business and finance

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , F O O D see food journalism and

reviewing

R E P O R TI N G , F O R E IG N see foreign reporting R E P O R TI N G , H E ALT H see health and medical

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , I N D U S T R IAL see industrial reporting R E P O R TI N G , LO C A L G O VE R N M E N T see local

government reporting

R E P O R TI N G , M E D IC A L see health and medical

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , N AT U R A L D IS A S T E R S see weather

and natural disasters reporting

R E P O R TI N G , N E WS see news reporting R E P O R TI N G , P OL IT IC AL see political journalism R E P O R TI N G , P RO P E R T Y see property reporting R E P O R TI N G , S C IEN C E see science reporting R E P O R TI N G , S O C IA L see social pages R E P O R TI N G , S P O R T S see sports media and

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , TE C H N O L O G Y see technology

reporting

R E P O R TI N G , TR AF F IC see traffic reporting R E P O R TI N G , TR AVE L see travel reporting R E P O R TI N G , WAR see war reporting R E P O R TI N G , W E AT H E R see weather and natural

disasters reporting

R E V I E W I N G , A R T see art magazines and

reviewing

R E V I E W I N G , B O O K see book reviewing R E V I E W I N G , F I L M see film reviewing R E V I E W I N G , F O O D see food journalism and

reviewing

RE V IE W ING, MUS IC see music reviewing RE V IE W ING, T HE AT RE see theatre reviewing

R O B ER TSO N , C O N N IE (1895–1964) Connie Robertson was a pioneering journalist and editor who played a major role in establishing women’s sections in Australian metropolitan newspapers. Her career came too early for her to work across all forms of press journalism, and much of her working life was confined to what was known as the ‘women writers’ room’, culminating in her role as social editress of the Sydney Morning Herald. The title represented the restrictive nature of the position, yet Robertson successfully steered the pages she edited beyond traditional women’s subjects of the time, and into the spheres of social issues, literature and the arts. She trained two generations of female reporters, many of whom called her ‘Teach’. Robertson was confident in her taste in fashion and she disregarded the conventions of the day. Born in Sydney, she was the first of six children of A.G. Stephens, the literary editor of the Bulletin. Robertson was named Connie Sweetheart, but used Constance as her first name in her newspaper by-line. She worked for her father from the age of 13, assisting him in the publication of his own literary magazine, the Bookfellow, from 1907. After the publication closed, Robertson joined Sun Newspapers Ltd, where she worked as a proofreader, then as social editress of the Sunday Sun, editor of the Sun’s women’s pages, editor of the Sunday Sun’s women’s supplement and editor of two magazines, Woman’s Budget and Woman. Robertson applied successfully for the position of social editress of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1936, and remained in the job until early 1962. With a mixture of shrewdness, charm and meticulous attention to detail, Robertson ruled her staff with steely determination. Her pages were a mirror of Sydney society at the time. ‘She loved gossip but it had to be high-grade gossip’, remarked a colleague, H.G. Kippax. Robertson’s own writing assignments included a visit to Hollywood to report on the film industry, and coverage of fashion shows in London and Paris. In 1942, she became an accredited war correspondent, touring women’s Army and Air Force bases in Australia; in 1947, she wrote a series of articles from Britain on post-war rationing; and in 1954, she covered Queen Elizabeth II’s first tour to Australia. She lived her life according to the proverb: ‘Work makes life sweet’. Appointed OBE in 1955, Robertson died two years after her retirement, and just one day after the death of her husband. REF: V. Lawson, Connie Sweetheart (1990). VALERIE LAWSON

R E V I E W I N G , LI T ER ARY see book reviewing

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rogers, robert barton (‘bob’) (1926– ) R O G ERS , ROBE RT BARTON (‘BOB’) (1926– ) Robert Barton (‘Bob’) Rogers is the longestserving broadcaster currently on Australian radio, with a career spanning the time when the stylus was changed after each record to the contemporary era of digital radio. Beginning as a panel operator at 3XY Melbourne in 1942, his first on-air shift was at 3MA Mildura in 1944. He moved to 7HO Hobart in 1949 and to 4BH Brisbane in 1950. Rogers obtained copies of the latest hit records from the United States before they were released in Australia, and with the advent of the American concepts of the disc jockey and Top 40 charts, his reputation attracted the attention of 2UE Sydney, which recruited him in 1958 to present music programs aimed at a younger generation. In 1964 he joined 2SM Sydney, becoming one of the ‘Good Guys’. The station sent him to England to provide interviews and voice reports for the Beatles’ tour to Australia. Rogers initially ignored talkback radio, introduced to Australia in 1967, before recognising that he was losing audiences. He began to include some selective talkback; however, his ad-lib style sometimes prompted litigation, so his editorial comments began to be scripted, pioneering a practice for radio announcers that continues to this day. Rogers’ success brought him to the attention of television, and he hosted tonight shows on TCN9 and ATN7 in the 1960s and 1970s. His most interesting radio and television programs comprised music, showbiz interviews and gossip, based on his comfortable relationship with the stars. Rogers left full-time radio in the 1980s to run a chain of clothing shops, but continued to work on air as a locum. In 1999 he returned full-time with 2CH Sydney. Rogers was appointed OAM in 2010 ‘for service to the media as a radio broadcaster’. REF: R.B. Rogers and D. O’Brien, Rock’n’roll Australia (1975). PHILIP O’BRIEN

RY D GE ’S The name ‘Rydge’s’ evokes Norman B. Rydge (1900–80), his business-oriented publications and a sprawl of companies in the leisure trades, including early involvement in the hotel industry. Ever alert to innovation, Rydge published an article in 1934 on the impact of television on business. In 1936, he took charge of Greater Union cinemas, which—in alliance with J. Arthur Rank from 1945—established a nation-

wide chain of drive-ins but stymied local feature production at Cinesound. In accord with his maxim that a ‘business without profit is business without honour’, Rydge boosted companies in which he was a major shareholder, such as Cash Orders (Aust.) Ltd. His lifelong devotion to tax evasion began with his first manual, Federal Income Tax Law (1921). From 1928, he edited Rydge’s Business Journal, two years before Henry Luce’s Fortune but with less of the American’s enthusiasm for civilising executives. Rydge’s biggest obstacle had been to convince his fellows that they needed to read. It began at 64 pages in January, reaching 112 pages by September—with almost a third taken by advertising. The hundredth issue (1936) wondered how ‘that comparatively insignificant publication ever bore the name Rydge’s’. Rydge chased 20,000 direct subscriptions, but from July 1928 had to share the cover price of a shilling with newsagents and booksellers, though he later reverted to subscription only. By the 500th edition in 1970, subscriptions were only just above the initial target. Rydge understood that marketing went beyond advertising to include office management, the tricks of a commercial traveller, window-dressing, packaging and the publicity that he perfected with fictional testimonials. A name change in 1935 to Rydge’s: The Business Management Monthly emphasised this integration of skills, though he altered the look more than the content. After that second subtitle disappeared, the wording on the covers juggled ‘Business’, ‘Entertainment’, ‘Finance’ and ‘Industry’. Rydge’s Memory Course in 1980 continued the 1920s appeal of the Pelmanism memory system, which had been part of The Rydge Course: How to Achieve Success (1955). The company gave away 5000 copies of Self-Made or Never Made to subscribers in 1933. By 1947, Rydge’s was selling How to Build Personality, claiming it was more effective than Dale Carnegie’s system. The eponymous brand appeared on Rydge’s Construction, Civil Engineering and Mining Review (1967), Rydge’s Management and Marketing Service (1972), and Rydge’s EDP Manual (1977). The flagship publication, depleted of its gloss, and beaten by both professional journals and a more active business press, merged with John Fairfax & Sons’ Business Review Weekly on 25 September 1987. REF: T. O’Brien, The Greater Union Story (1985). HUMPHREY McQUEEN

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S SAT EL L I TE BROADCASTING The concept of broadcasting via microwave signals from earth to a satellite in geosynchronous orbit 35,786 kilometres above the equator was first proposed in 1945 by Arthur C. Clarke, the British radio expert and author of the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. Satellites were developed to meet national military and strategic needs, but ultimately have revolutionised global communications. The first television pictures were transmitted by Telstar between the United States and Europe in 1962, and in 1965 the US INTELSAT satellite broadcast live coverage of Gemini 6’s return to earth. In 1966, it became technically possible to send television pictures using Intelsat IV from the United States to an Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) earth station in Carnarvon, Western Australia. Prior to the launch of the first AUSSAT satellite in 1985, Australian broadcasting licences were allocated according to the technical reach of their terrestrial transmitters. Australian governments funded broadcasting as a public utility and an essential service, but used private broadcasters where commercially viable. The prohibitive cost of broadcasting across the vast Australian continent was unattractive to commercial broadcasters and resulted in very basic service delivery for regional and remote residents. Major capital audiences received 20 radio stations, three colour commercial television channels (Seven, Nine and Ten), and public service broadcasters, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and from 1978 the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). In contrast, regional radio and television services offered ABC radio and television and limited commercial and community broadcasts. Remote communities remained unserved by any television. In 1969, OTC established four earth stations and the Department of Communications launched the Remote Area Television Scheme (RATS) using the US INTELSAT in an experiment to equalise services for people in the ‘bush’. Although RATS and later the SelfHelp Television Reception Scheme broadcast into approximately 85 Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal remote communities, neither scheme provided real access to remote viewers, apart

from fortuitous reception by groups living on the fringe of larger settlements in the broadcast area. The possibilities of satellite communication fuelled widespread global debate, analysis and revision of existing broadcasting regulations for bureaucrats, and the beginning of ‘satellite fever’ for entrepreneurs keen to exploit the new technology. Widespread global bureaucratic concerns surfaced over the capability of satellites to beam unregulated direct-to-home (DTH) or direct satellite broadcasting (DBS) across national borders to individual receivers. Issues surfaced over regulation of national and international broadcasting, national sovereignty and security, media ownership and control, national cultural identity, and how to differentiate established broadcasting services from program distributors. In the developing world, concerns focused on the boundaries between a free flow of potentially developmental information and developed world propaganda, creating a rift sufficient for the United States and the United Kingdom to withdraw from UNESCO for 19 and 12 years respectively. In 1977, in response to concerns, a World Administrative Radio Conference commenced ongoing global coordination and regulation of satellites, including reserving national ‘parking spots’ in geo-stationary orbit and orbital locations within specific frequencies (Ku band 14/12GHz) to registered locations (152o, 156o, 160o and 164o east for Australia). The conference distinguished between direct program broadcasting, received directly from a satellite by a home television set with appropriate equipment, and programs distributed by a licensed broadcaster. Also in 1977, Kerry Packer, the powerful head of Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL), successfully lobbied the prime minister, Malcolm Fraser, for a satellite justified by its benefits for remote residents, and privately commissioned a feasibility study on the use of satellites to distribute television programs on a national basis. The Bond Report, as it became known, concluded that the primary beneficiary would be the television industry. Packer sent the report with a covering letter to the Coalition government on 15 August 1977; together with

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satellite broadcasting Packer’s conversation with Prime Minister Fraser, the move is widely considered responsible for initiating political support for Australia’s acquisition of a domestic communications satellite. The letter suggested that all four existing television networks use satellites to broadcast to areas currently without television, and recommended that networking restrictions imposed by the existing Broadcasting and Television Act 1942 from major capital city stations to other regions be abolished. Despite unresolved fierce and lengthy debate over the merits, technicalities and impact of satellite broadcasting options, the hope for social as well as economic benefits, and resistance from a Labor opposition, the government remained firm in its plans to acquire a satellite. Australia was one of the first to adopt a domestic communications satellite system in 1981 in the face of continuing opposition, with planned 51 per cent government and 49 per cent private ownership. Aussat Pty Limited was the new public corporate authority created to manage and operate the satellite. Aussat paid the Hughes Aircraft Company A$20 million as an early payment just days before Australia’s 1983 election to purchase three HS376 satellites (with 15 Ku band transponders, four 30w transponders and eleven 12w transponders). The new Hawke Labor government, unable to break the contract with Hughes, changed the satellite’s ownership to 75  per cent government and 25 per cent telecommunications carrier Telecom (now Telstra), in line with its own ideology. In a 1984 government-commissioned Satellite Program Services Inquiry, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) observed that unless existing ownership and control rules were altered, national distribution of programs, although clearly cost effective, would increase the power and influence of the commercial television networks. Arguments for national broadcasting contended that it increased viewer choice by equalising television services, rebuffed foreign ownership and facilitated a pan-Australian identity. Opposing arguments maintained that the flexibility of satellite technology could preserve local cultural identities, remove barriers to entry for regional stations, maintain responsiveness to local information, content and audience needs, and prevent regional viewers receiving programs and advertisements created for city-based audiences. Remote Indigenous communities raised concerns about the impact of city-based commercial television and advertisements on their children, language and cultural maintenance. A landmark Taskforce on Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting and Communications report acknowledged for the first time Aboriginal people’s right to be catered for in broadcasting. In a move to settle the debate the Communications Minister, Michael Duffy, announced the establishment of a Remote Commercial Television Service

(RCTS) in October 1984, creating four regional commercial television licences using ‘spot’ footprints. Duffy’s solution, however, was quickly massaged by his own party to appease the networks by announcing a policy of equalisation in 1985 using the national beam, and aggregation, increasing commercial television licences from one to three. Satellite AI was launched from Cape Canaveral in the United States on 27 August 1985, A2 was launched on 27 November 1985 and A3 launched at French Guiana on 16  September 1987. In addition to national beams, the satellite was configured for remote broadcasting to create the new RCTS licences, one of them won by the pioneer Aboriginal commercial television channel, Imparja Television. In 1987, entrepreneur Alan Bond purchased the Nine Network from Kerry Packer to transmit a pub and club direct satellite service with horse racing and sports broadcasts on Sky Channel, using the AUSSAT K3 satellite. K3 was delayed following the explosion of the US space shuttle Challenger, and Bond requested permission to use the space on AUSSAT K2 already in orbit while awaiting Imparja Television’s launch. In the 1990s, in the face of mounting satellite debt, the Labor government privatised Aussat and merged telecommunication providers OTC and Telecom. SingTel Optus Pty Ltd has been the operator since 2001. Optus retired the original A1/A2 and A3, and B1/2 satellites, leaving five satellites in orbit, B3 (in inclined orbit), C1, with 20 digital transponders, D1, D2 and D3) with footprints in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Norfolk Island, Lord Howe Island, Cocos Island, Christmas Island and McMurdo Sound, in addition to parts of Asia and Papua New Guinea. A sixth Optus 10 satellite is planned for launch in 2014. NewSat will launch its Jabiru 2 satellite in 2014 with powerful media and broadcasting services to high-demand enterprise and government markets. As envisaged, satellite broadcasting has resulted in greater concentration of media ownership and a decrease in regional news, information and program content. Positively, it has fuelled and extended the reach of a diversified media industry, enabled the equalisation of rural and remote reception, and enhanced users’ number, choice and quality of programs via a variety of platforms. The development, innovation and convergence of communication technologies has been accelerated: outback travellers with a satellite dish attached to their vehicles can receive radio and television programs; independent media producers create content for carriage by networks; Hollywood filmmakers securely transmit digital films direct to cinemas; supermarkets distribute in-store videos nationally; and audiences can watch media via the internet. In 2013, Australia completed its shift from analogue to digital television. While many

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school papers Australians still view free-to-air terrestrial television services, digital television delivers quality public, commercial, community and narrowcast services, pay television (Foxtel) and remote area broadcasters (Imparja and Southern Cross Central 7) to all Australians, regardless of location. The government mandated for digital pay television delivery and Foxtel acquired pioneer pay television operator Austar in 2012. Satellites broadcast DTH programs across and beyond Australia using Intelsat8 and AsiaSat4. ABC News 24 is broadcast live throughout Australia, but other public and commercial networks download and re-schedule news programs to protect children from harmful material, insert regional news and advertisements and accommodate three different time zones (five during daylight saving). Satellite services are defined by footprints, and audiences adjacent to state borders can receive metro, remote and repeat content from two or more sources. Remote communities unable to access terrestrial or wireless broadcasting are assisted to receive digital television via the government-funded satellite-delivered DTH Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) scheme, a significant innovation crucial to enabling the government to shut down analogue terrestrial television and continue promised services to remote Australia. Major radio networks broadcast digital alongside existing analogue services in association with pay television. In 2015, Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), using fibre networks in populated areas and fixed terrestrial wireless in nearby rural areas, will launch two communication satellites to reach areas unable to be served by terrestrial broadcasting alternatives. The tender to construct two multiple, high-capacity Ka band (updating the existing Ku band) purpose-built satellites has been awarded to Ariane Space, with planned launches from French Guiana in 2015. REFs: ABT, Satellite Program Services, Inquiry into the Regulation of the Use of Satellite Program Services by Broadcasters Report, vols 1 and 2 (1984); W. Bell, ‘The Totem of the Clan’ (PhD thesis, 1984) and A Remote Possibility (2008); MIA, no. 38 (1990) and no. 58 (1990); S. Paltridge, ‘The Social Shaping of a Satellite’ (PhD thesis, 1989). WENDY BELL

before moving to television in 1974, working as reporter and subsequently chief of staff for TVW7. He joined 6PR in 1979 as news director, and in 1981 began The Sattler File as a half-hour commentary program that then expanded into a longer talkback format. The program was to occupy a variety of timeslots over the years, and Sattler even relocated it to Sydney station 2SM in 2000. He moved back to Perth in 2001, broadcasting his New South Wales and Queensland program from there. In 2003, he returned to 6PR, taking over the breakfast and later drive timeslots. Throughout his career, Sattler featured as a regular commentator in print, television and online media in Perth. Sattler attracted controversy over the years, especially during the 1990s when he was Perth’s highest-rating talkback radio presenter. His public crusade against juvenile crime culminated in the Rally for Justice in August 1991; the event attracted 30,000 people and led the then state Labor government to introduce mandatory juvenile detention legislation, which was criticised for effectively targeting Indigenous young people. In 2001, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found 6PR guilty of allowing program guests to racially vilify Noongar religious beliefs and fined the station for breaching the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 on Sattler’s program. In 1999–2000, Sattler was caught up in the ‘cash for comment’ scandal when the Australian Broadcasting Authority found that 6PR was in breach of the broadcasting codes over broadcasts that had mentioned his sponsors. Despite these controversies he was the recipient of many industry accolades during his radio career, including national RAWARDs and New York Festivals International Radio Awards. Sattler’s broadcasting career came to an abrupt end in June 2013 when he was fired by 6PR after what the station described as a disrespectful interview with Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard. REFs: R. Johnson, Cash for Comment (2000); C. Stockwell, ‘The Role of the Media in the Juvenile Justice Debate in Western Australia’, National Conference on Juvenile Justice, Canberra (1992). GAIL PHILLIPS

SAT T L ER, HOWARD (1945– ) During an era that saw the rise of shock jock-driven talkback in commercial radio, Howard Sattler defined the genre in Perth, as part of the network that nurtured Alan Jones (Sydney) and Neil Mitchell (Melbourne). Sattler began his career as a cadet journalist with the Sydney Morning Herald in 1963. After completing national service, he joined Perth’s Independent Sunday newspaper in 1970 as a senior reporter (later managing editor)

S CHOOL BROA DCA S T S see educational media

SC H O O L P AP ER S Also known as school magazines, school papers were originally developed in late 19th century Australia as a way to provide reading material to school children beyond the restricted readers and primers then in use. The first school paper, the Children’s Hour, was produced by the South Australian Education Department in 1889.

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science reporting At that time in Australia, school reading lessons were dominated by the use of the Irish National Books, a series of readers originally developed for the Irish population that featured (Protestant) Christian scripture and lessons. These texts were a problem for the state after the establishment of compulsory primary schooling in the 1870s, which emphasised a secular education and—at least in South Australia (the colony that most insisted on the separation of church and state)—banned the use of the Bible as a basis for lessons. While the import of reading series from England such as the Royal Readers published by Thomas Nelson (introduced in South Australia in 1878) did address some of this need for secular content, the reading material they contained was becoming dated by the 1880s, and there were objections to the fact that local Australian children couldn’t relate to the focus on the English countryside, flora and fauna. A new wave of educational reform, which would become known as the ‘New Education’, was calling for greater ‘interest’ in lessons and relevance to pupils’ lives. Such needs were referred to by Inspector-General John Hartley when the Children’s Hour was launched. He emphasised that reading should not become ‘tiresome’ to children, and that it was hoped that local teachers ‘would use their own literary powers’ to contribute local pieces. Importantly, in the Australian colonies, the production of a school paper would allow Education Departments to provide a variety of reading material at low cost to children spread thinly across vast distances, often without access to commercial reading materials. This first school paper was an immediate success, with many families subscribing to take a paper in addition to those supplied to each school (at a cost of a halfpenny per issue). There were 3741 subscriptions by 1890 (out of approximately 45,000 children enrolled in total) and 6672 by 1891. It was used alongside the official Royal Readers until 1900, when it became the only text for the school examination for children in Class III and IV. In 1894, five years after its establishment, a second concurrent edition was published for Class III (approximately mid-primary), with the original being designated for Class IV—the then Compulsory Standard established as the goal for all primary school students. Eight years later, in 1902, a Class II (approximately lower-primary) edition was added. The success of the Children’s Hour did not escape the attention of educational leaders in the other colonies. The colony of Victoria established its own school paper in 1896, followed by Western Australia in 1899. New South Wales first adopted a commercially published paper, the Commonwealth School Paper, in 1904 before establishing its own in-house School Magazine in 1916. The Queensland School

Paper was introduced in 1905 and, around the same time, a Tasmanian School Paper, produced by the Victorian Education Department, was also introduced. The school papers of this period were focused on creating citizens and nation-building. School papers or magazines remained a mainstay of many school reading lessons for at least the first half of the 20th century. The Children’s Hour, for example, was published continually for 76 years before being discontinued in the mid-1960s. School papers represented an important innovation in publishing for children in Australia. The foremost innovation was the conscious inclusion of local content featuring recognisable landscapes (the bush and the beach), climate (dust storms and drought), social settings (Christmas in summer), and flora and fauna. Its naming as a school ‘paper’ signalled that the Children’s Hour, for example, would feature a very broad range of text types, including puzzles, facts and figures about the colonies, poetry and stories, songs, current events and even sports reports. While the local material was written by teachers and inspectors, much was also sourced from the then burgeoning international commercial magazine market for children. Morally improving material was borrowed from magazines produced by religious societies in England and North America. In this way, the Education Departments found a way to introduce properly Protestant moral instruction without the use of the Bible. Overall, school papers are an example of a successful local Australian innovation developed in response to particular demands of distance and restrictions on content. REFs: P. Cormack, ‘Children’s School Reading and Curriculum Innovation at the Edge of Empire’, History of Education Review, 42(2) (2013); B. Green and P. Cormack, ‘Literacy, Nation, Schooling: Reading (in) Australia’, in D. Trohler, T.S. Popkewitz and D.F. Larabee (eds), Schooling and the Making of Citizens in the Long 19th Century (2011). PHILLIP CORMACK

SC IEN C E R EP O R TIN G Early 19th-century Australian newspapers (rural and metropolitan) printed science ‘notes’— anecdotal reports of science demonstrations and lectures. These were often republished from UK and US papers and journals. In 1888, Archibald Liversidge founded the Australian Association for the Advancement of Science to promote science in Australia and later New Zealand. Science journalists were uncommon in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but there is evidence that the term existed as early as 1910, when James S. Bray called himself a ‘Naturalist and Science Journalist’ in a Sydney Morning Herald advertisement. Newspapers such as the Launceston Examiner ran very short columns titled ‘Popular Science’ early in the 20th century.

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science reporting During World War I, there were multiple reports in metropolitan and rural newspapers of the need to fund intersections between science and industry, and reports of meetings of various science organisations. In the 1920s, science journalism became more visible as a profession, especially in the United States. In Australia, it retained a distinctly international flavour even into the 1940s, when there was a sharp increase in the number of science reports in newspapers. By-lines of ‘Science Reporter’ for Associated Press columns syndicated in Australian newspapers included Americans Howard W. Blakeslee (‘World of Science’), Alton L. Blakeslee and Rennie Taylor, while the Melbourne Argus used the London Daily Express ‘Science Reporter’, Harry Chapman Pincher. During World War II, the Australian press made frequent and overt connections between science and war. There was an extra push for science writing immediately after the war, in part due to the need to redeploy wartime scientists. As explained by physicist Dr Stuart Butler, the communication of science to the general public was a very important responsibility of scientists. Such was the public fascination with science that poems about ‘the March of Science’ and ‘Atoms and Neutrons’ bobbed up in the pages of the Australian Women’s Weekly in the second half of the 1940s. Internationally, the nexus between ‘big science’ and industry that had been created for the war effort was maintained with other projects, such as the space race, nuclear energy and big engineering projects such as the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme. Soon after his appointment to the chair of physics at the University of Sydney in 1952, Canadian-born Harry Messell established the Nuclear Research Foundation (later the Science Foundation for Physics), persuading Sir Frank Packer to support it to the tune of £2–4000 per year. A department within the School of Physics was named the Daily Telegraph Theoretical Department. In 1957, the Daily Telegraph commissioned Messell’s colleague, Stuart Butler, to write a short piece on Sputnik. Thereafter, Butler wrote occasional and eventually regular pieces on popular science for the newspaper, before collaborating with Robert Raymond (documentary maker and co-founder of the ABC’s television program Four Corners) to create a comic strip that explained science to the general reader. In September 1961, the Sydney Morning Herald began publishing ‘Frontiers of Science’, which was drawn by Andrea Bresciani. The strip, published in the Herald until 1979, reveals much about relations between Australia and the United States on matters of big science during those years. The University of Sydney ran its own television studio, with Bruce Gyngell’s help. For around 15 years, Harry Messell and Stuart Butler’s summer schools, which were created for high school science teachers but from 1962

accepted school students, were broadcast on Packer’s Nine Network on Sunday mornings, and rebroadcast on the ABC. The schools were also promoted in the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs and the Australian Women’s Weekly. The University of Sydney also produced the famous television program, Why Is It So?, hosted by American-born physicist Professor Julius Sumner Miller, for the ABC from 1963. It became Demonstrations in Physics in 1969 and continued until 1987. The Australian ran questions from the show (‘Millergrams’), with answers published the following day; these were published in book form in 1988. In 1963, the ABC advertised a new post of Talks Assistant (Special Duties), responsible for science on both radio and television. The first responsibility of the successful applicant, Dr Peter Pockley, was Science Question Time, a fortnightly program in which he headed a panel answering questions sent in by viewers. From 1964, the Nine Network’s Project ’64 screened documentaries on various topics, some of which were science-related (for example, one on heart transplants). There were internal tensions at the ABC in 1972 when the Features Department (not the Science Unit of which Pockley was head) began a television project called Science Australia. That year, science journalist Robyn Williams emigrated from Britain and joined the Science Unit. He became host of The Science Show, which made its debut in August 1975; it is possibly the longest running radio science program in the world. He also hosts Ockham’s Razor (1984– ), and has been the recipient of numerous awards and honours. In 1971–75, Robert Raymond’s series of one-hour films, Shell’s Australia, on Australian wildlife screened on the Seven Network. A book of the series sold 150,000 copies, and the films were screened in schools around Australia. Raymond was a prolific science communicator, who, as well as producing science-related documentaries, published more than 20 books, mostly on science-related topics. Raymond worked with many others, including Vince Serventy and Alan Moorehead. On ABC Radio the pilots of environmental and technological programs produced in the 1960s and 1970s later became Earthbeat hosted by Alexandra de Blas and The Buzz with Richard Aedy. Newspapers tried to emulate the ABC’s success in science reporting from the late 1960s, but there has never been more than a handful of full-time science reporters, and in 1977 only three daily newspapers in Australia had science writers: Melbourne’s Herald and Sun News-Pictorial, and the Adelaide Advertiser. In the field of magazines, the monthly Search began in 1970, becoming Australiasian Science in 1998. New Scientist established an Australian editorial presence in the late 1980s. Australian popular science magazine Cosmos was launched

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screen producers association of australia in 2005. It publishes articles by prominent scientists including Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Tim Flannery and Margaret Wertheim. Towards 2000 debuted on ABC Television in 1981 to showcase developments in science and technology; it was renamed Beyond 2000 in 1985 and moved to the Seven Network. It then aired on Network Ten (1993–99) and was also broadcast internationally. The program was revived as Beyond Tomorrow on Seven (2005–07). Longer-running ABC Television science programs have included Quantum (1985–2001) and Catalyst (2001– ). Children’s television science programs have included The Curiosity Show on the Nine Network (1972–90) and Backyard Science, co-produced by Beyond Television Productions and Penguin Television for the ABC and the Seven Network. Several other children’s programs, such as Totally Wild (Network Ten, 1992– ), include science and technology information in a magazine-style format. Community radio science programs include Lost in Science and Beyond Zero on 3CR, Einstein a Go-Go on 3RRR, and Diffusion and A Question of Balance on 2SER FM. All of the ABC’s science material is available on the ABC’s online science gateway, which began in 1997 as The Lab and ranges from ‘Ancient Worlds’ to ‘Space and Astronomy’. It hosts a number of forums to which the public can contribute and ask an expert, with such experts including Bernie Hobbs, a former teacher and medical researcher who joined the ABC in 1997. Expert contributors from the general public are also acknowledged in some of the forums. The first Australian National Science Week, funded by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science and Research, was launched in 1997. The Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University was established in 1996, and in 2011 Sue Stocklmayer, the centre’s director, became Australia’s first Professor of Science Communication. A Science Communication and Journalism Award is offered annually as part of the Eureka Awards by the Department of State Development, Trade and Innovation, and in recent years has been won by journalists who have published in newspapers including the Age, the Australian, the West Australian, and the Sydney Morning Herald. However the ABC—both radio and television—dominates the award winners. Notable science reporters include Bob Beale, Julian Cribb, Wilson da Silva, Leigh Dayton, Simon Grose, Graeme O’Neill, Deborah Smith and Dr Paul Willis. Much has been written about the sharp decline of fulltime specialist science journalists in the 21st century, and the rise in industry-funded science communicators. Since at least 1995 there has been an expansion of public relations staff and consultants in public institutions and commerce. Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at the University of Sydney, wrote

and presented the first series of ABC Television’s Quantum, hosts a weekly science talkback program on Triple J, and with Adam Spencer has co-hosted Sleek Geeks on ABC Television since 2008; ‘Dr Karl’ also writes a weekly column for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age on scientific ‘mythconceptions’. The Australian Science Media Centre was established in 2005 to help the media work more actively with the Australian scientific community, and its goal is to support evidence-based reporting by providing links between media practitioners and relevant scientists. Science blogging has become a popular means of reporting on science, and in 2010 National Science Week hosted a competition to find the best science bloggers and microbloggers in Australia. In 2007, John Cook launched Skeptical Science, a climate science blog that lists and challenges the arguments of climate sceptics using information from peer-reviewed articles. In 2010, Inspiring Australia: A National Strategy for Engagement with the Sciences was launched at the Australian Science Communicators National Conference. This initiative aims to generate a coherent, Australia-wide approach to science communication. REFs: K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983); J. Metcalfe and T. Gascoigne, ‘Science Journalism in Australia’, Public Understanding of Science 4 (1995); P. Pockley, ‘Mixed Report Card on Science in Media’, Australasian Scientist (May 2005). MAUREEN BURNS

SC R EEN P R O D U C ER S ASSO C IATIO N O F AU STR ALIA The Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) represents the interests of Australian ‘independent’ producers of film, television and new media programs, along with services and facilities companies. It has around 350 active members producing programs across a diverse range of genres. Members pay a joining fee and a production levy. The Association is governed by a council elected from five divisions—Animation and New Media, Documentary, Feature Film, Television, and Facilities and Services. The current SPAA has evolved gradually from its beginnings in 1956. Independent producers joined together for two main reasons: to lobby federal and state governments to support Australian content on television and in the cinema through regulation and subsidy, and to strengthen their bargaining power in industrial relations negotiations with actors’ and technicians’ unions. The Australian Film Producers Association (AFPA) began in the late 1950s, made up mostly of cinema advertisement producers who lobbied successfully to limit the importation of television commercials. This campaign was followed by a decade-long campaign to establish higher levels

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shakespeare family of Australian content on commercial television. The most significant lobby group of independent television producers came out of radio. The policy advocacy of these producers provided a model for screen producers’ associations of the future—small business entrepreneurs lobbying for Australian content. Crawford Productions (still a member of SPAA) is the longest surviving independent television production company. AFPA became the Film Production Association of Australia (FPAA), which was formally registered as a federal employer association in 1972. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the producer association have had a complex relationship, often joining forces in policy debates and campaigns for the protection of Australian industry and content, and often clashing—particularly on the issue of foreign actors in Australian films. The early 1970s also saw the emergence of direct subsidy funding for Australian feature films, which led to the formation of the Independent Feature Film Producers Association (IFPA) in 1973. The founding members included Hal and Jim McElroy (Picnic at Hanging Rock) and Margaret Fink (My Brilliant Career). Difficulties in negotiating agreements with Actors’ Equity led to IFPA merging with the FPAA in 1976 to form the Film and Television Production Association of Australia (FTPAA). By 1985, the FTPAA was losing membership and short of finance. With John Daniell and John Weiley at the helm, a renewal operation was launched. The FTPAA changed its name to the Screen Production Association of Australia (SPAA) and organised a conference to drive membership and earn income. In 1994, the organisation changed its branding again to the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia (SPAA). SPAA is a member of the International Federation of Film Producers’ Associations (FIAPF). Since the late 1950s, SPAA and its predecessor organisations have been a consistent voice lobbying for Australian content regulation. Industrial relations, policy and conferences and events continue to be the main focus of SPAA. REF: H. Crawford, Commercial Television Programmes in Australia (1959). OWEN JOHNSTON

SHAKESPEARE FAM ILY Thomas Mitchell (T.M.) Shakespeare (1873– 1938) had been a printer for eight years, a country newspaper owner for nine years, and the secretary and manager of the NSW Country Press Association and business arm for nine years when he attended Canberra’s official naming ceremony in March 1913. On returning to Sydney, he told his four sons and two daughters that he planned to establish a national newspaper in the national capital.

In January 1925, the Shakespeare family and R.J.S. Fallick, of the Queanbeyan Age, formed the Federal Capital Press of Australia Ltd with capital of £25,000. The company began publishing the Canberra Times on 3 September 1926. The Shakespeare sons had been preparing for this: Arthur Thomas had gained 10 years’ journalistic experience with the Sydney Morning Herald; James William (Bill) and Christopher John (Jack) had become the proprietors of the Hawkesbury Herald at Richmond; and Clarence Eugene (Clarrie) had trained on a newspaper at Katoomba before joining Bill and Jack at Richmond. Bill and Jack sold the Hawkesbury Herald in May 1926, and Jack went to Canberra to install the machinery for the new paper. Arthur resigned from the Sydney Morning Herald to become managing editor of the new paper. Clarrie joined the reporting staff in 1926 (only to die a year later) and Bill joined as secretary/accountant in October 1927. A.E. (Alf) Shakespeare, a cousin of T.M.’s, also joined the reporting staff. The Canberra Times first appeared as a weekly, and became a daily on 20 February 1928, ahead of the expected shifting of government departments from Melbourne to Canberra. But with the Great Depression, the newspaper struggled grimly for survival for more than a decade. T.M. Shakespeare resigned from the NSW Country Press Association in February 1929 to become managing director of the Federal Capital Press of Australia Ltd. He had entered newspapers as an apprentice compositor on the Forbes and Parkes Gazette in 1887. At Condobolin, he established the Lachlander on 26 July 1895 and married Ann Forster a year later. In 1897, they sold their home to fight a libel action. They lived in three rooms partitioned off from the newspaper offices, where their first son, Arthur (1897–1975), was born. Shakespeare won the libel action and the Lachlander prospered. Shakespeare sold the paper in 1902 and bought the Grafton Argus, which he sold in November 1904 to move to Sydney to administer the NSW Country Press arms. He was secretary and manager (1904–28) and secretary (1906–28 and 1931–38) of the Australian Provincial Press Association (APPA). Arthur himself was APPA secretary (1929–31 and 1938–54). In the late 1950s, Arthur worried about the Shakespeare family’s ‘absence of male succession’. He wrote to R.A.G. Henderson, managing director of John Fairfax & Sons, on 17  March 1958 to seek ‘an understanding which will ensure that in the place of family succession this newspaper would be in hands which would uphold it always as a useful organ of public opinion at the Federal capital’. Fairfax considered two related possibilities: printing a southern edition of the Herald in Canberra, or printing a national daily there. On 4 April 1963, John Fairfax Ltd and the Federal Capital Press

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shipping news of Australia Pty Ltd signed a secret agreement through which Fairfax acquired 10,000 of the 80,000 issued £1 shares in Federal Capital Press and obtained an option to purchase the remaining 70,000 shares for £578,000, the option being exercisable in 1967 or earlier—if one of a range of situations occurred, such as another company taking steps to publish a daily newspaper in Canberra. In 1964, with Rupert Murdoch planning to establish the Australian, the agreement with Fairfax was brought into play and the Sydney company took charge at the Canberra Times. Arthur Shakespeare retired as managing editor in July 1964 and Jack Shakespeare retired simultaneously. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000); H. Shakespeare, ‘The Canberra Times’, 10 August 1974, typescript held by Canberra Historical Society. ROD KIRKPATRICK

S H IP PI NG NE W S The importance of maritime trade—both international and coastal—to Australia’s economic prosperity is underwritten in an oblique manner by shipping news. In addition to items appearing in various newspapers concerning arrivals and departures, from the 1870s to the 1970s there were eight different papers dedicated to publishing news about shipping movements in and out of Australian ports. The origin of most of these papers was the weekly Australasian Shipping News (1877–1900), which was succeeded by the Daily Australasian Shipping News (1900–07) and published under various names, ceasing publication as the Daily Commercial News and Shipping List (and also including airways news) in 1972. As much as can be determined, these papers were published by the over-arching association of merchant shipping companies and marine insurance underwriters. Their purpose was to collate information concerning arrivals, departures, speakings (records of sailing ships hailing one another at sea, to then pass on name of vessel met and location once in port), casualties and miscellaneous intelligence. To read the papers is to realise the central importance of technological developments in communications and maritime transport in relation to the provision of more reliable information regarding shipping movements: the telegraph, by which information could be relayed port to port; the advent of steam, meaning more precise times concerning voyages; the provision of weather reports, beginning in the 1940s; and the advent of radio contact between ships and shore, which seems to have been firmly established only by the beginning of the 1960s. The shipping papers also reflect key features of Australia’s maritime history. They show Melbourne’s evolution as the premier port in the country, from being the colonial era centre of maritime trade that helped underpin ‘Marvel-

lous Melbourne’ to becoming one of the world’s first fully containerised ports in the 1970s. Of even greater interest is the still underappreciated importance of Newcastle, which, before the Panama Canal was completed in 1913, was the centre of the Pacific rim’s coal-distribution network. Newcastle exported to the American west coast (many ships backloaded with lumber from Puget Sound), the Pacific Islands, the Philippines and South America (Valparaiso in Chile and Callao in Peru). After World War II, Newcastle saw a considerable increase in trade with South-East Asia and Japan. The demise of the shipping papers in the 1970s is best explained by the advent of long-distance radio, satellite communications and computers, which collectively rendered obsolete the need for dedicated papers relaying shipping news. PETER DOWLING

SIN G LETO N , JO H N D ESM O N D (1941– ) Long synonymous with the advertising industry, John Singleton is a media businessman whose expanding portfolio of media interests has seen him emerge as a media proprietor in his own right. Singleton’s media career began at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1958. His standing in creative circles quickly grew, as did his larrikin reputation. The floundering Berry Currie Agency gambled on the unpredictable copywriter when it appointed him creative director in 1963. At Berry Currie, Singleton not only cemented his creative reputation, he also learnt how to run an agency. In 1968, Singleton formed Singleton, Palmer, Strauss and McAllan—better known as ‘SPASM’—where he pioneered a distinctly Australian type of advertising. Derided as ‘ocker’, this loud and blunt appeal celebrated the Australian accent. His success caught the eye of the American agency Doyle Dane & Bernbach, which bought out SPASM in 1973. However, Singleton struggled to conform to the new owner’s rules, and after five years he left the agency. The non-competition clause in his contract saw him leave advertising altogether. He then ventured into presenting. After two stints as a television chat show host (1979–80), he moved on to Sydney commercial radio, hosting 2KY’s morning show (1980–85) while assisting with the station’s business operations. Singleton re-entered advertising in 1985, forming John Singleton Advertising (JSA) the following year. Billings grew quickly, and in 1994 the agency was floated successfully on the stock exchange. Forming a holding company, the Singleton Group (later STW), Singleton acquired an impressive list of advertising and communications firms, including Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson, his first employer. While his 2007 sale of shares suggested another departure from advertising, his backing of the

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skase, christopher charles (1948–2001) Banjo agency in 2009 indicated that he was not done yet. Communication acquisitions comprised one part of Singleton’s media empire. In 1992, he briefly held a seat on the board of John Fairfax Holdings before his growing interest in Sydney’s TEN10 placed him in breach of cross-media ownership laws. In 1996, he acquired Sydney’s 2CH and 2GB, which would form the basis of his Macquarie Radio Network. Ventures into other media outlets have included an Indonesian television network and Lonely Planet publications. As Singleton entered his fifth decade in the media, he was now, as one colleague observed, ‘seen by the Big End of Town as a serious businessman, not just a bloke who does ads’. Singleton was appointed AM in 1994. REF: G. Stone, Singo (2002). ROBERT CRAWFORD

60 MI NUT ES The 35-year history of Australia’s longest running and most successful current affairs program means it ranks as one of global broadcasting’s most enduring television shows. The Australian version of 60 Minutes was modelled on the American CBS network program of the same name. It first aired on the Nine Network on 11 February 1979, and was broadcast nationally every Sunday night. 60 Minutes soon established a distinctive identity—thanks in large part to the personalities involved. The program was the brainchild of the Nine Network’s larger-than-life owner, Kerry Packer, who chose veteran television journalist Gerald Stone to bring his vision to the airwaves. Even for Packer, this was a risky decision, as Sunday-night television had traditionally been reserved for family entertainment. Stone knew his new program would be a career-maker or breaker for everyone involved. The program’s first on-camera reporters were disparate but complementary personalities. George Negus was a quintessentially macho Aussie. Ray Martin—who joined 60 Minutes from the ABC—was an urbane inquisitor known for his love of words who would later become one of Australian television’s most popular figures. Ian Leslie, gregarious and infectiously likeable, rounded out the team. Behind the scenes were producers considered the best and brightest in Australian television, lured to 60 Minutes partly by Kerry Packer’s open chequebook but more by the promise of an unprecedented journalistic adventure. Their brief was immense but simple: bring the world home to Australia. Within weeks of its first broadcast, 60 Minutes swiftly became a ratings behemoth, attracting millions of viewers and tens of millions of advertising dollars. Packer’s gamble

had succeeded beyond his and Gerald Stone’s wildest imaginations. The key to 60 Minutes’ long-term success was its concentration on ‘people stories’—examining events, places and issues through the eyes of those who experienced them. Stone’s oft-repeated mantra was ‘Don’t give me a story on flood control—give me a profile of Noah!’ 60 Minutes has never been afraid to spend big, either to secure exclusive interviews or to pursue expensive international stories and investigations—witness its 1987 report on art treasures looted by Ferdinand Marcos, which reputedly cost the program a quarter of a million dollars. Very quickly, 60 Minutes became—and remains—a professional Everest for Australian television journalists. Its distinguished reporting alumni include Jana Wendt, Richard Carleton, Jennifer Byrne, Tracey Curro, Mike Munro, Ellen Fanning, Peter Overton, Jeff McMullen, Liam Bartlett and Peter Harvey, as well as its current on-camera team of Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Michael Usher and Allison Langdon. The program’s past and present production team includes legends of Australian television. Over the decades—with its weekly mix of stories ranging from major investigations and front line war reporting to celebrity profiles and human interest stories—60 Minutes has won every Australian television, journalism and technical award, as well as a host of international broadcast honours. It has withstood intense counter-programming from other networks, and has seen off direct competitors for its brand of storytelling. Midway through its fourth decade, 60 Minutes still rates amongst the country’s top programs—and remains the benchmark for commercial television current affairs. REF: J. Little, Inside 60 Minutes (1994). GARETH HARVEY

SKASE, C H R ISTO P H ER C H AR LES (1948–2001) In the second half of the 1980s, Christopher Skase was perhaps the most glamorous of all Australian media proprietors, owning a television network, a suite of prestigious tourist resorts in Queensland and Hawaii, an Australian Rules football club and, fleetingly, a Hollywood studio. The son of 3DB radio personality Charles Skase, Skase withdrew from a commerce degree to work at stockbroker JBWere, then as a business journalist at the Sun News-Pictorial and the Australian Financial Review in Melbourne. In 1974, he formed an investment company, Takeovers, Equities and Management Securities (TEAM), with three other equal partners: Peter Hutchins, John Shergold and Doug Shears. After three years, Skase emerged with a controlling interest in a shelf company, Qintex, which became his chief corporate vehicle.

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sky news australia By the mid-1980s, Qintex had acquired the jeweller Hardy Brothers, an array of regional television investments, a controlling stake in Brisbane’s TVQ0 and land at Southport and Port Douglas for development. These became the basis of a diverse media and tourism group, which thrived in an environment of easy credit, and rising stockmarket and property values. Skase and his second wife, Pixie, courted the great, the good and the influential. Awarded a licence to develop the Brisbane Bears Football Club, and running two costly ‘Skins’ golf tournaments featuring Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman, he became an early sports entrepreneur. In 1987, Qintex agreed to pay John Fairfax $780 million for the Seven Network: Sydney’s ATN7, Melbourne’s HSV7 and Brisbane’s BTQ7. In 1988, he agreed to pay Robert Holmes à Court’s Bell Group $113 million for Perth’s TVW7 and Adelaide’s SAS7. This placed Qintex in breach of audience reach limits set by federal media ownership laws, which he campaigned to increase; although involving instalment payments, they also over-taxed an already extended balance sheet. Qintex’s price plunged after it announced plans to acquire MGM/UA in April 1989; a strike by commercial airline pilots then devastated his resort businesses. Burdened by debts in excess of $1 billion, Qintex collapsed in November 1989. Skase declared himself bankrupt in 1991, and left the country soon afterwards for Spain, from which he declined to return on grounds of ill-health. His absence, and rumours that he had salted away a personal fortune, became a cause célêbre, and an arrest warrant was issued in 1994, to no avail. He died of cancer in August 2001 with extradition proceedings still pending. REFs: T. Prior, Christopher Skase (1994); T. Sykes, The Bold Riders (1994). GIDEON HAIGH

S K Y NEW S AUST RAL IA Australia’s first locally produced television news channel, Sky News Australia features news on the hour, headlines every 15 minutes, regular half-hour programs including Sportsline and Agenda, as well as panel and discussion shows including The Contrarians and The Nation. Sky News began broadcasting on pay television in 1996. Its parent company is a joint venture between Rupert Murdoch’s British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) and the two companies that own the largest commercial free-to-air television networks in Australia—Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media and the Nine Entertainment Co. Sky News rose from early obscurity to build its reputation through coverage of live events, including the Beaconsfield mine collapse in 2006 and a series of bushfires in 2006–07. It provided live coverage of the 2004 federal election as a dedicated channel, but it was during the 2007 election that Sky scored a series of triumphs

including hosting the only leaders’ debate and being the first channel to accurately predict the election result. Sky News’s political editor David Speers was the first to announce the result of a 2006 Labor Party leadership spill by taking a text message live on air from a member of the Labor caucus. In 2007, he broke the story of thwarted moves by key Cabinet ministers to dump Prime Minister John Howard during the APEC summit; he provided dramatic coverage of Julia Gillard’s deposing of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2010; and his interviews with Rudd precipitated Rudd’s failed 2012 Labor leadership challenge. Speers also hosted federal election debates in 2010 and 2013. As a proportion of Australians watching television, Sky News’ audience share is low— sometimes only 0.5 per cent. Viewers tend to be heavy news consumers who check headlines regularly. Compared with other networks, Sky News operates on a shoestring budget. It has relatively few staff, and much of their work involves re-packaging stories from external sources. Sky News’s reporters are also expected to write their own scripts and edit their own video. In 2004, Sky News expanded from a single news channel to the eight-channel Sky News Active. The Sky News Business Channel was launched in 2008, followed by A-PAC (Australia’s Public Affairs Channel, an Australian version of American public affairs network C-SPAN) in 2009. In late 2012, Sky News took over the Weather Channel, rebranding it as Sky News Weather. Sky News is also available as a mobile service and SMS/MMS. Sky News’s presence has influenced Australian journalism, encouraging a faster, longer news cycle and a digital newsroom, content-packaging approach. Other outlets now also privilege immediacy, ‘breaking news’, live coverage and the visual. In 2010, the ABC launched the freeto-air ABC News 24, ending Sky News’s 14-year monopoly on local 24-hour television news. REFs: S. Young, ‘Audiences and the Impact of 24-hour News in Australia and Beyond’, in J. Lewis and S. Cushion (eds), The Rise of 24-Hour News Television (2010) and ‘Sky News Australia: The Impact of Local 24-hour News on Political Reporting in Australia’, Journalism Studies 10(3) (2009). SALLY YOUNG

SM ITH ’ S W EEKLY Smith’s Weekly was a Sydney-based national broadsheet first published on 1 March 1919. Editor Claude McKay and manager Robert Clyde Packer were innovative newspapermen, and their financier, Sir James Joynton Smith (1858–1943), was a flamboyant public figure and former Lord Mayor of Sydney. The paper was brash and populist, and shaped a metropolitan Australian self-image in the inter-war

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social media period, making a name as ‘The Diggers’ Paper’ through its advocacy for returned servicemen. Styling itself ‘The Public Guardian’, Smith’s Weekly was preoccupied with both the injustices (real or perceived) and humour of modern life, with significant sections on boxing and the turf, and a page of readers’ paragraphs that became ‘Unofficial History of the AIF’. But the paper’s most striking feature was its comic art. Prominent artists included Stan Cross, Frank Dunne, George Finey, Cecil Hartt, Mollie Horseman, Joe Jonsson, Joan Morrison, Syd Miller and Virgil Reilly. An initial circulation of 35,000 had built to 145,000 by August 1922, allowing Smith to reward McKay and Packer with one-third shares each when the company became profitable in 1921. Such success also enabled the launch of the Daily Guardian (1923–31). McKay retired in 1927, returning in 1931 when Packer left to become managing editor of Associated Newspapers Ltd. A readership of 214,125 in 1929 fell by around 40 per cent within a decade, a result of the Great Depression, but accelerated by the Wilkinson case in 1932, when Smith’s Weekly was forced to apologise for publishing uncorroborated claims against a murder victim, Francis Wilkinson. The paper that had spent £50,000 in fighting libel suits in its first five years became more cautious. When editor Frank Marien died in 1936, his role was taken by Kenneth Slessor, one of several literary figures who added lustre to Smith’s Weekly, but he was unable to stem its decline. Joynton Smith resigned in 1939, the paper was leased to a syndicate that included the industrialist W.J. ‘Bulldog’ Smith, and McKay became editor-in-chief once more. During World War II, he and editor George Goddard played to Smith’s Weekly’s strengths as the Diggers’ Paper, moved to a tabloid format and rebuilt its readership to 228,579 by 1945, only to see this fall away again after the war. In 1950, W.J. Smith sold his major shareholding and, despite offers by Sir Keith Murdoch to rescue the paper, the last edition of Smith’s Weekly appeared on 28 October that year. REFs: G. Blaikie, Remember Smith’s Weekly? (1966); R.B. Walker, Yesterday’s News (1980). PETER KIRKPATRICK

SOCI A L ME DI A ‘Social media’ first emerged as a term in the late 1990s, and became popular in the first decade of the 21st century with the emergence of platforms such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The term ‘social media’ is now commonly used to refer to a range of internet platforms as well as a general interactive mode of engagement via online platforms. But it also refers to the socio-technical blending of tools and ideologies that focus on the making and

sharing of user-generated content, and maximising the amount of data captured. Whether as a series of applications, a mode of engagement or an ideological perspective, social media as a concept sits within a long history of issues relating to communication, identity, labour, privacy and regulation. While the term ‘social network site’ became associated with a specific form of site that prioritised and visualised social connections, social media came to refer to a wider ecology of services, design approaches, and communicative spaces and styles. Social media genres include everything from content-sharing venues (YouTube, Last.fm), to forms of blogging and microblogging (Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter), social networks (Facebook, Google+), location check-in (Foursquare) and hook-up apps (Grindr, Tinder). After the emergence of the internet, Usenet (launched in 1978), Geocities (1994) and LiveJournal (1999) all enabled users to share content and establish links with like-minded others. By 1997, with the establishment of the social network SixDegrees, profile creation and listing of friends became established activities, which were then consolidated by Friendster in 2002. Over the next four years, MySpace, Facebook, YouTube then Twitter all launched, with Facebook becoming the dominant space for social sharing and ‘friending’: adding people to a list of social connections that can be seen by others. While most popular social media sites are based in the United States, the popularity of each has been mirrored in Australia. Australia has not had success with launching geographically specific social media services; however, the architecture of sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter allows for customisation and localised content. For instance, a central function of Twitter is ‘trending topics’, which aggregate the popular conversations on the site; since 2010, trending topics have been tailored according to region or country, providing a snapshot of what users in a particular nation are discussing, and reflecting national interests in politics, culture, media and current affairs. Social media now account for a significant percentage of time spent online by adults, and social networking has become a dominant activity on computers and mobile devices. Consequently, social media are also a vital communication channel for essential information, adopted widely in Australia by emergency services and government bodies. During the 2011 Queensland floods, Twitter was used as a way to disseminate information from emergency services and provide disaster relief. Challenging the assumption that social media are trivial, Twitter was used as a mechanism for communicating information about life-threatening events. Social media technologies can also be understood as participants within wider networks of communication, interaction and change. Two

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social pages examples are the role of social media in news production and dissemination, and in political activism. Social media can be seen to have contributed to changes in the industrial production of news, allowing media consumers to interact critically with journalists on mainstream media news sites, contribute to stories or establish their own news-oriented blogs or Twitter feeds. Many large news organisations include social media as a way to link to their stories, as well as seek out news leads and sources. At a structural level, social media services reflect what one’s friends are reading, and make suggestions based on the interests of a wider social network. This algorithmically generated ‘social news’ ties an individual’s news-consumption patterns to their social graph. Facebook has blurred the definition of social news further by defining all updates from contacts as a ‘news feed’. Activists and organisers use social media tools to advertise upcoming gatherings, to document protests via mobile photography and video, and to discuss political issues—as was seen in the emergence of the #DIYRainbow movement in 2013. What began as a local protest against the removal of a rainbow crossing in Sydney’s Darlinghurst spread across the city, interstate and internationally. The movement involved people creating a rainbow with chalk and sharing the images via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. The protest became synonymous with GLBTIQ rights and same-sex marriage. It drew on the affordances of social media in a range of ways: eyewitnessing, crowd-sourcing and media-sharing. Protests increasingly are organised and advertised using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and these social media spaces in turn become a useful way for issues to be disseminated. While the movement was centrally organised through Facebook, the organisers encouraged the spread and co-option of the practice of chalking, and relied on users to spread the movement through their networks. However, social media’s role in shifting social and industrial dynamics should not be exaggerated. Rather than being a single catalytic agent, social media contribute and engage within a complex dynamic of media forms, functioning as one set of communication channels among many—closely interlinked with mobile phones, newspapers, radio, television and face-to-face contact. Social media have also become associated with a set of ideas and values. Much of the early rhetoric about social media emphasised online engagement, including content-sharing, democratic engagement, user creativity and platforms for individual voice. However, significant criticisms of this framing have emerged. The most popular social media spaces are privately owned by companies typically based in the United States, which have a strong financial interest in designing systems that extract as much personal data as possible from users, including location, date

of birth, relationship status and cultural interests, as well as a wide array of images and videos. Exploiting users’ content and labour allows for more targeted advertising, as well as enabling the accumulation of vast individual and collective data sets that can be mined or sold for a variety of purposes. Thus social media are simultaneously about everyday social interaction between users, sharing and generating content, and the profit-oriented collection of large quantities of data within privately owned systems. Similarly, privacy and data regulation emerged as central issues for social media. User privacy settings are often designed to expose personal information; within some platforms, data can be hidden but are kept by design. Users have very little power to control how their personal data are used, or to participate in the making of data-governance rules within platforms. The dynamics between identity and anonymity are also navigated through different platforms, with some (4chan) allowing complete anonymity and others (Google+, Facebook) requiring the use of real names. There are many reasons why people continue to deploy forms of anonymity and secrecy, from being able to play with identity markers to enabling sharing of private information or escaping abuse. While social media can be cast in terms of platform design and technological affordances, they also encompass a wide set of arenas related to the conduct of social life, including the representation of self, connection to others, engagement in public and semi-public space, consumption and production of media, exploitation of data, and the fostering of particular forms of human attention and communication. REFs: d.m. boyd and N.B. Ellison, ‘Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship’, Jnl of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1) (2007); A. Bruns et al., #qldfloods and @QPSMedia (2012); M. Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, vol. 1 (2000). KATE CRAWFORD and KATHLEEN WILLIAMS

SO C IAL P AG ES The social pages era in the Australian print media spanned just over a century, from the early 1870s to the mid-1970s. Their arrival was triggered by a healthy economy and the rise of a prosperous middle class; their demise was inevitable when editors abandoned the idea of categorising women as a species who needed segregated newspaper space devoted to their social lives. One of the first newspapers to publish regular social news within its women’s pages was the Australian Town and Country Journal. In its first issue, published on 8 January 1870, the ‘Ladies’ Column’ comprised a report on the Paris scene and details of an all-purpose remedy for sore throats, headaches and cold feet. Within a few years, the Queenslander, the Australasian, the Illustrated Sydney News and

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sommerlad family the Melbourne Punch all published a gossip column with reports of weddings, christenings, holiday plans, overseas journeys on ocean liners, visits to the theatre and who wore what. The celebrities of the day were the squattocracy and a network of the privileged few who lived in the most exclusive suburbs of the major cities. By the 20th century, the celebrity circle favoured by the ‘social editresses’ of metropolitan newspapers encompassed the wives, mothers and daughters of pastoralists, bankers, lawyers, wool brokers and stockbrokers. The reporting was not all obsequious. In the late 19th century, a few writers took a gentle swipe at their subjects—among them, Alexina Maude Wildman, whose weekly ‘Woman’s Letter’ in the Bulletin began in 1888 under the byline ‘Sappho Smith’. Pen-names were common at the time. The Ladies Pages of the Australian Town and Country Journal were edited by ‘Firefly’, and the social column for the Adelaide Register News-Pictorial was written by a succession of women known as ‘Lady Kitty’. In 1896, the British newspaper magnate Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) launched the Daily Mail, a paper that focused on short articles, human-interest stories and news targeted to a female audience. His initiative had a lasting influence, and by the early 20th century all the major metropolitan newspapers gave generous space to women’s news, with social notes a major focus. The Sydney Sunday Sun’s column titled ‘Woman Folk’ was a regular feature by 1903, while the Sydney Morning Herald launched its ‘Page for Women’ in 1905 with an article by Ethel Turner on young girls’ choice of literature, news of Lady Warwick’s Farming College for Girls, and trending fashions, including the wrist bouquet. In pages such as ‘The Social World’, published in the Chronicle in Adelaide, the editor was more of a postbox than an energetic reporter, with ‘Penelope’ urging readers to send her ‘accounts of wedding ceremonies, engagements, dances, and all other social items’. From the 1920s, the growth of department stores such as David Jones, Anthony Hordern & Sons, Myer and Mark Foys, and the dependence of newspaper proprietors on retail advertising revenue, meant that the activities of department store families became a prime subject for the social pages. An emphasis on ‘over there’ featured heavily, with reports of imminent journeys and news of the latest fashions and parties in Britain—still regarded by many Australians as ‘home’. The social pages reached their zenith in the decades book-ending World War II. From the 1930s to the 1950s (with the exception of the war years themselves, when the social pages were dropped), the social editresses of major metropolitan newspapers meticulously tracked the social lives of old money clans such as the

Knox, Fairfax and Allen families in Sydney, the Baillieu, Syme and Myer families in Melbourne, and the Bonython and Barr Smith families in Adelaide. The social page reporters—all women— wrote detailed accounts of who went to which opening nights at the theatre, had lunch at city restaurants, attended balls, cocktail parties, ship departures and arrivals, art exhibitions, the races, polo games, weddings and christenings. In the 1950s, the annual Sheep Week and Wool Ball were highlights of the social calendar, with country visitors from wool dynasties such as the Falkiners and Katers congregating in the cities to attend sheep sales and attend lunches, dinners and parties. The emerging feminist movement in the 1960s had a slow but direct effect on the women’s pages and their accompanying gossip columns. News of female politicians and women in business began to creep into the mix, and by the 1970s the title of social editress and the concept of title-tattle about the privileged were yesterday’s news. In an article published in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1982, Judy Johnson, editor of the Sydney Sun-Herald’s Tempo, said, ‘The social notes as they used to be run, are now too parochial for a city of this size … yet [readers] are interested in stars, celebrities, personalities and the very, very rich’. The years of segregation and pandering to the local elite were over. The age of celebrity was here. REFs: Australian Women’s Weekly, 11 August 1982; V. Lawson, Connie Sweetheart (1990). VALERIE LAWSON

S OCIA L IS T PRE S S see alternative media;

labour press

SO M M ER LAD FAM ILY A three-generation dynasty of newspaper editors began when a throat infection prompted Ernest Christian Sommerlad (1886–1952) to discontinue his calling as a Methodist missionary. He returned to his home town of Inverell in New South Wales in February 1912, and became a journalist on the Inverell Times for four months, and then the Inverell Argus, where he soon became the editor. He produced newspapers that probed more deeply than simply reporting daily events. In May 1918, he bought the Glen Innes Examiner with a bank loan guaranteed by local businessmen. With the editorial column as his pulpit, he preached about the need for district advancement. Sometimes his front page carried a banner declaring ‘The Examiner Does Not Shirk a Clear Cut Editorial Opinion’. Sommerlad organised mergers of the competing newspapers in Glen Innes (1924), Inverell (1927) and Armidale (1929), bringing

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them under the umbrella of Northern Newspapers Pty Ltd, of which he was the managing director (1926–52). In 1929, he became the general manager of the Sydney-based Country Press Cooperative Co. of Australia Ltd (soon Country Press Ltd). An astute businessman, he rescued the company from financial difficulties, and became managing director (1932–52) and chairman (1948–52). A founder of the Country Party, Sommerlad was treasurer of the separatist Northern New State Movement. On his death in 1952, the NSW Country Press Association established the annual E.C.  Sommerlad Memorial Awards for Journalism. Sommerlad had demonstrated an intellectual grasp of the role of the provincial newspaper and what it could mean to its community. He articulated the standards that were held aloft as ideals for provincial newspaper editors in the final half of the 20th century. His first son, Ernest Lloyd (1919–2014), became the secretary of the NSW Country Press Association in 1945, and was general manager of the business arm in 1951–61 and chairman of Northern Newspapers in 1955–61. He was federal director of the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (later Commercial Radio Australia) (1965–70) and chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Council (1980–87). Ernest Christian passed on the editorial torch to second son, David John Ross (1929– ), who inspired a generation of editors, such as Laurie Barber, Ron Robinson and Don McFadyen. David edited and managed the Glen Innes Examiner (1953–54), the Inverell Times (1955–71) and both papers (1971–77), before managing the Armidale Express (1977–81). He was executive editor of Rural Press Limited from 1982 to 1988, as well as president of the NSW Country Press Association (1983–86) and its executive director (1988–2003), and president of Country Press Australia (1987) and its executive director (1988–98). David’s second son, John Wesley (1961– ), was the editor of the Hawkesbury Gazette (1985–87), managing editor of the Maitland Mercury (1988–90) and the Port Macquarie News (1990–96), and editor (1996–2002) and managing editor (2002–13) of the Tamworth-based Northern Daily Leader. He was also president of the NSW Country Press Association (1998–2000). REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000); information from David Sommerlad. ROD KIRKPATRICK

S O U TH AUST RAL I A N GAZETTE AND COLONIAL R E G ISTER The first issue of the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register was printed in London on 18 June 1836; the second appeared one year later, from a rush hut in Adelaide. Robert Thomas and George Stevenson (1799–1856) launched

the newspaper into the experimental colony of South Australia. Surviving the bankruptcy of its founders in 1845, in 1929 it was purchased by a syndicate led by (Sir) Keith Murdoch and the Herald and Weekly Times. When Murdoch purchased the Advertiser in 1931, the Register was subsumed into its old rival. First editor Stevenson was outspoken and fearless. His additional role as private secretary to Governor (Sir) John Hindmarsh led to accusations of biased reporting and the establishment of the competing Southern Australian (1838–44), renamed the South Australian (1844–51). After the paper criticised Governor George Gawler’s handling of the Maria massacre in 1840, the lucrative government printing contract was withdrawn. Combined with the 1841 economic crash, this resulted in Thomas and Stevenson declaring bankruptcy; the newspaper was bought by James Allen. Passing to outspoken radical John Stephens, in 1850 the Register became a daily. After Stephens’ death, it was bought by a syndicate that included William Kyffin Thomas, son of the original owner—now editor. The Register became increasingly conservative. The country-focused weekly Adelaide Observer (est. 1843) was owned by the Register from 1845. In 1869, the company established the tabloid Evening Journal. William Sowden (1858–1943), the Register’s editor from 1897 to 1922, was conspicuous in a range of causes, and was knighted in 1918. Following Sowden’s retirement and the Murdoch takeover, the Register was transformed into the Register News-Pictorial with an emphasis on photographs and sensationalism. For another 50 years, the memory of South Australia’s first newspaper remained only in the Advertiser’s title adjunct ‘and Register’. REFs: G.H. Pitt, The Press in South Australia 1836– 1850 (1946); Sir William Sowden Papers (SLSA). ANTHONY LAUBE

SO U TH AU STR ALIAN P R ESS C LU B The South Australian Press Club is an important forum for local journalists and editors in the state. The club began in 1995 as an initiative of Robert Mayne, then Adelaide correspondent for the now defunct Bulletin, and has continued since with the support of South Australian media organisations and limited commercial sponsorship. It is modelled on the National Press Club in Canberra, meeting monthly in Adelaide and providing a forum for guest speakers of interest to the news media. Prominent newsmakers who have addressed the club since its inception include businesswoman Janet Holmes à Court, South Australia’s NASA astronaut Andrew Thomas, state Director of Public Prosecutions Steven Polaris QC and South Australian Chief Justice John Doyle. The first president of the South Australian Press Club

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special broadcasting service was the former editor-in-chief of the Adelaide Advertiser, Don Riddell. The current president (in 2014) is Jeremy Pudney, news manager of Network Ten in Adelaide. The club offers an annual scholarship for young journalists to undertake study or work placement in Europe or Asia. REF: http://www.sapressclub.com.au. IAN RICHARDS

SOUT HERN STAR ENTERTAINM ENT ‘Southern Star’ is an independent production and distribution company headquartered in Sydney. It produces television drama, children’s and entertainment programs. Since 2009, it has been wholly owned by Endemol B.V. Founded in 1973 as animation studio Hanna-Barbera Australia, the company was renamed Taft Hardie Group a decade later. The Hanna-Barbera studio was sold to Disney in 1988 and the remaining catalogue rights to Turner Broadcasting a few years later. In 1988, the company became Southern Star and the main shareholders were bought out by senior managers, including executive chairman Neil Balnaves and drama producer Errol Sullivan. Southern Star was a pioneer of exclusive joint ventures with Australian producers. When Southern Star Group Ltd (SSR) listed on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1996, it had three divisions: Entertainment, International and Duplitek. In 1997, Southern Star Entertainment replicated Crawford Productions’ achievement in the early 1970s by having prime-time dramas airing simultaneously on each commercial television network: Blue Heelers (Seven), Water Rats (Nine) and Big Sky (Ten). Several UK production and distribution companies, and footage and photo libraries, were acquired in the late 1990s and an Australian production joint venture with European television and online producer Endemol Entertainment was established in 2000. In 2001, it produced the first of many series of Big Brother for the Ten and later Nine Networks. Other successful programs produced in Australia using Endemol formats include Deal or No Deal and Extreme Makeover. Adult drama successes in the 2000s have included The Secret Life of Us (2001–05), Love My Way (2004–07), Offspring (2010– ) and the mini-series Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, Paper Giants: Magazine Wars, Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War and Power Games: The Packer– Murdoch Story (2011–13). Children’s programming successes have included Blue Water High, Hi-5 and The Adventures of Bottle Top Bill. The lucrative Duplitek business began as a producer of cassette tapes, then CDs and DVDs. Technicolor bought into the company in 2000 then wholly acquired it in 2002. Southern Star’s remaining entertainment, sales and other businesses were bought by Southern

Cross Broadcasting in 2004 and delisted. They were then sold to John Fairfax Holdings and the Macquarie Media Group in 2007, then sold again to Endemol two years later. Fairfax retained Southern Star Factual, previously Oxford Scientific Films. Rory Callaghan took over as chief executive from Hugh Marks, who had been in the job since Neil Balnaves stood down in 2005. Southern Star’s sales and distribution business, which includes overseas distribution of Home and Away, was integrated into Endemol Worldwide, run by Cathy Payne. Callaghan resigned in 2012 and was replaced as chief executive of Southern Star Entertainment by Janeen Faithfull. REF: P. Chai, ‘Southern Star Chief’s Era Over Down Under’ Variety, 11 August 2005. JOCK GIVEN and MARION McCUTCHEON

SP EC IAL B R O AD C ASTIN G SER VIC E We live in a world dominated by audio-visual media: the media of the ‘now’. But the radio networks and the major television networks (ABC, Seven, Nine and Ten) still fail to deliver the multicultural reality (or history) of today’s society. By filling this gap, the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) is a vital reminder to all Australians that we are part of a whole world. The development of SBS over the past 37 years mirrors much of the story of modern Australia. Despite SBS’s humble beginnings, it came to play a major role in the development of Australia, and a vital role in modernising the idea of public service broadcasting. In 1975, before SBS, the Whitlam Labor government funded the opening of radio stations 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne. Their purpose was to disseminate information on government health policies to non-English speaking background (NESB) migrants in Australia. Under the Fraser Coalition government, SBS was established in November 1977 as a statutory authority. Under the amended Broadcasting and Television Act 1942, it assumed responsibility for 2EA and 3EA to extend output to general radio programming. This followed extensive consultation and the establishment of both federal and state consultative bodies. The scheduling principle for the growing range of radio programs in languages other than English was (and is) to provide time and placement in proportion to the size and/or needs of communities. This was not simply multilingual programming for NESB audiences: it was meant to assist Australia to become a successful multicultural society. SBS Radio has never been accorded the same kind of public recognition as SBS Television. But it has always been that presence of a large group of volunteers, staff and contractors of NESB, which has underpinned the commitment and passion of SBS.

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special broadcasting service The Outside the Box research project report (2009) identified six key influences that shape our audio-visual media futures: people, content, funding, governance (including government), technology and environment. In the case of SBS Radio in the late 1970s, five of those six influences were positive: people (Australia’s growing multicultural mix) provided a demand for multilingual programming; multilingual content was vital for successful delivery of policy; government supported multiculturalism and the right structures were in place; radio was the perfect technology for the task; and the environment (the appropriate use of resources, domestically and globally) was a positive, as this was a new and socially valuable initiative using resources effectively. Only funding was scarce. As the audience for SBS Radio grew, there was a greater push for the service to be offered on television as well. Between 1975 and 1980, extensive discussion by state and federal inquiries/ panels, boards, ethnic community associations and others showed much interest in the idea of multicultural television—and revealed how little the other broadcasters had done. But both funding and technology were issues—the latter due to the paucity of studio resources and an obligation to transmit on UHF. SBS Television test transmissions began on the ABC in Sydney and Melbourne in April 1979, and Bruce Gyngell was appointed special consultant. ‘Channel 0/28’ commenced full-time programming on Channel 0/28 at 6.30 p.m. on 24 October 1980. Five years later, the network changed its name to SBS, began daytime transmissions and expanded to Brisbane, Adelaide, Newcastle, Wollongong and the Gold Coast. To be accessible to every Australian, English was used as the common language for all television programs. For programs originating in languages other than English (LOTE), subtitles were to be used rather than dubbing. Along with the impact of internationally purchased programs, early Australian productions by SBS achieved real breakthroughs, with shows like Through Australian Eyes (1982), which took Australian school children back to the countries from which their parents had come, and Vox Populi (1986–95), a current affairs program in which participants spoke in their own languages. But Australian production, with its much higher cost than purchased programming, was able to provide only a minority of network content. SBS World News (1981– ) was a real drawcard, as was soccer. Food became a significant feature of SBS Television, and SBS began publishing an annual guide to ‘ethnic eating’ in 1992. The Hawke Labor government was forced to relinquish a plan to amalgamate SBS with the ABC in 1986 after massive protests from ethnic community organisations. By the late 1980s, SBS Television was predominantly transmitting very high-quality programming in LOTE and in English, giving audiences the chance to understand

the riches that multiculturalism was bringing to Australia. The SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra was established in 1988. Neither the ABC nor the commercial broadcasters were making any sustained attempt to reflect Australia as it had become. The SBS board under Sir Nicholas Shehadie (1981–99) was active and supportive throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and endorsed the view that multiculturalism was broader than just ethnicity and included all areas of discrimination in society. Successful local programs included First in Line (1989, Australia’s first weekly prime-time series developed by Indigenous Australians), The Book Show (1986–97), The Movie Show (1986–2004), Eat Carpet (1989–2005) and Face the Press (1990–93). News and current affairs programming extended to a daily current affairs program and a major weekly program, Dateline (1984– ) and, of course, World News. In 1988, Mary Kostakidis became the first female chief newsreader in Australia. The 1980s and 1990s saw a significant growth in sport, with an emphasis first on soccer and then also the Tour de France. All of these initiatives were intended to grow audience with content based firmly on the charter. People were encouraged to buy UHF aerials. The audience grew, with an average weekly reach of 1.74 million in 1990. In June 1991, the Hawke government approved advertising for SBS Television and Radio under a new charter. It permitted five minutes of advertising/sponsorship per hour, but only between programs. In December, the Special Broadcasting Service Act 1991 officially made SBS a corporation. The new advertising regime provided funds to enable Australian production and the purchase of overseas program rights. In 1992, after a major review, new SBS Radio schedules came into force: the number of languages covered on 2EA increased from 57 to 63, and on 3EA from 54 to 59. In 1994, a national SBS Radio network was launched, providing a greater service to Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin, as well as Sydney and Melbourne. Also in 1994, SBS achieved the content-funding breakthrough it had been seeking: a means for the network to become involved in significant independent productions. Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating’s Creative Nation policy granted SBS $13 million over three years to invest in or commission independent productions for prime-time viewing. SBS Independent (SBSi), with a structure similar to that of Britain’s Channel 4, was established separately from the Television Division. Over the next decade, it was to be involved with the commissioning or joint funding of some of the truly significant programs of the age, winning a remarkable list of awards in the face of far bigger and better funded networks. All of these programs had a multicultural purpose, were quality productions and, in almost every case, had a focus on prime-time viewing.

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sports broadcasting rights In 2001, SBS digital television services commenced in the five mainland capitals. In 2003, SBS Radio launched new program schedules based on census statistics and community consultation. It ceased broadcasting in Gaelic, Welsh and Belarusian in order to free up space for new programs in Malay, Somali, Amharic and Nepalese. Living Black, which began in 2003 as a weekly Indigenous magazine program, is the only prime-time Indigenous current affairs program on Australian television; there is also a radio version. Under chair Carla Zampatti (1999–2009), the board, management and staff completed a major restructure of television culminating in 2006 in the implementation of in-program advertising. This occurred at the same time as the Howard government appeared to start moving away from the idea of multiculturalism. In 2002, the events surrounding the Tampa and the ‘Children Overboard’ affair led to increasingly negative federal government rhetoric about ‘boat people’ and ‘border protection’, and an ambiguous concern about Muslims—rhetoric that was widely evident from the ‘Cronulla riots’ onwards. Slowly, ‘multiculturalism’ began to fade from government priorities. The core role of SBS was now at some risk. If this shift in thinking became permanent, what strategic role would SBS have? Joseph Skrzynski was appointed chair in 2009, and multiculturalism was re-emphasised as the centre of the corporation’s agenda. SBS Television was rebranded SBS One to coincide with the launch of a sister channel. SBS Two was originally designed to focus on Asia-Pacific specialty shows, international children’s programming and English learning programs, but in 2013 it was relaunched to appeal to a youth (16–39) audience. SBS bought a majority interest in World Movies, a pay television channel screening films from across the world in more than 70 languages. In 2010, it also took over the Foxtel arts channel, STUDIO. In 2012, National Indigenous Television (NITV) became part of SBS Television’s suite of channels. In 2010, SBS Radio launched Chill, a world music digital radio channel, and PopAsia, offering mainstream Asian pop music for younger Chinese Australians; they were followed by PopDesi and PopAraby in 2012. The radio network has transitioned from a predominantly homeland news service to what has been called, since 2011–12, an ‘Australian Information Network’. Another review of SBS Radio program schedules in 2013 increased the number of languages broadcast to 74, with the addition of Dinka, Hmong, Malayalam, Pashto, Swahili and Tigrinya. Each of the programs starts with news—Australian, international and homeland. SBS Radio now consists of Radio 1, Radio 2 and Radio 3, as well as Radio 4, which broadcasts the BBC World Service and special (often sport-

ing) events. At the same time, SBS Online has built an increasingly strong presence delivering alternative viewing and listening times for a wide range of programming. SBS has been central to the development of new talent, content and ideas. It has extended the viewing and listening options available to Australians and provided them with a clearer picture of their own society. It has put the ‘public’ back into public broadcasting, and at times been the envy of broadcasters all over the world. Small, flexible and passionate (at its best), it has harried or teased competitors and audiences into thinking about the realities of modern Australia. REFs: I. Ang, G. Hawkins and Lamia Dabboussy, The SBS Story (2008); A. Lloyd James, R. Gibson, P. Bell, B. Goldsmith, H. Pattinson and A. Chandler, Outside the Box, http://otbresearch.com.au (2009). ANDY LLOYD JAMES and BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY

SP O R TS B R O AD C ASTIN G R IG H TS On Boxing Day 1908, promoter Hugh Donald McIntosh staged the world heavyweight boxing championship between white Canadian Tommy Burns and black American Jack Johnson in Sydney. The match is significant as one of the earliest sporting contests recorded on film. When radio broadcasting commenced in Australia in November 1923, sport and radio soon saw a mutual benefit—even if many sports administrators were wary that broadcasting would harm ‘gate’ takings. By 1925, horse racing and cricket were being broadcast, though ‘rights fees’ were not paid, since the broadcast was seen as free advertising. By 1930, many race callers had been excluded from racecourses, forcing them to broadcast from nearby vantage points. With the Australian Broadcasting Commission Act 1932, the ABC had eight city and regional stations operating in time to broadcast ‘ball-by-ball’ descriptions of the 1932–33 Bodyline Test cricket series between Australia and England. Although radio stations paid a ‘facilities fee’ there was no broadcast rights fee. The ABC and commercial radio stations worked together to ensure that none was applied. In 1946, they formed a consortium known as the Special Broadcasting Committee, with the aim of obtaining the broadcast rights at a reasonable fee and ultimately without payment. The issue of rights fees came into focus in the lead-up to the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. From the late 1940s, there was commercial pressure for the introduction of television to Australia. In 1953, the Menzies Coalition government amended the Australian Broadcasting Act 1948 to allow for the granting of commercial television licences. The forthcoming Olympic Games provided the impetus for the government to implement its two-tiered

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sports broadcasting rights television broadcasting system. Broadcasting began in 1956, in time for the Games—but saw a showdown over broadcast rights. When, in 1955, the Melbourne Organising Committee (MOC) reached an agreement with a British firm, Associated-Rediffusion, for exclusive film rights, newsreel and other broadcasters protested loudly. In January 1956, a meeting between the ABC, newsreel companies and several other broadcasters, including the American NBC, issued a demand that there should be free access to the Olympic Games as was the case for photographers and journalists. The MOC stood its ground. Although this resulted in little film of the Games, it was a landmark for sport, as it had arguably established that those wishing to reproduce sporting contests for public consumption would have to pay. Twenty years on, a new struggle emerged. The ABC’s cosy arrangement with cricket continued until challenged in 1976 by the Nine Network and Kerry Packer. Packer offered the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) $210,000 for the broadcast rights, but it accepted a lesser offer from the ABC of $65,000. Packer subsequently set up his own competition, World Series Cricket (WSC), enticing the best Australian and overseas players to participate. WSC staged ‘Supertests’ and ‘one-day internationals’ in Australia during the 1977–78 and 1978–79 seasons, while the ACB continued conducting concurrent ‘official’ fixtures. With the schism financially crippling the ACB, an agreement was reached in 1979, with Nine gaining the broadcast and marketing rights to Australian cricket; this arrangement lasted for 15 years. While cricket continued its relationship with the ABC, the football codes’ engagement with television was piecemeal. Again, there was a perception that allowing unfettered television broadcasting would damage gate receipts. In Melbourne, as part of the rollout of television, there had been closed-circuit broadcasts of Victorian Football League (VFL) matches, and in 1957 a formula was struck whereby 15 minutes of three matches could be broadcast at £50 per match. By 1958, individual clubs were to be paid £500 per match, but in 1961 the VFL rejected an offer of £14,000 for the season to broadcast the last 15 minutes of each match. By 1971, however, the ABC and ATN7 together paid $200,000 per year for five years, for replays. By 1977, ATN7 was paying $100,000 to broadcast the Grand Final. From 1985, the price escalated from $3.5 million for the season to a five-year deal signed in 2011 between the AFL, ATN7, Foxtel and Telstra for $1.253 billion, with radio paying a combined $23.2 million. Rugby League was equally slow to realise the potential of television revenues. The first televised match between North Sydney and Balmain from North Sydney Oval in April 1961 saw North Sydney paid £261. ATN7 became the main broadcaster in the city, while the ABC

provided country coverage, though historically TCN9 has been the dominant broadcaster with Network Ten’s interest intermittent. The first Grand Final was broadcast in 1967 for a fee of $5000. By 1993, the Nine Network’s owner, Kerry Packer, was paying $80  million for the free-to-air television rights, with the soon-tobe-introduced pay television rights reputedly provided free as part of the deal. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation had established that sport was a major factor in the success of any pay television network after purchasing the rights to NFL gridiron in the United States and English Premier League soccer. When News approached the Australian Rugby League with a proposal to put Rugby League on the Australian pay television platform, it found itself blocked by Packer’s Nine Network. What ensued is known as the ‘Super League War’, fought through the courts and with Nine and News funding separate competitions in 1997. Concurrently, a battle was fought by the same two entities for the rights to Rugby Union, resulting in the formation of the Super Rugby competition and the southern hemisphere ‘Tri-Nations’ series involving Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. One outcome of this battle was a guarantee that 95 per cent of the broadcasting revenue would be distributed as directed by the players’ association. Ultimately, the Super League dispute proved too costly for each organisation. A compromise was reached and the National Rugby League (NRL) was established. The 2012 television rights deal signed between the NRL and Foxtel, Nine, Telstra, NZTV and radio is worth $1.277 billion over five years. By the time the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games were staged, broadcast rights had become lucrative indeed—the global rights payments to the Organising Committee totalled US$1.331 billion (45 per cent of the event’s income). The sports broadcasting rights battle continued in the new millennium, with Australia’s most expensive court case (known as the ‘C7 case’), being heard in 2006–07. This involved C7 Sports (owned by the Seven Network’s Kerry Stokes) taking action against 22 defendants, including TCN9, the Ten Network, Optus, Austar, the AFL, the NRL, Fox Sports, Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd and Telstra. Judgment was handed down on 27 June 2007, with the trial judge commenting that ‘the expenditure of $200 million and counting on a single piece of litigation is not only extraordinarily wasteful, but borders on the scandalous’. Subsequently, there was the ‘Optus TV Now’ case. In July 2011, Optus released a free-to-air television broadcast recording product, known as TV Now, that would allow Optus customers to save recorded television broadcasts from 15 channels to Optus’s cloud, which they could then watch on personal computers, smartphones and tablets. The iPhone app also allowed customers

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sports media and reporting to stream the recorded broadcast with as little as two minutes’ delay from the original broadcast. TV Now was of concern to Telstra, which had signed a $153 million deal with the AFL and NRL to stream matches on its phones. The court initially found in Optus’s favour, but this was overturned on appeal. Optus promoted its case as a battle between old and new technologies, while a Telstra spokesperson stated that the decision ‘gives sports bodies and content owners the ability to receive a fair return for their property’. Broadcast rights will continue to be much sought after, with perhaps the next battle on the horizon being where wealthy clubs and franchises want to opt out of collective deals and run their own television and other media operations. REFs: D. Healey, ‘Seven Loses the Football: Why all the Fuss?’, in T.V. Hickie, A. Hughes, D. Healey and J.A. Scutt, Essays in Sport and the Law (2008); S.R. Wenn, ‘Lights! Camera! Little Action: Television, Avery Brundage, and the 1956 Olympics’, Sporting Traditions, 10(1) (1993). ANTHONY HUGHES

SPORT S ME DI A AND REPORTING When in 2012 Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited launched a takeover bid for James Packer’s Consolidated Media Holdings, it was just the latest evolution in what has been a symbiotic relationship between Australian sport and the media since at least the mid-19th century. Sport was at the heart of this deal. The aim was to give News a 50 per cent share in Foxtel, but far more significantly, a 100 per cent ownership in Fox Sports, the prime pay television sports outlet. Late in 2012, the Federal Court approved the $2 billion takeover. News Limited would dominate sports coverage in Australia because more and more events were migrating to the pay domain, despite government efforts to protect free-to-air coverage. Australia’s knowledge of and attitudes to sport have been derived largely from newspapers and magazines, radio and television, the internet and now social media, so media interests have always seen sport as an essential ingredient in their offerings. Until the end of World War I, newspapers were the principal public source of sports knowledge. Bell’s Life (1845–70), the Australian Town and Country Journal (1870–1919) and the Referee (1886–1939) all flourished, while specialist journals for cricket and other sports sprang up and later closed. Major daily papers like the Sydney Morning Herald, the Sun, the Age and the Argus, the Adelaide Advertiser and the West Australian devoted considerable space to sport. This dominance was challenged and later supplanted by the electronic media. Originally, overseas sporting news arrived in Australia by ship. The telegraph revolutionised both the media and sport because it quickened the immediacy of interest, which had a commercial spin-off.

Film also became important, and the running of the 1896 Melbourne Cup was one of the first moving images taken in Australia. The nexus between sport and film strengthened through newsreels. By the mid-1920s, radio was already a major force. Sporting events were among the first to be broadcast live in Australia, and by 1939 radio sports commentators were stars. The roles of newspaper reporters were changing. By World War II, they were more interpreters than reporters, with the latter role increasingly going to the radio broadcasters. By the early 1950s, race-callers, cricket and football commentators, such as Norman Banks, Clif Cary and Ken Howard, were skilled, highly paid celebrities. They took sport to every community in Australia, and even internationally, as the reputation of Australian sport grew. Alan McGilvray typified the impact of commentators during this era. He played cricket for New South Wales in the 1930s but then gravitated to broadcasting and called every Test match in which Australia played from 1946 until 1985. But in 1956 television took over as the lead purveyor of sports coverage, its importance encapsulated in the prominence given to telecasting the Melbourne Olympic Games. By the 1960s, the telecasting of live sports events and the beginnings of magazine sports shows were well entrenched. With the advent of colour television in 1975, sport became a staple television diet on the ABC and commercial television networks. Personalities dominated other sports as well in this new phase. In Rugby League, Rex Mossop was the go-to man from 1964 until 1991, and brought a colour to the game unlike any other. A former dual international in Rugby League and Rugby Union, he joined ATN7 when it began Rugby League telecasts, the first in a legion of ex-players who have dominated commentary. Mossop was very different from McGilvray: a tough and direct man who was as famous for his speech mix-ups as for his description of the game. At the end of his time at ATN7, Mossop and his offsider Barry Ross were suspected of having charged fees for allocating teams Match of the Day status. Until it was professionalised, Rugby Union was very much an elite sport, and Gordon Bray was the lead ABC commentator. That image of the game became complicated as eligibility rules allowed players to cross from League to Union and back again, which did not sit well with Bray and similar callers. The power of television over Australian sport was best demonstrated in 1977 when Kerry Packer established a rival international cricket series to defy the Australian Cricket Board, which had passed over his bid for television rights, in favour of the ABC. Packer’s World Series Cricket lasted for three years before a 1979 truce saw Packer gain the rights to all Australian

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sports media and reporting cricket for a 10-year period. From then on, the possibility of substantial television rights drove the planning for all sports organisations, while media organisations had to factor sports broadcasting rights into their financial planning. That rise of a commercialised sport affected all the media giants—for example, News Limited has to cater to the different football tastes in the various states and territories. Regional rivalries in sport have become powerfully felt through strong media representation and development— particularly in the successful State of Origin Rugby League series between Queensland and New South Wales (est. 1982). Radio and the other media had to adapt. In radio, a number of stations, like 2KY (1925– ), devoted themselves entirely to horse racing, tied to the gambling industry, which in turn has developed closer media links with sports events. The Sports Entertainment Network—SEN116 (2004– ) in Melbourne and SEN1323 (2004–05) in Adelaide—moved to an all-sport format in an attempt to gain market share. The rise of allsports television channels led to the creation in 1995 of what became Fox Sports in Australia. Specialist sports magazines began to emerge as radio and television coverage came to dominate the market. Early titles like the Sydney Sportsman (1900– ), Football Record (1912–88) and Sporting Globe (1922–88) were joined by magazines such as Australian Cricket (1968–98), Rugby League Week (1970– ), Tracks (surfing, 1970– ) and Inside Sport (1991– ). From the mid-1990s, the internet began to have an impact. By the turn of the 21st century, the sports presence on the web was significant. This allowed sports consumers to break the hold held by media organisations over reporting and interpretation. By 2011, for example, The Roar (http://www.theroar.com.au) had daily coverage of a bewildering range of sports provided by largely independent reporters. The print and television industries also began to migrate their sports coverage online and on to smartphones. It was no accident that ‘3’ became the principal sponsor of Australian cricket. Sport was seen as central to the commercial success of this media form. Most recently, social media have become significant. A Facebook and/or Twitter presence is now mandatory for all sports and media outlets. This has also opened up commentary and criticism opportunities to subscribers, creating a more independent view of sport. Throughout this media evolution, several trends are discernible. The first is that the coverage of sport has become increasingly superficial, with far less explanation. This is partly due to a lack of space, but it also stems from the dilution of professionalism in sports coverage, in a field now dominated by former sports stars. The second trend concerns the commercial aspect of sport. Newspapers initially advertised to attract spectators to sporting events; the

grounds themselves were largely unadorned with advertisements. Then commercial radio linked listeners to advertising during the course of the action. Sport, for example, encouraged consumers to buy the radio sets in the first place. The impact of this was felt very early. In 1931, for example, R.C. Packer struck a radio deal with cricket superstar (Sir) Donald Bradman. The Australian cricket authorities refused permission for Bradman to work for Packer. Bradman threatened not to play against England, backed by Packer. The authorities relented, demonstrating the commercial power of the media. When television arrived, that process accelerated. In the early radio days, sports organisations commonly paid for the privilege of having their events put to air, but the 1970s that process had been reversed, and by the 1980s sports in high media demand were earning millions of dollars every year. By the late 20th century, sports venues and participants had become saturated billboards. The web and social media have yet to really commercialise their activities, except where deals have been done with rights holders in terms of cross-media. That is one reason why the 2012 Rupert Murdoch–James Packer deal carried so much significance, because News Limited would become a sole provider via Fox Sports and all the associated spin-offs into telephony and social media. The third trend was for the playing conditions and practices of sport to be calibrated by the media. In the television age, game times and playing circumstances are altered to suit television and associated advertising schedules. One recent example concerned the 2012 Olympics, where the Australian men’s hockey side discovered they were scheduled to play a string of very early morning matches in London to suit television audiences around the world. Some sports, like tennis and golf, now have ‘for television’ exhibitions, built around personalities who just happen to be active in sport. This trend is manifested clearly in 20/20 cricket. This three-hour version of cricket was designed purely for television audiences. Its success saw it replicated around the world, and it has changed the entire face of cricket following, scheduling and strategic planning. The fourth trend is the creation and remuneration of sports stars. Radio turned prominent players into personalities, and television transformed them into celebrities. That transformation has been capped by social media, where stars have their own Facebook, Twitter and Instagram sites. With regard to the fifth trend, television has internationalised Australian sports tastes and possibly undercut national identities. Television brought baseball, basketball and gridiron into the centre of Australian life. Finally, it is important to recognise the role of the media in the preservation of sport’s social status quo. Newspapers largely reported only

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stephens, alfred george (1865–1933) those sports in which the readership was already interested. That began to change with the rise of the internet, and has arguably accelerated with the emergence of the social media. Two case studies exemplify this. While women athletes were some of the most successful for Australia from the 1950s onwards, few achieved mass coverage. Successful women’s teams in hockey and netball were ignored while less successful men’s teams in all sports were lionised. There is a direct link here to the impact of television rights that has made quite ordinary male sports figures extremely well paid. There are still only a handful of women sports writers and broadcasters. However, the internet and social media are beginning to change this trend—although women’s sport remains hugely disadvantaged in the media. The other case is soccer (known outside Australia as football). The game became highly significant in Australia as part of the immigrant diversification process in the 1950s and 1960s, so became trapped within its ‘ethnic’ shell, partly by its long association with SBS. Despite the rise of a host of Australian international stars and football’s huge international presence, in Australia it has a low media profile. Yet the web and social media have begun to change this. Ironically, as the economic, political, ethical and social complexity of sport increases, sections of the Australian media have begun to develop a more analytical outlook. Major media outlets have investigated the great sports issues like drugs, betting scandals, business arrangements, financial transactions, sexual harassment and so on. Sports matters are now as likely to be found in the political and business areas of the media as in the traditional sports ones. However, this is also the one area where the web and social media have begun to make a serious difference. The major sports still have an indirect power over a small number of journalists: publish an unsatisfactory story and future access may not be guaranteed. However, the independent analysts of the web and the Twittersphere are not so inhibited, and on any given day any number of stories will appear there that struggle to get a place in the broader mainstream media. That might prove to be the biggest change for a long time, but if the Australian pattern continues in this sports–media relationship, it will not be the last. REFs: B. Hutchins and D. Rowe, Sport Beyond Television (2012); M. Nicholson, Sport and the Media (2007); D. Rowe (ed.), Critical Readings (2003); B. Stoddart, ‘Sport on the Information Superhighway’, Jnl of Sport and Social Issues, 21(1) (1997). BRIAN STODDART

STAR OBSERVER The Star Observer (SO), formerly the Sydney Star Observer, is the oldest gay and lesbian newspaper in Australia. Founded and initially edited by an

American, Michael Glynn, who had emigrated to Australia in 1971, it first appeared in July 1979 and has not missed an issue since. Initially known as the Star, the weekly has, in its various manifestations, given an important voice to Sydney’s—and Australia’s—gay and lesbian communities, and brought to them news and views on matters of concern and relevance to them. Like all community newspapers, the SO has fulfilled several important functions. First, it ensured that anything, no matter how obscure, that in any way involved anything ‘homosexual’ was reported and commented on. Second, it allowed a gay perspective to be presented, important at a time when the mainstream press was rarely neutral about issues involving homosexuality. Third, it played a major role, during the 1980s, in helping to promote a sense of gay identity, and thus of creating a gay ‘community’. Its editorials directly addressed the issues of identifying as gay, and it often included notices urging readers to ‘Think gay, buy gay’, encouraging them to shop locally in the emerging gay precinct around Sydney’s Oxford Street. Finally, over the years, it recorded the various controversies that involved the community, and enabled the presentation of a variety of lesbian and gay viewpoints. Its most recent name change reflects the paper’s shift to cover the country’s whole eastern seaboard. Some of the breaking stories the SO has reported on include, in July 1981, the first appearance of AIDS in America; in May 1983, the first AIDS case in Australia, and of key community responses including the formation of the AIDS Council of New South Wales and the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation; in 1984, the decriminalisation of male homosexuality in New South Wales; in 1996, the sidetracking of the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption; in 2002, Sydney’s Gay Games; and the battle, won in 2003, for the equal age of consent. The newspaper has also covered numerous Oxford Street bashings and the recent fight for same-sex marriage. The ownership structure of the parent company, Sydney Gay Community Publishing, is unique; since February 1988, the shareholding has been dispersed among the lesbian and gay communities. To stop any one individual taking control, there is only one vote per shareholder, no matter how many shares they may own. Thus the SO remains one of the few truly community-owned gay and lesbian newspapers in Australia. REF: G. Wotherspoon, ‘Telling It Like It Is: The Emergence of Australia’s Gay and Lesbian Media’, in L. Featherstone, R. Jennings and Robert Reynolds (eds), Acts of Love and Lust (2014). GARRY WOTHERSPOON

STEP H EN S, ALFR ED G EO R G E (1865–1933) A.G. Stephens achieved fame as the Sydney Bulletin’s Red Page literary editor from 1896 to 1906. Printer’s ink ran in his veins from an 439

stokes, kerry matthew (1940– ) early age as his father owned Toowoomba’s Darling Downs Gazette during the 1870s, selling out to W.H. Traill, later proprietor of the Bulletin. At the age of 15, Stephens began a printing apprenticeship with rival newspaper the Toowoomba Chronicle, then completed his training in Sydney. At just 23, he was appointed editor (1888– 90) of the Gympie Miner, throwing himself with gusto into the political, intellectual and cultural life of the booming gold rush town. His friends included future Labour prime minister Andrew Fisher and former Fenian revolutionary John Flood. Relishing editorial power, Stephens challenged and entertained his Gympie newspaper audience, drawing material from his regular reading of British and American newspapers and keeping his readers abreast of local, colonial, national and international news. His political commentary was always concise and well-informed, and he lectured to the Gympie Literary Circle on poetry, fiction, non-fiction and drama. Stephens went on to perfect these skills— first as a columnist at the Brisbane Boomerang in 1891 and then as editor (1891–92) of the Cairns Argus—before J.F. Archibald recruited him for the Bulletin in 1894. As inaugural editor of the Red Page, Stephens became Australia’s most influential literary critic. Throughout his long career, he read widely and voraciously, including European, British and American books, magazines and newspapers. One of his models was pioneering English journalist W.T. Stead, editor of Review of Reviews. As an editor and critic, Stephens was fearless, magisterial and forthright. As a journalist and essayist, he developed the in-depth interview into an art form. Under the imprint of the Bulletin Newspaper Company Limited, he published the first books of Arthur Hoey Davis (‘Steele Rudd’) and Joseph Furphy, along with books by other Bulletin contributors. Numerous writers benefited from Stephens’ patronage, including Miles Franklin, Barbara Baynton, John Shaw Neilson, Louise Mack and Hugh McCrae, and he continued in this role as editor of the Bookfellow (1907–25), publishing important books under that imprint as he had earlier for the Bulletin. In all, he edited about 50 books for publication. REF: S.E. Lee, ‘The Self-Made Critic: A Literary and Biographical Study of A.G. Stephens’ (MA thesis, 1978). CRAIG MUNRO

S T O K ES, KERRY MATTHEW (1940– ) Kerry Stokes is Australia’s most significant locally based media proprietor, controlling the Seven Network, Pacific Magazines and West Australian Newspapers. He also has interests in Sky News Australia and the Prime Media Group. Most of his media interests are held through Seven West Media. Seven television

reaches 13 million viewers a month, and the newspapers in the group are near monopolies in their West Australian markets. Seven West Media is controlled by Seven Group Holdings (SGH), of which Stokes is a 70 per cent owner and chairman. SGH also owns the Caterpillar earthmoving franchises for much of Australia and north-eastern China. These are the source of most of Stokes’ wealth. He also has extensive iron ore mining and real estate interests, mostly held by his private company, Australian Capital Equity. Stokes was adopted as a baby, and raised in Melbourne’s slums. He left school at 14, and in later life discovered he was dyslexic. He made his first fortune in real estate during the 1960s Perth land boom, before developing shopping centres. He and builder Jack Bendat invested in regional media in Bunbury and Perth radio station 96FM in the mid-1970s. Stokes bought the Canberra television station CTC7 from John Fairfax & Sons in 1980, and in 1986 he won the new third commercial television licence in Perth. In the 1980s, he made unsuccessful bids for Channel Ten and Channel Seven, then sold his media interests. However, he bought back the Golden West Network, and in 1989 purchased the Canberra Times, financed in part by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited—leading to a perception that he was ‘Murdoch’s man’. In 1995, Stokes began to buy shares in the Seven Network. He quickly lifted his stake, succeeding in becoming chairman. For the next few years, he wove his way between Murdoch and Packer during the complex and internecine battles over pay television, to emerge as the controller of Channel Seven. However, he had been effectively locked out of the emerging pay television industry, and was forced to close his C7 pay television business. In 2002, Stokes launched an unsuccessful legal battle alleging that News Limited had led a conspiracy to ‘kill C7’. In 2006, he began restructuring his empire. Today, SGH is not only a media company, but a diversified mining, media and investment group. Stokes owns one of the most significant private art collections in the country, and has served as chair of the National Gallery of Australia. He has also shown an interest in Australian history, buying Victoria Crosses and other military artefacts for the nation, earning him a place on the Australian War Memorial Council. He presented the Boyer Lectures in 1994 and the Andrew Olle Media Lecture in 2001, and was appointed AC in 2008. Two of Stokes’ four children, Ryan and Bryant, have been involved in the business. Ryan, now CEO of Australian Capital Equity, is seen as Stokes’ heir. REF: M. Simons, Kerry Stokes (2013). MARGARET SIMONS

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strikes (journalists’ and printers’) ST ONE, GERAL D (1933– ) Gerald Stone is the man who was chosen by Kerry Packer to produce the Australian version of 60 Minutes, one of the most successful current affairs programs ever seen on Australian television. Stone was born in the United States, and started his career in journalism there after service in the US Army, working initially for the New York Times, then for United Press International (1957–62). He immigrated to Australia in 1962, working as a reporter on the Daily Mirror until 1967 when he moved to ABC Television with This Day Tonight. In 1974, he moved to the Nine Network, which had pioneered current affairs on commercial television. Stone became the first producer of 60 Minutes—a magazine-style current affairs program based on the CBS original—in 1978. Expensively mounted, the show featured reporters Ray Martin, George Negus, Ian Leslie and later Jana Wendt, who travelled the world to bring back both political and human-interest stories. The reporters, as much as their stories, became the stars of the show. The 1979 debut of 60 Minutes was inauspicious, but it soon built a large audience, becoming the anchor of the network’s Sunday-night schedule and impossible to beat in the ratings during the 1980s. Stone left the show in 1989. He worked for a time for the Fox Network in New York before returning to Australia to take up the position of head of current affairs at the Seven Network. Between 1995 and 1998, Stone was editor-in-chief of the Bulletin. He was made a director of SBS in 2000, serving as deputy chairman from 2005 until his retirement in 2010. Stone is the author of a number of books about the media, including Compulsive Viewing (2000), Singo: The John Singleton Story (2002) and Who Killed Channel 9? (2007). REF: G. Stone, Say It with Feeling (2011). NICK HERD

ST RI K E S ( J OUR NALISTS’ AND PRINTERS’) For an industry historically known to prefer conciliation and arbitration, it is ironic that the first known strike in Australian history took place at a newspaper. In 1829, typographers on the Australian walked off the job over a wages claim. In 1840, printers withdrew labour from the Sydney Herald in a dispute over apprentices. The strike weakened the newspaper, leading to its purchase by John Fairfax & Sons. The Victoria Typographical Association, formed in 1851, led strikes at Melbourne’s Argus (1855) and Age (1858), which failed after management brought in workers from Hobart and England. Meanwhile, in Sydney in 1854, printers struck over wages at the Empire. The proprietor, (Sir) Henry Parkes, took legal action

and 13 of the 17 strikers were imprisoned. Parkes imported cheaper workers from India. After this, the industrial organisation of printers and the use of strike action waned. The next major strike occurred in 1889, when 101 compositors in Brisbane joined a month-long general printing strike that was marred by violence. With the new century, printers and journalists realised the ramifications of being workers in a capitalist economy. Journalists formed the Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA) in 1910, while the national Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia was established in 1915. Both groups retained a preference for conciliation and arbitration. Yet in 1912, journalists walked off the Perth Daily News for two days over wages parity with Melbourne and Sydney journalists. It was the first known strike by journalists in Australia. In 1919, journalists on Broken Hill’s Barrier Daily Truth, published by a mining union, were locked out after refusing a management request to work for free because the union had devoted all its funds to striking miners. The labour movement was again involved in a strike in 1925 after the sacking of four Labor Daily journalists, who had formed a union branch at the paper. The dispute prompted a protest march by 350 members of the Labor Council of New South Wales. Printers struck for five weeks in Perth in 1922, over plans to increase working hours and reduce wages. Two dailies and three weeklies did not publish for the duration of the strike. The next strike occurred in Sydney in October 1944 after printers at the Sun unsuccessfully sought a 40-hour week. Journalists were drawn in when Fairfax sent copy to other newspapers for inclusion in a composite paper. Journalists refused to work on the composite and were dismissed or suspended. The dispute lasted 13 days, during which striking printers and locked out journalists united to produce a strike paper, the News, out of the Communist Party printery. Nine editions of the News were published with daily sales of 100,000 copies. In 1947, journalists and printers on opposition papers again resisted management efforts to produce a composite paper when a printers’ dispute escalated, forcing publication of the Sun to be abandoned for two days. In 1955, Daily Mirror printers struck over a new industrial award. The Mirror was not published for 19 days, the Sun for nine days and the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald for six days. There were no Sunday newspapers in Sydney for two weeks. Journalists were brought into the dispute when proprietors, as in 1944, produced a composite paper. Journalists who refused to work on the composite were sacked. This time, three editions of a strike paper, the Clarion, were printed at the Catholic Weekly. It sold up to 170,000 copies daily and made

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student newspapers a £3000 profit. The strike ended after a mass meeting of more than 3000 unionists voted to return to work under a no victimisation policy. While it was printers who initiated the 1944 and 1955 strikes, it was journalists who walked off the job in August 1967 to protest a downgrading of editorial staff. The 16-day strike affected newspapers in Adelaide and Sydney. Although two composite papers were produced, improved technology meant publication of all newspapers was restricted rather than stopped. The Clarion re-emerged for two editions. Support for the strike waned and journalists voted to return to work. In 1975, the first strike by journalists over editorial independence took place at the Australian, Daily Telegraph and Daily Mirror, owned by News Limited. On 8 December, during the federal election campaign following the Dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government, AJA members held a two-day strike to protest anti-Labor bias. The journalists’ strike followed a strike by printers, protesting anti-Labor editorials. A letter sent to Rupert Murdoch, signed by 75 journalists, claimed the Australian had become a ‘propaganda sheet’. The strike led to a joint communiqué from the AJA and Murdoch, in which Murdoch supported fair and accurate reporting and the AJA Code of Ethics. The following year, ABC staff—including 120 journalists—staged a 24-hour strike to protest the Broadcasting and Television Amendment Act 1976, which they feared would threaten editorial independence. In 1978, commercial television journalists struck for three days over award changes. The introduction of computerised visual display terminals (VDTs) in newsrooms prompted a strike in 1980 by 2124 AJA members across Australia. The strike lasted five weeks but no newspapers ceased publication. Issues of the Clarion were produced in each state. The strike ended when nationwide union meetings voted to accept a considerably smaller VDT allowance. The ability of managements to continue publishing greatly reduced the impact of strike action and, since the 1980 VDT walkout, snap strikes have been used. In 1991, News Limited journalists staged a 24-hour strike over job cuts. In the same year, NSW journalists had to decide between their role as ‘outsiders/observers’ or as trade unionists during a general strike. They voted 772 to 573 to join the strike. The trend to snap strikes continued after the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance took over representation of journalists from 1992. That year, Fairfax journalists struck for 24 hours to protest sackings and ABC journalists staged a 24-hour strike after current affairs reporters were put in charge of news coverage of the US election. In 1994, News Limited printers and journalists held a nationwide strike over new technology and wages. In 1998, strikes were held at Victorian regional newspapers owned by

Leader Community Newspapers, to protest the publication of a column by Premier Jeff Kennett. Journalists were among 5400 ABC staff who walked off the job in 1996 to protest government cuts to public broadcasting. During the 24-hour strike, ABC Radio stations played continuous music, and evening news and current affairs programs were replaced. Two weeks later, evening television news was cancelled at SBS after a snap strike was called over the cuts. In 2004, ABC journalists in Victoria and South Australia joined a one-day strike protesting plans to centralise sports news coverage in Sydney. Two years later, a 24-hour nationwide strike over pay and conditions again disrupted news and current affairs programming. Since 2000, staff at Fairfax newspapers have been involved in four major strike campaigns. The first, in 2000, followed a deadlocked pay dispute and journalist concerns over falling editorial standards. Journalists held rolling strikes, prompting a lockout by Fairfax management. Continued concerns over staff cuts and quality led to a brief strike in Sydney in 2007. The following year, plans to axe 5 per cent of the workforce prompted a four-day strike and pickets in four cities. In 2011, journalists threatened strike action when Fairfax Media announced it would outsource sub-editing. In 2012, sub-editing staff cuts and plans to relocate production of some regional titles to New Zealand sparked a 36hour walkout by 800 journalists in Melbourne, Canberra, Wollongong, Sydney and Newcastle. REFs: J. Hagan, Printers and Politics (1966); C.J. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist (1985). MARGARET VAN HEEKEREN

STU D EN T N EW SP AP ER S Student publications in Australia are a soapbox from which young adults find their voice, values and occupation. This often raw student media has fostered a strong tradition, passion and community of emerging journalists and content makers. Typically independent of the university to which they are connected, they tend to be partially or fully funded through a student representative body such as a student union or guild. Editors are elected by the student body each year, and hire unelected staff as sub-editors, contributors and artists to aid in the production of the newspaper or magazine. Although editors receive little or no pay, and their publications have often been embroiled in controversy, these papers and magazines remain an integral part of campus culture and a launching pad for passionate and talented individuals. They take advantage of their autonomy and act as watchdog over their university community, often to the ire of university managements. The first student magazine, Hermes, came into being in July 1886 due to the initiative and institutional loyalty of two University of Sydney

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student newspapers undergraduates, Sydney Thompson and George Barbour. It has continued, focusing more on literary matters and with varying frequency, into the 21st century. In 1929, Honi Soit became the official organ of the Sydney University Undergraduates’ Association, and the two publications run in parallel. In 1927, the Sports Union established the Melbourne University Magazine ‘to record the doings of all sides of university life’. It continued until 1979, but became more specialised after the launch of Farrago in 1925—the same year the University of Melbourne’s Labour Club was founded. Student newspapers reflected the ideological turbulence of these years, centred particularly on the Spanish Civil War and debates about censorship. The Queensland University Magazine appeared soon after the university’s establishment in 1910, changing its name in 1921 to Galmahra. It was published three times per year until 1932, and annually between 1933 and 1950. A weekly, Semper Floreat, appeared in 1932. Whack-ho, a book of student songs, jokes and comments on lecturing staff, first appeared in 1935 and at subsequent Commemoration Day ceremonies. At the University of Adelaide, the Varsity Ragge (1928–31) was succeeded by On Dit in 1932; a one-off issue of the Ragge in 1934 attempted to compete with the interloper. In 1936, On Dit’s campaign for a student president of the Adelaide University Union was successful. The University of Western Australia’s Pelican began in 1929 as a weekly current affairs broadsheet, and evolved into a monthly newspaper. A decision by the Guild of Undergraduates to revive student processions and stunts led to the publication of a satirical newspaper, SrussSruss, in September 1931. The material was condemned as obscene on the front page of the Sunday Times. The guild published another edition in 1932, laying the foundations for PROSH’s tradition of satire and smut. What became Togatus was launched at the University of Tasmania in 1931. At their inception, student publications were typically two to four page broadsheet publications published weekly during the academic year. Some stopped printing during World War II due to newsprint restrictions, and then returned in tabloid format. These chronicles of campus life created a training ground for journalists, writers, artists and politicians, including Cyril Pearl, Alan Moorehead, Donald Horne, Brian Fitzpatrick, Jack Linsday, P.R. Stephensen, Max Harris and L.F. Crisp. With the founding of new universities after the war came publications including Woroni (Australian National University, 1950), Tharunka (NSW Institute of Technology/ University of New South Wales, 1953), Opus (University of Newcastle, 1954), Lot’s Wife (Monash Universi-

ty, 1964), Rabelais (La Trobe University, 1967), Unit (Queensland University of Technology, 1967) and Arena (Macquarie University, 1968). At the University of New South Wales in the early 1960s, Tharunka was the mouthpiece—and weapon—of the new Faculty of Arts. In 1961, the newspaper demanded that the vice-chancellor resign and that the university be the subject of a royal commission; this was too much for the Student Union itself and the issue was suppressed. University management was bombarded by parents—especially fathers protective of their student daughters—concerned about sexual and blasphemous content. With increasing student activism centred on the Vietnam War, apartheid, women’s liberation, gay rights, Aboriginal land rights, nuclear energy, the environment and Watergate, many student newspapers were radicalised. On 14 March 1968, On Dit brought out a special orientation issue supporting a large student demonstration against the Playford Coalition government’s gerrymander. The editorial on 22 March, flanked by an article by Professor W.G.K. Duncan on ‘Democracy’, was devoted to the alleged torture of a Vietnamese girl. Another special issue, on 17 June, centred on Australia’s treatment of Aborigines. In Melbourne, ASIO spies were said to congregate around the office of Lot’s Wife. The newspaper’s radical influence spread beyond Monash University. In 1970, conservative Catholic and other Christian students at Monash countered with Wot’s Wife. That year, the Australian Union of Students (AUS) was formed, signalling a greater commitment to unified student representation and activism. During this period, as student newspapers increased in size and therefore workload, editors were paid a small allowance or honorarium. By the early 1970s, this meant a tabloid size publication for most student publications, with an active print run of 4000 to 8000 copies. The shift from hot-metal typesetting to web offset transformed student publications and opened the floodgates to last-minute paste-ups to fool censors. At Flinders University the Empire Times, the only student newspaper in the country to own its own printing press, was launched in 1969. Extracts were read out in parliament, with politicians describing it as ‘pure pornography’, part of ‘an evil in our society’. As the 1970s advanced, however, some of the fervour of Australia’s student newspapers subsided. By May 1976, Semper Floreat was inviting contributions and reminiscences from the heroic student radicals of the earlier years, under the heading ‘The Rise and Fall of Student Consciousness’. In the 1980s, many university campuses saw the student left under assault from the right, with some student politicians and universities looking to minimise unfavourable coverage of

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suburban newspapers student-run and university-run ventures. The AUS collapsed in 1984 and was replaced by the National Union of Students (NUS). The 1990s saw a change in production with the introduction of desktop publishing. The technology was evolving from the arduous process of Stanley-knife layout stuck together with a waxing machine to Macintosh publishing. Layout and graphic design gained momentum and student media shifted once more, visually, into a do-it-yourself collage style. The uptake of desktop publishing and all that it promised did not slow the values of student publications. A prime example occurred at the University of Adelaide. In March 1991, Maria O’Brien wrote a controversial piece for On Dit about the severe misogyny she had experienced during two years at St Mark’s College. In September, a 21-year-old female student at the residential college was assaulted and murdered by one of the male students. The tragic episode pointed to the forthrightness of both the author and publisher of the On Dit article. Perhaps the most referenced controversy in recent years occurred in 1995, when Rabelais published an article entitled ‘The Art of Shoplifting’. There was a public outcry, with representatives of major retail chains and local police condemning the publication. The editors defended and explained the article in terms of raising issues about the pattern of wealth distribution in Australian society, questioning the sanctity of private property, and highlighting the inadequacy of financial support for students. The Rabelais editors were prosecuted for ignoring a ban on publication issued by Victoria’s Chief Censor. In a show of solidarity, seven other student publications reprinted the article: Arena, Honi Soit, Semper Floreat, Vertigo (University of Technology, Sydney), Catalyst (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), No Name (Victoria University of Technology) and Metior (Murdoch University). The authorities did not target the editors of these newspapers, and charges against the editors of Rabelais were ultimately dropped. Notable editors of student newspapers after the war included Bob Ellis, Clive James, Richard Walsh and Laurie Oakes (Honi Soit); Geoffrey Blainey, Lindsay Tanner and Christos Tsiolkas (Farrago); Michael Leunig (Lot’s Wife); Humphrey McQueen and Julianne Schultz (Semper Floreat); John Bannon, Julian Disney, David Penberthy and Nick Xenophon (On Dit); and Kate Ellis (Empire Times). As the 20th century drew to a close, the internet made production faster and easier, but also created a more chaotic environment. Technological changes enabled some publications to move online and abandon publishing in print. When Voluntary Student Unionism was introduced by the Howard Coaltion government in 2006, student publications were starved of

funding from student fees. In 2007, Express Media, designed to provide opportunities for young people in writing and media, began to host an annual conference, NEWS (National Editors Workshop and Skillshare), in Melbourne. It continues to provide the only sustained support for student editors. REF: http://expressmedia.org.au/express_media/resources-help-support/student-media/. BRIDGET GRIFFEN-FOLEY and STEPHANIE WALKER

S UBS CRIPT ION T E L E V IS ION see pay television

SU B U R B AN N EW SP AP ER S Suburban newspapers are the free weekly publications delivered to letterboxes throughout the suburbs of Australian cities. They are distinct from regional and rural publications serving a particular town or location, such as the dailies in Newcastle, Wollongong, Albury, Geelong, Cairns, Townsville and Launceston, and regionals such as the Northern Star (New South Wales), the Wimmera Mail-Times (Victoria) and the Geraldton Guardian (Western Australia). Suburban newspapers have a diverse history and have provided training for many significant journalism careers. Taken together, suburban newspapers have a weekly readership of more than eight million. But there has been a determined move towards the term ‘community newspapers’ to denote a more inclusive approach to the papers’ readership and to distance the industry from the pejorative implications of ‘suburban’. As Michael O’Connor wrote of the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, which made its first appearance in 1803: ‘The newspaper was written for a small number of people living together in a tiny place.’ Contemporary suburban newspapers fill much the same role. While this observation is true of most newspapers around the globe, the Australian example is somewhat distinct: the growth of our major cities, with their extensive suburban hinterlands that boomed during the 1960s and the vast distances between each city, has created a newspaper industry that is not only predominantly city-centric (rather than national), but also offers significant scope for suburban newspapers to establish a durable foothold in those communities. There is an argument that modern Australian newspapers are actually built on the 19thcentury foundation of what effectively were suburban titles, such as the Sydney Gazette and the Port Phillip Herald. The reality is that the early colonial newspapers reflected their settlements’ concerns, activities and interests in a way that contemporary suburban newspapers strive to emulate. They also contained significant

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suburban newspapers advertising content, reflecting the rise of the business class around the young cities. According to Community Newspapers of Australia (CNA), suburban newspapers started in 1843 with the Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland Advertiser in New South Wales. This publication is seen as the first iteration of the Cumberland-Courier newspaper group (now NewsLocal), which produces 22 suburban titles for News Corp Australia across Sydney. The first Victorian suburban publication was the Williamstown Chronicle in 1854, followed by the Brighton Southern Cross and the Footscray Advertiser. The Parramatta and Williamstown papers both emerged from discrete communities built around thriving ports and settlements, separate from the main settlements in Sydney and Melbourne. The Williamstown Chronicle was established by J.B. Stephens, who sold it to Robert Neale and his two sons. The paper survived until 1964. The important distinction between the suburban newspapers of the 19th century and their free contemporaries is that the first suburban titles came at a price, either a penny or halfpenny. The pricing model remained popular until some owners started to break away and establish free papers in the 1920s. The suburbans were caught between the two war-induced newsprint shortages and slowly embraced the free model. By the 1960s, most suburban newspapers were free and hand-delivered to letterboxes throughout the Australian suburbs. This became a significant point of difference to the paid-for metropolitan dailies, but it also planted the seed of what became a resilient image of ‘free’ being interchangeable with a lack of quality—both in the news content of the publications and their design, which was often dictated by the demands of advertisers. This commercial imperative was seen as a potential taint on the independence and reliability of the news, especially when a suburban’s advertiser was the subject of a news story. One of the key developments in helping to deal with such suggestions was the steady growth in professionalism of the industry, boosted by the interests of the Murdoch, Fairfax and Packer families. In the years after World War II, suburban newspapers became more disparate and titles were brought together in uneasy commercial alliances. Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Cumberland Newspapers chain in 1960 signalled his first major investment in suburban newspapers and reshaped the suburban landscape. Alarmed, the Packers and the Fairfaxes responded by forming a joint venture, Suburban Publications Pty Ltd. Eventually, the two ‘competing’ companies reached a territorial agreement, carving up the Sydney suburban market. John Fairfax & Sons acquired the Packer stake in 1985; with the purchase of the Herald and Weekly Times in 1987, Murdoch gained control of the Leader suburban newspapers chain that started with

one newspaper in 1888, along with Messenger Newspapers (est. 1951) in Adelaide and Quest Suburban Newspapers (est. 1985) in Brisbane. The end result has been that News Corp Australia, through its network of state-based community newspaper subsidiaries, produces free tabloid papers in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide and the Northern Territory. In a rare example of commercial bipartisanship, the Community Newspaper Group is owned jointly by News Corp Australia and Seven West Media, which also publishes the West Australian. Fairfax retains its strength in Melbourne and Sydney, but News Corp Australia still outnumbers its main print rival in those markets. The Australian Suburban Newspapers Association was formed in 1968; it became CNA in 2002. The absorption of most suburban newspaper titles among the larger metropolitan media companies—News Corp Australia, Fairfax Media and Australian Consolidated Press—has added to the debate about the ownership dominance of News Corp Australia in particular, with the company controlling more than 100 suburban titles across the nation in addition to its metropolitan newspapers and pay television interests. Such market dominance has not extinguished the growth of independent local newspapers, some of which have managed to continue with a small readership sustained by generous local businesses and a dedicated editor. International research suggests that the future of local content—online and in print—is strong, and more opportunities for locals to contribute as citizen journalists providing words, pictures or video will help to nourish the existence of suburban publications. Continued immigration and the steady expansion of Australia’s cities have given suburban newspapers greater readership opportunities, with new titles established between 1990 and 2005 to meet the demand in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. A critical element in this was a thriving real estate market, which has helped to underpin the advertising dollars that have sustained many of the suburban titles. The battle for this lucrative advertising market led to the proliferation of competition within suburban newspapers, creating markets where up to three local papers were covering one suburban area— usually a local government municipality. This made the suburban newspaper environment more challenging and robust for journalists and advertisers than the metropolitan newspaper markets, where only one morning paper has existed in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth for the last two decades. Strong, independent suburban newspaper chains continue to exist: Perth Suburban Newspapers, proclaiming its proud independence, publishes five titles across Perth and

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Fremantle; the 94-year-old Torch Publishing has three titles based out of its CanterburyBankstown headquarters in Sydney; and the Star News Group publishes 27 titles in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. Standalone publications, such as the South Sydney Herald, which was founded by local Trevor Davies and is now published by the South Sydney Uniting Church with a monthly circulation of 20,000, deserves to be considered alongside these publications. While metropolitan daily readership figures continue to decline, the suburban decline generally is far smaller and the core readership seems more resilient. Print media sales figures released in August 2013 revealed a decline of 10.9 per cent nationally in sales year-on-year for metropolitan and national papers. It was a sobering figure, but the community newspaper sector—which measures its free products on readership statistics—was proving more resilient, with industry estimates of falls of less than 5 per cent. However, the business model of suburban newspapers is still precarious. Broader economic circumstances have a direct impact on advertising revenue—particularly real estate—and the suburban newspaper networks are fighting for what appears to a slowly dwindling revenue basis. Unlike the metropolitan dailies, the suburbans do not have the luxury of a cover price to offset some of those issues. Similarly, suburban housing growth has continued, but the capacity for publishers to print more papers—it is not commercially feasible in some instances—and the difficulty of finding people to deliver papers to many of the new estates compromises the potential to expand readership. Inevitably, the focus of suburban newspapers’ efforts is now on building an online audience that can overcome such pressures. Early indications are that many suburban readers are keen to read, and more importantly contribute to, their local news websites. This suggests that the concepts of ‘citizen journalism’ and ‘hyper-local’ may find their expression through the readership of Australia’s suburban newspapers. Yet this does not mean it will be followed by a similar boom in local online advertising support. In this, suburban newspapers are confronting their own version of the commercial threat to their business model. REFs: G. Barila, ‘Hyperlocal: Really, Really Local’, in Life in The Clickstream (2010); N. Richardson, ‘The Virtues of Localism in the Digital Age’, in M. Ricketson (ed.), Australian Journalism Today (2012); Local Newspapers Report (2012), http://www.newspaperworks.com.au. NICK RICHARDSON

SUICI D E , R E P O R TI N G O F see health and medical

reporting

SU N (SYD N EY) The Sun was a Sydney afternoon newspaper, published from 1910 to 1988. On 1 December 1887, the Australian Star commenced in opposition to the Evening News. The only Sydney newspaper to support protectionism, the Star launched a Sunday edition, the Sunday Sun, from 5 April 1903. The Star became tabloid size from March 1909 but reverted to broadsheet from January 1910. Struggling for sales and revenue, the Star, together with the Sunday Sun, was taken over by (Sir) Hugh Denison. With a talented staff headed by Montague Grover, the Sun replaced the Star from 1 July 1910. With its Sunday edition, the Sun claimed to be ‘The only daily paper in Australasia’. The motto of ‘Above all for Australia’ lasted until 1 March 1967. From 1912, it was the first Australian paper to buy cable news from the London Times. Although the Sun was not, as is often claimed, the first newspaper in Australia to regularly place news on the front page, it had a striking layout. It gave considerable space to news of crime and ‘human interest’, and the 16-page Saturday issue was packed with entertainment. Circulation grew rapidly: from 15,000 in 1910 to 207,000 in 1928. An attempt at expansion to Melbourne in 1922 ended with sale of the Sun News-Pictorial and the Evening Sun to the Herald and Weekly Times in 1925; the Evening Sun was closed. In March 1931, Sydney’s Evening News (now under the same ownership) also closed, making the Sun as Sydney’s sole afternoon paper, and something of a cash cow. Denison’s Associated Newspapers Ltd made strenuous efforts to ensure this continued, such as paying the Packer family company not to publish a competitor in 1932. On Denison’s death in 1940, Sir John Butters became chairman. Editorially, the Sun almost always supported conservative political views. On 17  November 1947, it became a tabloid. In August 1953, John Fairfax & Sons acquired a substantial interest in Associated Newspapers. Two months later, the Sunday Sun and Fairfax’s struggling Sunday Herald were merged to form the Sun-Herald. In 1956, Fairfax obtained full ownership of Associated Newspapers. In May 1941, the Sun had lost its Sydney afternoon monopoly with Ezra Norton’s launch of the Daily Mirror. From then until 1988, there was strong competition. Both titles were notorious for screaming headlines and sensationalism to attract readers. The two papers would often change stories between editions to outdo each other. The Sun shifted downmarket, but never as much as the Mirror. John Fairfax & Sons acquired the Mirror in 1958, but did not incorporate it into the Sun. In 1960, the company sold the Mirror to Rupert Murdoch. Until the mid-1970s, circulation was about even, but then the Mirror drew ahead.

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By the 1980s, the Sun was losing money. However, Fairfax was reluctant to close it, as this would concede victory to the Mirror. In 1984, the Sun was selling 347,000 daily compared to the Mirror’s 361,000. On 14 March 1988, in the aftermath of Warwick Fairfax Junior’s failed attempt to privatise the company, the Sun was closed. According to the John Fairfax Group, it was losing $20 million annually. REFs: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981); R.B. Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales 1803–1902 (1976). VICTOR ISAACS

SUN NEW S-PI CTORIAL The Sun News-Pictorial was a morning daily tabloid newspaper begun in Melbourne in 1922 and closed in 1990, when it merged with the broadsheet Herald to form the Herald Sun. Part of the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), it achieved the largest circulation of any Australian newspaper. The Sun News-Pictorial was the idea of newspaperman Montague MacGregor ‘Monty’ Grover (1870–1943), who edited (Sir) Hugh Denison’s successful Sydney afternoon newspaper, the Sun, introducing brisk news reports and features like crosswords and cartoons. Denison appointed Grover in 1922 to edit a new paper, the Evening Sun, to challenge the Melbourne Herald, edited by (Sir) Keith Murdoch. Blocked by a no-competition agreement with six months to run, Grover proposed Australia’s first pictorial morning daily tabloid newspaper. The first issue was published on 11 September 1922, with Grover as editor. The Evening Sun followed, but heavy losses saw both papers sold to the HWT in 1925. The HWT closed the Evening Sun but retained the morning paper with its winning formula: each day’s best photography on the front, back and centre pages, bright news copy, regular features, sport and cartoons. Former chief of staff of the Argus, (Sir) Lloyd Dumas, became editor. Sydney Deamer, E.G. Bonney and cartoonist Jim Bancks moved to the Sun News-Pictorial. Grover was offered the supervision of HWT magazines but drifted away. Former London Daily Mail pictorial editor Arthur Baker worked closely with Sun News-Pictorial editors Ralph Simmonds (from 1927) and George Taylor (from 1931) in the choice and presentation of photographs. By 1933, with a circulation of 172,000, the Sun News-Pictorial was Australia’s largest selling daily. Nothing could curtail its progress. Much credit for the Sun News-Pictorial’s success in these years should go to its editor from 1946, J.C. ‘Jack’ Waters, a gregarious newspaper man who encouraged new writers, succinct copy, quality photography and comic strip artists like Stan Cross. Waters was close to managing editor

and later HWT chairman (Sir) John Williams after Murdoch’s death in 1952. Williams liked his papers pitched to a definable sample of the market—a man and his wife in their early thirties with two kids at school, paying off a house and a Holden car in a suburb like Moorabbin. Waters instructed Sun News-Pictorial journalists to only use words that a 14-year-old could understand. Melbourne’s suburban sprawl in these years helped fuel circulation, but the Sun News-Pictorial sold extensively into provincial and country Victoria as well. By the end of 1952, it had sales of more than 405,000—by far the largest of any daily morning Australian newspaper. As late as 1954, with 40 pages, it was still equal with the Herald but by 1956 the Sun News-Pictorial had taken the lead. With newsprint now freely available, editors drew on American tabloid journalism and improved news coverage, adding more pictures and sections, including ‘Young Sun’, women’s pages and motoring. The closure of the Argus in 1957 saw another circulation spurt. With a growing emphasis on sport—especially VFL—and families, the Sun News-Pictorial’s visual appeal suited the new consumer age of television. Sun News-Pictorial journalists, now with by-lines and appearing on Herald Sun Television (HSV7), became household names: Alan Trengove, Lyle Turnbull, foreign affairs commentator Douglas Wilkie, sports journalist (and later editor) Harry Gordon, football writer Lou Richards, women’s pages writer Pat Jarrett and columnist Keith Dunstan. The low cover price of four cents, maintained until 1969, built circulation and aided advertising. Active public contact was maintained through sponsored promotions and charity events: the Sun Home Show, the Sun Aria and the Sun Moomba Queen. Even with the price rises that followed, the Sun News-Pictorial’s readership proved loyal. Under Gordon’s editorship from 1968, circulation increased, with special sections on property and used cars expanding. Circulation peaked in 1971 at 650,000 copies a day. However, inflation saw the Sun News-Pictorial lose about 4500 buyers each year over the next five years. The mid-1987 takeover of the HWT by Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited led to an effort to lift circulation, along with a further concentration on pictures, extended news coverage, special events, leisure, sport and the Saturday magazine. By 1988, circulation was 590,000. The problem was not the Sun News-Pictorial, but its broadsheet afternoon stablemate, the Herald. In May 1989, Rupert Murdoch commenced the Sunday Sun News-Pictorial and the Sunday Herald. Production of the two papers further burdened the HWT presses. Murdoch’s response was to merge the Sun News-Pictorial and the Herald, on 8 October 1990, into ‘Victoria’s first 24-hour newspaper’, the Herald-Sun (the hyphen was dropped in 1993).

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REFs: M. Cannon (ed.), Hold Page One (1993); Let’s Go To Press (1996 HWT Resource Document). DAVID DUNSTAN

S U N DAY MAI L ( A DE LAIDE) The Sunday Mail was originally titled the Mail because at the time of its launch it was unlawful in South Australia to publish a newspaper on the Sabbath. For its first 60 years, the newspaper carried a Saturday dateline, even after it changed its name to the S.A. Sunday Mail in 1954 and then to the Sunday Mail in 1955. The Mail Newspapers Ltd was established in 1911 to publish three weekly titles in South Australia: the Sporting Mail (1912–14), which was published on Thursdays primarily to provide betting information for Saturday’s races; the Saturday Mail (1912–17), published to preview weekend sporting events; and the Mail, which carried extensive sporting results. The Mail’s first edition was available by 7 p.m. on Saturdays and its final edition, labelled ‘Midnight’, was distributed before Sunday began. In its first edition on 4 May 1912, an article attributed to the manager and probably written by foundation proprietor Clarence Moody, a journalist and champion lawn bowler, addressed ‘the Sabbath aspect’: ‘to print a paper which a large section of the community may read with profit and without harm on the first day of the week … we are publishing a Sunday paper; but it is being done in Adelaide with limitations which do not apply in other states … The object … is to go to press sufficiently early on Saturday night to enable the runners to deliver the paper to householders by midnight.’ The Mail’s early years were a struggle. The sporting and Saturday editions had been discontinued by the end of World War I, and ownership changed several times before the title was purchased by the fledgling News Limited in 1923. Over the next 30 years, the Mail built a strong readership based on sporting results and family reading. Under the editorship of George Brickhill, the Mail focused on football and horse racing, with prominent sportsmen contributing often-controversial articles. To balance its concentration on sport, the Mail also gave considerable space to its women’s pages and, with future readers in mind, established a children’s section in 1921, which became known to generations as ‘Possum’s Pages’. Originally titled ‘Mate’s Own Corner’, it featured items for ‘clubmates’ written by ‘Possum’. In 1924, May Gibbs’ gumnut babies, Bib and Bub, were featured in the first comics pages in the Mail, followed in 1932 by Jimmy Bancks’ ‘Ginger Meggs’. In 1954, the Sunday Mail was at the centre of a bitter battle between News Limited and its morning rival publisher, Advertiser Newspapers Ltd. Melbourne’s Herald and Weekly Times, under Sir Keith Murdoch, had taken a stake in the Adelaide Advertiser in 1931, and

when Sir Keith died in 1952, he also owned a controlling interest in News Limited that passed to his son, Rupert. In an effort to gain control of the lucrative Sunday market, including large revenue streams from real estate advertising, the Advertiser launched a Sunday edition in 1953. In response, Rupert Murdoch made an audacious bid to buy Advertiser Newspapers for £14 million. After two years, the Sunday Advertiser closed its Sunday edition in return for halfownership of the Sunday Mail—a situation that continued until Rupert Murdoch took over the HWT in 1987, thereby achieving full ownership of the title. By 1972, public acceptance of Sunday as a day of leisure rather than strict religious observance led to the Sunday Mail’s dateline being changed from Saturday to Sunday, even though the first edition still comes off the presses before 6 p.m. on Saturdays. The Mail’s circulation in 1912 was 15,000. By the early 1960s, it had passed 200,000, and it reached a peak of more than 320,000 in the 1990s. In 2013, not long after celebrating the Mail’s centenary, the Sunday Mail’s circulation was 246,007. REF: http://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page. cfm?c=2662. MARK DAY

SU N D AY N EW SP AP ER S The distinctiveness of the Australian Sunday newspaper lies in its relative recency. With few exceptions, all the Sunday newspapers circulating in 2014 dated from the 20th century or later. The development of the Sunday press can be divided into five periods: colonial influence overlaid by Sabbatarianism (1880s–1920s); the emergence of the first competitive commercial papers (1920s–1940s); modernisation (1950s–1970s); heightened corporate competition (1970s–1980s); and consolidation and oligopolisation (since the mid-1980s). Although, as a consequence of colonialism, the development of the Australian press as a whole was influenced by the parallel situation in Britain, this was less the case with Sunday newspapers. Popular Sunday titles began appearing in Britain from the 1840s. They may have been tolerated because they provided a distraction from radical politics for the working class. However, a much stricter adherence to Sunday observance laws by individual states in Australia hindered the emergence of local titles. Furthermore, the widely dispersed Australian population made weekly editions (summaries) of metropolitan daily papers more viable until the development of the railways ensured more prompt mail deliveries. Thus the first period of the development of Sunday newspapers in Australia was one of colonial influence, mitigated by Sabbatarianism. A limited number of titles (Sydney’s Sunday Times,

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sunday newspapers the Sunday News and Truth, and Perth’s Sunday Times and Sunday Chronicle) began to circulate in the 1880s and 1890s. In Victoria, editions published up to midnight on a Saturday acted as a substitute. An attempt to publish a Sunday Times in Melbourne in the 1880s drew an instant negative response from the state government. At the beginning of the 20th century, Truth editions circulated in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart, establishing a national ‘network’ that was often in competition with state papers, and a precedent for interstate ownership that later came to characterise the oligopolisation of the Australian media as a whole. This gave way to a second period, during the inter-war years, of a more competitive market in Sunday titles across the country. A number of new titles were published, including the Sunday News (1919), the Sunday Pictorial (1929), the Sunday Guardian (1929) and the Sunday Telegraph (1939) in Sydney, and the Sunday Mail (1923) in Brisbane. Attempts were made to establish Sunday papers in provincial cities; these included the Newcastle Sunday Mirror (1959–61), which then became part of Sydney’s Sunday Mirror. Closures (of the Sunday News, the Sunday Times, the Sunday Pictorial and the Sunday Guardian) were almost as typical of the period as launches. After something of a hiatus during World War II, a period of modernisation followed, coinciding with the repeal of Sunday observance laws in most states for shops (1966), cinemas and sport (1967), and newspapers (1969). This was also the period when Australia’s major newspaper groups came to dominate the Sunday market. Consolidated Press Ltd launched the Sunday Telegraph in 1939, while Fairfax merged its fledgling Sunday Herald (est. 1949) with its recent acquisition, the Sunday Sun (est. 1903), to form the Sun-Herald in 1953. A second Adelaide title, the Sunday Advertiser, was launched in 1953 but merged with News Limited’s Sunday Mail just two years later. By the mid-1950s, half of the Sunday newspapers existing in the second decade of the 21st century had been established. Truth became the Sydney Sunday Mirror in 1958, passing into the hands of Fairfax and then News Limited. Corporate competition intensified in the 1970s. This was exemplified by developments in Melbourne, where Sunday newspapers were illegal. Agitation to permit Sunday newspapers had been made from the later 19th century. As late as 1938, Melbourne on Sunday was ridiculed by a Protestant clergyman as ‘the quietest city in the Empire’. David Syme’s Newsday and the Herald and Weekly Times’ Sunday Sun attempted Sunday publication in 1969; however, these projects were abandoned after rejection of the proprietors’ wage terms by printing unions. (Newsday briefly appeared as an afternoon newspaper instead.) Melbourne’s first actual Sunday paper, the Sunday Observer, appeared

in 1969; it was followed by a joint Syme–HWT venture, the Sunday Press, in 1973. Not surprisingly, Sunday papers in Melbourne had a somewhat chequered existence: the Sunday Observer circulated from 1969 to 1971, then re-emerged (1973–89). The Sunday News and the Sunday Review were short-lived ventures of the 1970s. Sunday, a successor to the Sunday Mirror, closed in 1979. The Sunday Press, a joint venture of the Age and the Herald, ran from 1973 to 1989. The most celebrated but quickly aborted venture was News Limited’s Sunday Australian (1971–72), which was merged with the Sunday Telegraph when the latter was acquired by the company. By the 1980s, ownership of the Sunday press, with the exception of two titles—Melbourne’s Sunday Observer and Perth’s Sunday Independent—was concentrated in three corporations: Fairfax, News Limited and the HWT. Further closures followed, particularly after 1987, described by media historian Bridget Griffen-Foley as ‘the worst period of newspaper closures ever experienced in Australia’, as the oligopoly of owners that had begun to form 60 years earlier looked to consolidate. The chief action was News Limited’s takeover of HWT. These factors combined to produce what has been termed ‘the battle of Sunday’ and the ‘Sunday newspaper wars’ in Melbourne. Intended to prevent successful start-ups by other companies, the Sunday Press was shut down in 1989—just after the closure of the Sunday Observer. Three new Melbourne Sunday titles appeared more or less simultaneously: News Limited’s Sunday Herald and Sunday Sun News-Pictorial and Fairfax’s Sunday Age. In 1991, the two News Limited titles were merged to form the Sunday Herald-Sun. At the same time, closures followed as News and Fairfax rationalised their operations into an effective duopoly. Fairfax’s National Times on Sunday lasted from 1986 until 1988, and News’s Sunday Sun, which had succeeded Brisbane’s Sunday Truth in 1971, ceased publication in 1992. However, other titles were established as conglomerates looked to extend their reach: a Sunday edition of the Canberra Times (1978), and the Sunday Tasmanian and the Sunday Territorian (both in 1984). Between October 1984 and June 1985, there were two Sunday Terroritorians; the Murdoch one still survives. The creation of new titles continued into the 21st century as attempts were made particularly to introduce regional Sunday papers in places such as Geelong (News Limited), Launceston and Dubbo (both Fairfax). The largely regional APN News and Media participated with the Sunshine Coast Sunday (1992– ) and Ipswich on Sunday (est. 2001). Nonetheless, by 2014 News was publishing Sunday papers in every state and territory, except the ACT, and Fairfax/Rural Press in three, accounting together for every title in capital

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cities, with direct competition in only Sydney and Melbourne. The major criticism of this historical trajectory has been that it has restricted both the numbers of newspapers in circulation, and diversity and pluralism. In 2006, 65.5 per cent of Australians over the age of 15 read a Sunday paper, compared with 54.6 per cent reading daily (Monday to Friday) editions and 63.5 per cent Saturday editions. However, these figures appear to be in secular decline, and by the end of 2011 every title except the Sunday Age had recorded circulation losses. REFs: S. Foley, ‘The Battle of Sunday’, Age, 16 August 2009; P. Gatenby, ‘The Australian Newspaper Plan (ANPlan)’ (conference paper, 2008); R. Tiffen, ‘Changes in Australian Newspapers, 1956–2006’ (conference paper, 2009). MICHAEL BROMLEY

S U N DAY TI MES ( PE R TH) By the time Rupert Murdoch purchased a controlling interest in the Perth Sunday Times in 1954—his first major acquisition after inheriting the Adelaide News—it was a profitable, respected newspaper with a reputation for crusading journalism. The West Australian Sunday Times: A Journal for the People was launched on 19 December 1897 and became the first regularly available Sunday newspaper produced in Western Australia. It continues in the 21st century as the West’s largest statewide weekly publication. The newspaper was born out of the dissident politics of the Kalgoorlie gold rush of the 1890s. It was established by Frederick Vosper (1869– 1901), a radical journalist from Queensland, and Edward Ellis, the founder of Sydney’s Sunday Times. Vosper assumed full control in 1898, continuing to shape the paper’s crusading for the public good at the same time as being a member of the state’s Legislative Assembly. The paper campaigned on issues such as better care for the mentally ill and women’s suffrage, railed against C.Y. O’Connor’s Goldfields Water Supply Scheme and highlighted pastoralists’ mistreatment of Aborigines. Its journalistic pre-eminence was beyond dispute at the turn of the 20th century, and it is credited as being the driving force behind a period of intense literary activity unrivalled by any era of Western Australia’s press. When Vosper died in 1901, his widow, Venetia, sold the business to James MacCallum Smith and Arthur Reid, owners of Kalgoorlie’s Sun. Under editors such as Andrée Hayward and Alfred Chandler, the pursuit to uncover scandal and corruption was stepped up and the paper (known simply as the Sunday Times from 1902) was relentless in spearheading the public campaign for secession from the Commonwealth. The newspaper was imbued with a liberal democratic spirit through stories, verse, sketches and reminiscences. The most prolific

contributor was Edwin Murphy (‘Dryblower’), whose acerbic, satirical verse praised workers and attacked their exploitation. MacCallum Smith consolidated the business and sustained it through World War I and the Great Depression, moderating its challenging but admired campaigning style, ensuring the content was strong on rural, women’s and motoring news, and taking the paper to new levels of popularity and prestige. Also a member of the Legislative Assembly, he sold out in 1935 to Western Press Limited owners John J. Simons and Victor Courtney, with Courtney eventually becoming managing editor and chairman. The pair shepherded it though the war years and editor Frank Davidson converted it to tabloid, adopting a more modern editorial style but retaining the Vosper legacy to champion the masses. In 1954, Rupert Murdoch gained control of Western Press to become the paper’s fourth owner. The Sunday Times continues to operate from its landmark Stirling Street premises. Its daily news website, PerthNow, launched in 2006, made it one of the first metropolitan papers to go online; however, the migration of classified advertising to the internet challenged its revenue base. The Sunday Times (with a circulation of 250,290 in 2013) remains a media institution in Western Australia. REF: F. Dunn, A Century of Sundays (1997). DAVID MAGUIRE

SYD N EY G AZETTE AN D N EW SO U TH WALES AD VER TISER Australia’s earliest newspaper, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, was first published on 5 March 1803, produced and printed by transported convict George Howe. For almost 20 years, the Sydney Gazette was the only newspaper in the colony of New South Wales. It was effectively a government gazette, although Howe was given permission to solicit advertisements and collect subscriptions, as well as inserting items of news. Only 100 copies of the first issue were published, at a time when the population of the colony was about 7000, with fewer than 1000 free settlers. Initially the newspaper consisted of four small, three-column pages of ‘portfolio’ size, the most that Howe could manage with a small hand press and limited supply of worn type. As well as shipping and court news, there were agricultural reports, religious homilies, literary extracts and even original poetry written by Howe himself. Even so, some of Howe’s readers found the Sydney Gazette rather dull, and it was constrained by his subservient relationship with the authoritarian colonial government. By the early 1820s, the newspaper’s production had grown to 300 or 400 copies.

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The Howe family continued to run the newspaper, with Robert Howe becoming Government Printer on his father’s death in 1821. Some of the Sydney Gazette office records of this era have survived and, together with the early convict records held in the New South Wales Archives Office, they provide fascinating glimpses of the operation of a successful printing and publishing enterprise, by now located in lower George Street and staffed with a mix of convict and free workers. Surviving subscription lists and newspaper delivery rounds chart the emerging social geography of early Sydney. However, the paper faced serious competition by the second half of the 1820s, with several newspapers vying for subscribers from among well-to-do colonists, together with the advertising revenue they attracted. In 1824, Robert Howe imported a new state-of the-art Columbian press, able to print a large format five-column newspaper. The Sydney Gazette became bi-weekly and, briefly during 1827, even daily—which made it Australia’s first daily newspaper. Appealing to the first ‘native-born’ generation of colonists, Howe adopted the motto ‘Advance Australia!’ and included more local content, employing journalists to research and write it. In 1824, a second newspaper, the Australian, commenced publication, making a strong point of its independence from government control. From that time, colonial newspapers became enmeshed with local politics. In 1829, Robert Howe drowned in Sydney Harbour, and by the early 1830s, his widow, Ann, aligned the Sydney Gazette with the reformist, liberal administration of Governor (Sir) Richard Bourke, antagoising a powerful group of wealthy merchants and landowners who sought to restrict political and civil rights to free settlers. Ann appointed outspoken ticket-of-leave convict, William Angus Watt, as editor. He published a series of articles attacking the treatment of assigned convicts on the pastoral estates of the interior. In the furore that followed, the Gazette changed ownership in 1836, when control passed to wealthy merchant Richard Jones. He appointed Rev. Ralph Mansfield as editor. After a series of short-lived conservative editors, the Sydney Gazette ceased publication on 20 October 1842. Through their pages and business operations, the Sydney Gazette and its contemporaries, such as the Australian, the Sydney Monitor and the Sydney Herald, provide a compelling picture of early colonial society and culture. These first-generation newspapers also provide access to the interior world-views of the earliest newspaper readers in Australia.

SYD N EY M AIL Founded on 7 July 1860 by John Fairfax & Sons as a weekly news summary aimed at both rural and lower income city readers, and issued on a Friday in time for the weekly country mail coaches, the Sydney Mail established a circulation of 10,000 within four years. It evolved to become Australia’s highest circulation weekly newspaper during World War I. In 1870, its plain, imageless, eight-page format, selling for threepence, was strongly challenged by the launch of the Australian Town and Country Journal, which had 32 pages and carried illustrations, for double the price. The following year, in 1871, the Sydney Mail responded by adopting the same format. It became known for the quality of its wood engravings and, along with its competitor, challenged the Illustrated Sydney News at the graphic journalism level. In the late 1880s, the Sydney Mail was at the forefront of the introduction of the photomechanical half-tone process for reproducing photographs in print. It has been claimed have been the first paper to produce a press photograph, ‘The recent railway accident at Young’ (15 September 1888); however, this is incorrect, with the honour going to the Illustrated Sydney News with two portrait photographs, published seven weeks earlier (26 July 1888). In the 1880s, the Sydney Mail began moving towards a magazine format, with a greater emphasis on serialised novels, short stories and essays. In 1882–83, it serialised Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms. In 1912, due to the introduction of a new printing press, the Sydney Mail assumed a new 50-page format, printing on fine art paper and with a coloured cover. The timing was fortuitous, as two years later this format was adapted to it becoming a largely pictorial magazine covering World War I. Circulation peaked in the second half of 1915 at well over 100,000 copies, although this fell to the 50,000s by the end of the war. Circulation was around 30,000 in the 1920s. From around 1921, a Sydney Mail Annual was also published. Then the Great Depression, the need for cost-cutting by the company, planning for the introduction of new presses for the Sydney Morning Herald, a faster distribution network that resulted in daily papers now reaching distant rural centres and the introduction of photographs in the Herald all contributed to the demise of the Sydney Mail. Its last edition appeared on 28 December 1938.

REF: S.J. Blair, ‘Newspapers and their Readers in Early Eastern Australia: The Sydney Gazette and its contemporaries 1803–1842’ (PhD thesis, 1990). SANDY BLAIR

SYD N EY M O R N IN G H ER ALD Australia’s oldest surviving newspaper began as the four-page weekly Sydney Herald on 18 April 1831, founded by William McGarvie, Alfred

REF: G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981). PETER DOWLING

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Ward Stephens and Frederick Michael Stokes under ‘the broad banner of British freedom, protection and law’. Its target readership—the colony’s prosperous upper and middle classes—would also be its advertisers. Its pledge (Alexander Pope’s ‘In moderation placing all my glory’) set it above more strident rivals, while promising to be a watchdog on government. Soon underpinned by a near-monopoly on classified advertising, it was a business model that took the Herald through to the 21st century and the challenge of a world turning away from print. In between, the Herald recorded the growth of a colony of 50,000 Europeans (including 20,000 convicts) into a multicultural nation of about 23 million. For most of that time, it was in the hands of the Fairfax family, beginning with printer, journalist and manager John Fairfax who, with journalist Charles Kemp, bought out Stokes, the last of the founders, on 8 February 1841. By then, the paper was a daily (from 1 October 1840) and the colony’s leading journal with a circulation of 3100. On 1 August 1842, it became the Sydney Morning Herald. A severe depression soon saw off older rivals and it began to be called ‘Granny’, not always with affection. The Herald files are a kaleidoscope of firsthand reporting of news that shook or shaped Australia. The gold rush began with a Herald scoop on 2 May 1851. As a ‘journal of record’, Herald reports on parliament, courts and public meetings sometimes took up two pages. The end of convict transportation—long sought by the Herald—came in 1853, the year John Fairfax became sole proprietor. Under its first official editor, Rev. John West, it pushed for Federation from 1854; support for a republic did not come until 1999. Beginning with the Sudan in 1885, its war correspondents covered all conflicts involving Australians, except World War I (official correspondents only) and Vietnam (to much subsequent criticism). The rise of trade unions and the Labor Party caused concern. Although the conservative Herald insisted it put principles before party, it was not until 1961 that it supported the unsuccessful attempt by federal Labor under Arthur Calwell to oust the Menzies Coalition government. In New South Wales, it was 2003 before Labor was backed. Gold brought a flood of nation-building immigrants, transforming Herald circulation and its ‘rivers of gold’: the classifieds. By century’s end, average daily circulation was pushing 70,000. In 1914, it was 120,000 and on its 100th birthday it was 220,000. News went on page one for the first time on 15 April 1944, and two years later circulation passed 300,000. But it was soon overtaken by (Sir) Frank Packer’s resurgent morning tabloid, the Daily Telegraph. With the end of newsprint rationing in 1949 came the Sunday Herald; it

was merged with the Sunday Sun to create a new tabloid, the Sun-Herald, in 1953. By 1930, a fourth-generation Fairfax, (Sir) Warwick Oswald, was leading the company, which published A Century of Journalism in 1931. Sir Warwick’s pledge in 1953 to preserve ‘old-fashioned virtues’ was to prove a hindrance to the incoming editor, John Douglas Pringle, and others who followed, in attempts to improve design and content for a more diversified readership. Although a talented team of writers—including women liberated from the social pages—kept up the paper’s reputation for quality journalism, it was not until Warwick’s son James replaced him as chairman in 1977 that the Herald began a serious fightback. In late 1980, Vic Carroll became editor and the Herald was transformed with separate tabloid lifestyle and listing sections. Saturday’s features section was expanded, joined in 1984 by the high-quality weekly colour magazine Good Weekend. Page one and beyond became a mix of hard and ‘soft’ news, sometimes with comment, eye-catching photographs and graphics. Layout was cleaner, and column widths expanded. The news pages gained agenda-setting features, many dealing with social issues. ‘Stay in Touch’, a clever and irreverent page for commuters, joined the more traditional fare of ‘Column 8’, further dispelling the paper’s staid image. A 10-year review of the ‘new Herald’ in 1991 found it had increased its appeal to both readers and advertisers, holding its high-earning and better-educated buyers with a lift in popularity among those aged 18 to 34. But by then there had been dramatic changes. The Herald was in new hands. In 1987, Warwick’s youngest son, Warwick Geoffrey Oswald, persisted with a $2 billion takeover despite a worldwide sharemarket collapse. When the debt could not be serviced, the receivers moved in and the last Fairfax proprietor left the building on 10 December 1990. Staff cuts became the order of the day—and the future. The Canadian Conrad Black became the active proprietor in 1991, but sold in 1996 when the Commonwealth government refused to allow him to take a controlling interest. His legacy was a $330 million printing plant that came on stream in late 1995, the year the Herald launched its website, smh.com.au. There was a resurgence—Saturday’s redesigned edition regularly passed 400,000. Without a dominant shareholder, editors set policy and in 1997 the Herald’s line was described as ‘liberal, rather than conservative … on most of the social issues of the day’. Circulation held up into the next decade, but by its end the internet had robbed the Herald of its classified advertising dominance and, with broadband’s rise, more potential buyers chose to read the paper free on smh.com.au.

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syme family Print journalists took further cuts, including the outsourcing of sub-editing. Despite this—and the instability of 20 years of takeover rumours featuring names ranging from Packer, Murdoch and Kerry Stokes to Gina Rinehart—Herald writers, photographers and sub-editors continued to win major journalism awards. It was Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association Newspaper of the Year in 2009 and 2010. But the print marketplace was rapidly diminishing, and the Australian continued to nibble at the Herald’s dominance of high-end readership. At the end of 2011, Fairfax Media’s chief executive, Greg Hywood, said a business model was being built around a future in digital distribution. Demand meant printed newspapers would continue ‘for the foreseeable future’, but with a difference: ‘They will be more targeted, they will be probably higher priced, the days of mass distribution are over.’ In June 2012, it was announced that 1900 more jobs would go in the next three years. The giant Chullora printing plant would close in 2014, with the Herald switching to regional presses. Printed copies were reined in by 15 per cent in the first year. ‘Digital first’ increasingly became the motto. The new round of departures included the editor-in-chief and the editor. For the first time in 158 years, no editor was appointed. The title of editor was dropped. On 4 March 2013, the weekday Herald went tabloid—or ‘compact’ as the Herald preferred to call it. It was a return in size to the original Herald but, with even stronger use of photographs and graphics, there was no resemblance to the unrelieved columns of black type of 1831. The broadsheet pages of the flagship Saturday Herald were given a reprieve until March 2014. The Herald’s digital life was a much better story. In early 2014, Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA) released figures for 2013, which showed the Herald leading all Australian mastheads across all platforms—print, web, mobile and tablet—with a readership of 4.75 million. This included six months with a paywall in place on the website. Despite having far more readers than ever, the Herald newsroom—the source of the quality, in-depth journalism that drove cross-platform success—continued to shrink. Sharing across mastheads, including merging the bureaux of the Herald and the Age in Canberra, and coverage of business and other national issues, stretched numbers. Joint and single-masthead investigations remained a benchmark. The revenue challenge persisted. Increasingly, the Herald had been forced to rely on dwindling front-of-paper display advertising. But in 2014, after a litany of missed opportunities with internet ‘start-ups’ that stole the masthead’s classified advertising monopoly, Fairfax Media signalled a fight-back. It would refocus on classifieds and— in print in particular—its ‘core highly engaged

readership’. The original business model of 183 years earlier was back on the table. REFs: John Fairfax Archives; G. Souter, Company of Heralds (1981) and Heralds and Angels (1991). MAX PRISK

SYM E FAM ILY Ebenezer Syme (1825–60) and his brothers, David (1827–1908) and George (1821–94), immigrant sons of Scottish schoolmaster George Sime—later spelled Syme (1791–1845)—and many descendants (chiefly of David) to the fourth generation, were associated from the mid-19th to the late 20th century with the business that published the Melbourne Age and several other newspapers. In David’s time, these were the Weekly Age, the Leader, the Farmers’ Journal, the Illustrated Australian News, the Herald (briefly) and Every Saturday. An unincorporated family firm for 92 years, from 1878 designated David Syme & Co., gave place in 1948 to a public company. Former clergyman Ebenezer Syme joined the staff of the three-month-old Age early in 1855, and was soon co-editor. In June 1856, he bought the business at auction for £2000. In September, he took his brother David, who had been prospecting on the Victorian goldfields, into partnership. Following Ebenezer’s death in 1860, David took over the newspaper business. Continuing the E. & D. Syme imprint, David ran the business in partnership with Ebenezer’s widow, Jane (1827–1912), bringing about stability for the enterprise and a growing circulation for the Age. Jane returned to England in 1862, but David kept her informed. In 1868, he employed her son, Joseph Cowen Syme (1852–1916), in the Counting House (finance section). Other members of the Syme family also worked in the firm. Brother George, another one-time clergyman, joined the staff in the early 1860s and became editor of the Leader, retiring in 1884. From the late 1850s, brother-in-law John Gourlay was employed, becoming paymaster and retiring in 1894. Secondgeneration involvement began when David’s eldest son (John) Herbert (1859–1939) entered the business in 1883. In 1878, David bought half of Jane and her children’s share. His nephew, Joseph, bought the other half, becoming a junior partner in what would be known as David Syme & Co. Joseph managed the business and technical side, David the editorial and literary aspects, with the right of overall control. By the later 1880s, relations between the partners had soured and, after 1891, David became sole proprietor; henceforth the ‘Syme family’ means David and his descendants and their spouses. Looking to succession, he appointed Herbert to Joseph’s vacated position and employed his two youngest sons, Geoffrey (1873–1942) in 1893 as a reporter, and Oswald

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syme family (1878–1967) in 1896 in the Counting House. He sent both to London in 1901 for wider experience. Returning in 1902, Geoffrey took responsibility for launching and editing Every Saturday. In April 1905, he became secretary to his father. Oswald soon abandoned newspaper work for farming. David died on 14 February 1908. Praised then and later as a ‘maker’ of Victoria and his Age as a power in the land, he left a newspaper business worth some £403,000 of an estate valued at £979,480. David Syme’s will provided for the establishment of the David Syme Trust, comprising his widow Annabella and five sons to administer his estate, including the newspaper business. This was to remain in the possession of his sons until the death of all five, with the imprint on the Age and Leader remaining unchanged. Herbert and Geoffrey were to assume managerial positions, their ‘capacities’ and salaries to be decided by the trustees. Accordingly, Herbert managed the business and technical side, and Geoffrey the editorial, steering the business through World War I, competition with the Herald and Weekly Times and the Great Depression. In 1941, Geoffrey was knighted for his services to journalism. From the 1920s, some third-generation Symes were employed, most notably Kathleen Syme (1896–1977), daughter of David’s third son, Arthur, and Hugh Randall Syme (1903–65), the son of Herbert. With the onset of World War II came further generational change. The death of second son Francis in 1931, Herbert in 1939, Geoffrey in 1942 and Arthur in 1943 left Oswald the sole original trustee. Kathleen and Hugh filled vacancies on the trust, and Oswald returned to the firm to manage the business. At his instigation, a Supreme Court action allowed the restrictive provisions of the will to be varied, and in 1948 David Syme & Co. Ltd was floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange, with a much-needed £400,000 raised through the sale of non-voting preference shares, with Syme family members holding 600,000 ordinary £1 shares. Oswald

was chairman of the six-person board of directors, and Hugh and Kathleen members, with little change until Oswald’s retirement in 1964, when his son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel E.H.B. Neill, became chairman. During the next two decades, several more third- and fourth-generation Symes served successively on the board, most remarkably (Chesborough) Ranald Macdonald (1938– ), a grandson of Oswald and stepson of Neill. Macdonald was appointed managing director in 1964. With Graham Perkin, editor from 1966 until his death in 1975, he embarked on a modernisation program, extending and diversifying into subsidiary newspaper, magazine and multimedia operations. In 1966, the Syme company entered into a partnership with John Fairfax & Sons Ltd that would last 17 years. Much-needed capital was raised though the issue of a million ordinary shares to Fairfax, which became the ultimate holding company, while Macdonald negotiated a deed of agreement to ensure the independence of the Syme company and the Age, unless the Syme shareholding fell below 10 per cent of the issued capital. By 1980 it had fallen to 43 per cent; in 1982, 55 Syme family members had only a 21.5 per cent interest. At the annual general meeting in September 1983, Macdonald announced that Fairfax would purchase the remaining Syme shares and move to full ownership; he also resigned. The partnership was formally terminated in 1984, and in March 1985 Fairfax served a takeover offer, seeking to acquire all outstanding Syme shares. The Syme family era was effectively at an end, although a fourth-generation Syme in-law, Commodore Dacre Smyth, remained on the board of David Syme & Co. Ltd until 1994. In 2000, the company’s name was changed to The Age Co. Ltd. REFs: E. Morrison, David Syme (2014); Syme Family Papers (SLV); J. Tidey, The Last Syme (1998). ELIZABETH MORRISON

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T TABL E TAL K Table Talk was a Melbourne weekly newspaper founded by prominent Jewish journalist Maurice Brodzky (1847–1919). Subtitled ‘A Journal for Men and Women’, it was a product of the boom culture of ‘Marvellous Melbourne’, chronicling the activities of the city’s social elite. The first issue of 26 June 1885 was an immediate sensation. Under Brodzky’s editorship, political and financial news combined with short fiction, serials, poetry, sketches and a detailed social gazette to make the relatively expensive paper (sixpence) extremely popular. Close attention to fashion and society gossip—particularly political and financial scandals during the 1890s depression—helped Table Talk maintain its circulation, while advertising revenues meant it was financially viable. Though imitative of similar European and British papers, Table Talk was noted for its daring approach, and attracted attention from international visitors to the 1888 Melbourne Centennial International Exhibition. Its cosmopolitan nature provided Melburnians with an important point of connection with the wider world, and served to mitigate the ‘tyranny of distance’. Particular attention was paid to the comings and goings of international celebrities, visiting American and European theatre companies and the success of Australian artists abroad. Profusely illustrated with woodcuts and cartoons (including work by Will Dyson), Table Talk also pioneered printed photography on 6 January 1888, then sporadically until perfection of the technology in 1896–99. Images and advertisements of the latest fashions populated Table Talk’s pages, as did portraits of society notables, prominent artists and actors. When Brodzky went bankrupt in April 1903, Table Talk was purchased by Edgerton & Moore publishers for £15 and, following a month’s hiatus, reappeared on 29 May, reduced in price to threepence. The paper was eventually acquired by the Herald (managed by Sir Keith Murdoch), which toned down its content. Table Talk gave considerable attention to sporting and leisure activities. It particularly catered for women, whose participation in sport was encouraged by successive ‘ladies’ correspondents’.

The journal maintained its popularity into the 1920s, when the emerging jazz culture received particular attention. Perhaps because of this ability to adapt, Table Talk outlived many of its competitors—such as Melbourne Punch, which it absorbed in 1925. In the wake of the Great Depression and falling advertising revenue, publication ceased on 14 September 1939. REFs: M. Cannon, The Land Boomers (1995); P. Parés, ‘First Take: Photo Images in Early Australian Print Media’, Australian Studies in Journalism, 10/11 (2001–02). RICHARD SCULLY

TA BL OIDS see newspaper formats and design

TALKB AC K R AD IO Until 17 April 1967, talkback radio was illegal in Australia. Talkback appeared in Australia not as a unique product of the local radio industry, but as a programming concept imported from the United States. For many years, commercial broadcasters in Australia closely observed programming initiatives launched by the American commercial radio industry. To some extent, talkback also reflected talk radio programming formats that emerged in Sydney in the early 1960s. As early as 1961, a number of radio stations directly contravened the Broadcasting Program Standards to trial a new form of broadcasting dubbed ‘talkback’. But in order to protect those being recorded, the Telephonic Communications (Interception) Act 1960 rendered illegal any attempt to record a telephone conversation using a device attached to the telephone. In 1964, several commercial stations began using a Swedish ‘beep-a-phone’ to broadcast telephone conversations with callers. The device produced an intermittent beep to warn speakers that their conversation was being recorded. The Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) expressed concerns not only about the technical quality of calls and callers’ privacy, but what was being said on air, who was saying it and the immediacy of this type of broadcasting. After protracted discussions

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talkback radio with industry representatives and individual commercial radio stations, in September 1966, the Postmaster-General (PMG), (Sir) Alan Hulme, finally announced that the prohibitive restrictions would be overturned. When the ABCB formally revoked the relevant conditions in the Broadcasting Program Standards, the PMG insisted on leasing a mandatory device called the ‘Recorder Connector Type 1’ to radio stations. The device created a delay of seven seconds before calls were put to air, inserted an intermittent beep (later dropped) and included an ‘emergency’ cut-out button. In April 1967, the Standards were amended to allow radio stations to put telephone calls to air. Talkback was a novelty when it first appeared, with a number of metropolitan stations preparing with ‘rehearsals’ for the April 1967 launch. Commercial stations in most metropolitan markets introduced new programs, or program segments, using the open line, and listeners overwhelmed telephone systems. But the novelty soon faded. The development of talkback reflected other programming shifts on commercial radio, including content changes and lengthening program sessions; an increase in the number of commercial stations and the forging of distinct station identities in the 1960s and 1970s; the introduction of commercial FM radio and news/talk formats in the 1980s; and the consolidation of station networks and an increase in program syndication in the 1990s. The launch of commercial FM radio in the 1980s split stations between ‘music’ and ‘talk’; they tended to specialise in one or the other. As FM began, many—although not all—AM stations focused on talkback rather than music. In 1982, Sydney’s 2GB adopted the slogan ‘News-Talk’, launching a news commentary and current affairs talkback format with no music. Following 2GB, metropolitan AM stations including 3AW, 3DB and 3UZ in Melbourne, 5DN Adelaide and 6PR Perth adopted dedicated news/talk formats, of which talkback was a significant component. Most talkback programs were not syndicated across state borders, even though program syndication on commercial radio generally increased between 1986 and 1994. The Consolidated Broadcasting Network—a joint talkback venture between 2UE Sydney and 3AK Melbourne, launched by Kerry Packer in June 1986—was a financial failure. Few prime-time talk programs were syndicated nationally. Talkback announcers who broadcast nationally included John Laws, Alan Jones and Charles Wooley. Other programs were syndicated nationally during periods when audiences were smaller. Talkback programs were generally local, and from the 1990s, a small number of stations dominated talkback in each capital city in Australia—notably 2GB, 2UE, 3AW, 4BC, 5AA Adelaide and 6PR. In Sydney, 2UE topped the radio ratings with programs featuring Laws, Jones and Stan Zemanek.

Unlike their state counterparts, federal political leaders initially needed to be convinced about the value of talkback. On 17 April 1967, two Liberal state premiers, Sir Robert Askin and Sir Henry Bolte, took listener calls. As a candidate for Liberal Party leadership, Senator (Sir) John Gorton was initially hesitant about using talkback, but agreed to appear on 3DB with Barry Jones. (Sir) William McMahon was also hesitant. As a Coalition Cabinet minister and later as prime minister, he agreed to appear with 2GB’s Brian White. Talkback was soon used for electioneering and campaigning: during the 1977 election campaign, talkback appearances were sought by both party leaders. On 5AD Adelaide in April 1968, Labor opposition leader Gough Whitlam may have been the first federal politician to ‘talk back’ directly to listeners. As prime minister, Whitlam made considerable use of talkback. His Coalition successor, Malcolm Fraser, used talkback to avoid Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery journalists—a technique already being used by NSW Labor Premier Neville Wran. Talkback programs and announcers became more visible in the 1970s, with patronage by political leaders and the growth of systematic electronic media monitoring. In Brisbane, Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s staff was monitoring 4BC’s Hadyn Sargent and his callers by the late 1970s. West Australian Labor Premier Brian Burke installed a radio-phone in his official car to comment on breaking news stories and participate in talkback programs. Wran’s government retained an electronic media-monitoring operation inherited from the previous Coalition government that enabled the premier to have tapes of any radio or television item within minutes. Monitoring drew increasing attention to the performance of politicians on talkback programs. During the 1980 and 1983 federal election campaigns, both political parties monitored gaffes made by party spokespeople. The Press Gallery president derisively dubbed the 1983 campaign the ‘John Laws election’, as major pronouncements were made on Laws’ program. During the 1987 election, Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke used talkback extensively, although he reputedly disliked it. Then Liberal federal opposition leader John Howard also frequented talkback. Labor’s Paul Keating used talkback when he was Treasurer and later as prime minister, uttering his famed ‘banana republic’ caution about the state of Australia’s economy during an interview with Laws. John Howard made greater and more sophisticated use of talkback than any other prime minister. While Liberal opposition leader, Howard commended the neo-conservative counter-culture on talkback in Sydney. He appeared with talkback announcers around Australia—notably with 3AW’s Neil Mitchell and 2GB’s Alan Jones. During this period, Premiers

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taylor family Jeff Kennett, Bob Carr and Peter Beattie also made considerable use of talkback. Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd favoured FM over AM radio, but was not the first politician to use the youth-oriented medium. Politicians using FM included Kennett and Beattie, and federal Labor opposition leader Mark Latham. In the early 2000s, Julia Gillard appeared in Latham’s stead as deputy prime minister. Opposition leaders received some airtime, but talkback sessions were generally reserved for incumbent premiers and prime ministers. Lower-ranking parliamentary representatives were not usually invited to take listeners’ calls. In 1999, revelations about the advertising agreements held by a number of high-profile announcers attracted considerable critical attention to talkback. ABC Television’s Media Watch revealed that a number of high-profile talkback announcers had received payments for on-air endorsements as part of undisclosed advertising agreements. The inquiry into the ‘cash for comment’ affair revealed that a number of high-profile talkback announcers accepted money and other goods or services in exchange for endorsing products and companies. Initially implicated were John Laws and Alan Jones, both at 2UE. The inquiry was subsequently widened to investigate 3AW’s Steve Price and Bruce Mansfield, 5DN’s Jeremy Cordeaux and 6PR’s Howard Sattler. The most lucrative commercial agreements were held by Laws and Jones. Although the term ‘talkback’ has come to be most closely associated with the news/talk format aired on many AM stations during breakfast, morning and drive sessions, many types of talkback programs are broadcast on commercial radio, including religious programs, gardening, motoring, home renovations, health and sport. The number of females hosting programs declined during the 1970s, and few female announcers broadcast AM talkback. On FM—unlike AM radio—women co-hosted talk programs. Talkback was traditionally associated with AM radio, but from the late 1980s increasingly FM stations also ran some talkback. While FM stations in the 1980s identified primarily as music stations, some had begun not only to broadcast talk programs during the breakfast session but also to syndicate comedy programs during the afternoon drive session. On FM stations, announcer duos and teams ran segments with talkback, rather than whole programs. In the drive session, talk programming fractured into AM talkback, with male announcers and comedy duos and teams on FM radio. Comedy programs, which had largely disappeared from AM talk stations, migrated to the drive session on FM radio. While names such as Bob Francis, Alan Jones, John Laws and Howard Sattler were associated with AM talkback, new FM duos broadcast talkback to a younger generation:

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy, Merrick and Rosso, and Hamish and Andy. REFs: L. Gould, ‘Talk Radio and the Open-Line: A History of Commercial Talkback Radio in Australia’ (PhD thesis, 2012); G. Turner (ed.), ‘Talkback Radio’, special issue of MIA, 122 (2007). LIZ GOULD

TAYLO R FAM ILY Four generations of the Taylor family have been full or part-owners, and have managed and/or edited, the Murray Pioneer in Renmark, South Australia. The newspaper, which began on 9 April 1892 as the Renmark Pioneer, had had three owners before Harry Samuel Taylor (1873–1932) bought it on 1 September 1905. Taylor became secretary of the Single Tax League of South Australia at the age of 18, and edited its weekly journal. At 20, he joined Queensland labour journalist William Lane on an ill-fated venture to South America to found a cooperative commonwealth, a ‘New Australia’, in Paraguay. Taylor returned to Australia in 1896 and worked on a sheep property near Wentworth, New South Wales, and then an irrigation block near Mildura, Victoria. He studied orcharding and vine-growing practices. Taylor wrote what became a highly regarded horticultural column for the Mildura Cultivator from 1902 to 1905. At the Pioneer, his horticultural expertise and interest in foreign affairs were real assets. In the 1920s, the principal librarian of the Public Library of New South Wales called the Pioneer the ‘best country paper in Australia’. In his first four years at the Pioneer, Taylor increased circulation six-fold. On 11 July 1913, he renamed the paper the Murray Pioneer & Australian River Record. He had to relinquish sole proprietorship in June 1921 and The Murray Pioneer Pty Ltd was formed. He remained as editor, general manager and governing director. Taylor’s only son, William Gilmore Taylor (1904–88), known as Gilmore, became chairman and managing director from 1932–87. Gilmore’s elder son, Darnley Harry Gilmore Taylor (1936–2001), was editor from 1965 to 1978, and managing director from 1987 to 2001. Younger son Paul Harry Gilmore Taylor (1944– ) was managing director from 2001 to 2009. Darnley’s son, Benjamin Gilmore Darnley Taylor (1967– ), an employee since 1993, became managing director in 2010. The Taylor women, including Gilmore’s wife Latitia and Paul’s wife Judith, also worked on the paper. The family has contributed much to South Australia’s Country Press Association: Harry was a committee member for several years, and the post of president has been held by Gilmore (1950–52), Darnley (1975–77), Paul (1994–96) and Ben (2009–11).

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technology reporting The family company has expanded across South Australia since the 1960s, acquiring the River News (Waikerie, 1962), Loxton News (Loxton, 1964), Bunyip (Barossa and Gawler, 2003), Border Times (Pinnaroo, 2006) and Mid North Broadcaster (Burra, Eudunda, Jamestown and district, 2006). The Pioneer, a bi-weekly since 1982, and the five weeklies are printed on the company’s press, which has been web offset since 1978. The River News reverted to its traditional circulation area—Waikerie—after a foray into Mannum from 1997. The result was competition with Rural Press Limited’s Murray Valley Standard in Murray Bridge. The River News’ withdrawal prompted a 2001 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission prosecution in the Federal Court, in which both companies were fined. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, ‘Taylors Reap Harvest of Editor’s Hard Work at Pioneer’, PANPA Bulletin (May 2002) and interview with Paul Taylor, 31 January 2003. ROD KIRKPATRICK

T E C HNOL OGY REPORTING New and emerging technologies have long been popular subjects for the news media. Two linked strands of content developed through the mid-20th century. First, post-war science reporting signalled the increasing pace of invention. The press celebrated the remarkable achievements of researchers and popularised the radical and sometimes disturbing possibilities of a shrinking world. From the late 1940s, public enthusiasm for ‘electronic brains’ such as CSIRAC, the early Australian computer, generated considerable media coverage, alongside related topics including robotics, satellite communications, nuclear warfare, and jet travel. Technology reporting evolved out of a second strand of journalism, less concerned with the remote wonders of science and more interested in the appearance of new technologies at work and at home. Here the subject-matter was the uptake and practical applications of new devices, beginning in the 1920s and 1930s with the complexities of acquiring and listening to radio receivers, and shifting over time to television, and then its associated and successor devices. ‘Technology’ has continued to evolve as a reporting field with this particular orientation towards the everyday uses of information, communication and media technologies. Within a week of its launching in 1964, the Australian was reporting on computers and automation, and by the late 1970s the Tuesday computer section, bursting with advertising, filled half the edition. By the 1980s, technology stories and supplements were regular features in Australian newspapers. A notable instance was the Sydney Morning Herald’s extensive ‘Computer Monday’ section, edited and in large part written by Gareth Powell, an entrepreneurial journalist and

former magazine publisher who also managed the newspaper’s travel section. The content and subject-matter of technology articles in the 1980s and 1990s was a mix of product reviews of new hardware, software and peripheral devices, expert commentary, industry news, and discussions of trends—often based on reporting from international trade conferences, with a market-making focus. At the time, this content attracted criticism and controversy; the ABC’s Media Watch devoted considerable attention to the ethics of the Herald supplement. However, the appearance and brief flourishing of technology supplements marked a remarkable period of economic and social change. They clearly secured broad readerships, and played a major role in providing publicity and visibility for what had once been an arcane area of professional and trade knowledge. Computing magazines to emerge included Australian Personal Computer (1980– ) and Australian PC World (1997– ), along with more specialist titles such as Australian Hi-Fi (1970– 88) and, for gamers, PC Powerplay (1996– ). The frequency of regular print coverage of technology matched the rapid development and distribution of personal computing in its take-off phase. Middle-class metropolitan households led the wave of home computing—and that demographic was well matched to the larger broadsheet readerships. Those households included younger enthusiasts encountering computers at school and university; parents and frustrated users at home and work; and professionals and managers dealing with technological change. They were not early adopters, but constituted a vital, dynamic populous market. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ early surveys on IT in households conveyed the rate of change, reporting that the number of Australian households with a computer rose from less than two million in 1994 to over three million—or 47 per cent—by late 1998. Coverage in the print media played an important role in what was effectively the creation of a new domestic market for technology goods and services: promoting what was new, educating and advising consumers, and providing critical feedback to manufacturers, retailers and distributors. Advertising was crucial to this phase: it came from local distributors of hardware and software, and from the growing number of employers competing for qualified IT professionals in what was then a tight, specialised labour market. Technology reporting also signalled some of the longer-term social and economic consequences of the changes associated with computing, not least as these were reflected in journalists’ own changing working lives. One of these was an emphasis on portable computing; another was the increasing time available for and given over to work—especially as modems and computer networks became better known. What may have been less apparent to readers

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telecommunications was the contingent and temporary nature of the underlying economics for this kind of reporting. The impact of the internet on mainstream press journalism is now well known; in the technology field, the dynamics of increasing competition and declining advertising became obvious earlier. Readers interested in technology news found more immediate and richer sources of information on the web, often on US sites, but also via Australian online magazines such as TechGuide. Advertising followed the readers, but was also subject to structural change. The parallel importation of software and hardware, enabled by the net, began to undermine what had been a historically high-margin industry. Job advertising also shifted online. Technology reporting, however, has by no means disappeared—in fact, it has transformed in important ways. Market-making continues, with product reviews and coverage for the major internet platforms, and enthusiastic treatment of emerging technologies such as 3D printing and online entertainment. But as digital devices have proliferated and multiplied, their use has become a feature of Australians’ everyday life rather than an exceptional or exclusive activity. Journalism has reflected that, with an increasing emphasis on the social and cultural aspects of technologies. Technology stories have not disappeared, but they have migrated from specific sections or programs to mainstream news content, and to other areas of sectional coverage, notably those dedicated to home entertainment. Technology reporters are conspicuous in the broadcast media, with coverage—sometimes sponsored—from the likes of Peter Blasina (‘The Gadget Guy’) on Sunrise (Seven Network), ABC Radio and 2UE, and Charlie Brown on Today (Nine Network), TV Week and 2UE. Brown also co-hosts CyberShack TV (Nine), a 30-minute consumer technology and home entertainment program that first aired in 2005. The tenor of much technology coverage has also changed, with the negative aspects of technology use—especially for children and young adults—emerging as recurrent themes in media coverage. Business stories emphasise the internet challenge to retailing and other once strong industry sectors. As reporting on the social aspects of technology has increased, major new areas of worrying coverage have developed: cyberbullying, piracy, pornography, internet surveillance and threats to privacy, and the disruption of family life. Technology—perhaps no longer perceived to be a natural friend of journalism—is now reported and presented in a more critical light. REFs: ABS, Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 1996 (1996) and Australian Social Trends, 1999 (1999). JULIAN THOMAS

TE LE C O M see Telstra

TELEC O M M U N IC ATIO N S More than anything else, telecommunications has dramatically transformed Australia, with its ‘magnificent distances’ (Prime Minister Alfred Deakin’s phrase) and its isolation from the rest of the world; it has also played a pervasive a role in the modernisation of Australian society. Across two centuries, the evolving technologies of telecommunications have sustained the growth and diversification of the Australian media and, through changing organisations, participated in the development and performance of diverse new media forms. For the first half of the 19th century, communication from, to and within the Australian colonies was carried entirely by mail. The first post office was established at Circular Quay in Sydney in 1809, under Isaac Nichols, a former convict who boarded ships to collect the mail, with addressees’ names being published in the Sydney Gazette and New South Advertiser. By 1850, communication by post had fostered the economic growth of the colonies. In 1853, a young Canadian entrepreneur, Samuel McGowan—a former student of Professor Samuel Morse, who had managed the New York– Buffalo line—arrived in Melbourne equipped with sets of Morse instruments, batteries and insulators to launch telegraph technology in Australia. ‘To us, old Colonists who have left Britain years ago,’ declared the Melbourne Argus, it is ‘the most perfect of modern inventions … Let us set about electric telegraphy at once’. Initiated in Melbourne in 1854, telegraphy was taken up in South Australia in 1856, Tasmania in 1857, New South Wales in 1858, Queensland in 1861 and Western Australia— where Australia’s only convict-constructed telegraph was erected—in 1859. Started partly by private enterprise, all telegraph lines were quickly owned by government and maintained by the separate colonial departments of electric telegraphy. Tasmania was connected with the mainland in 1859 by a cable from Cape Otway, Victoria, laid across Bass Strait to Circular Head to join the Hobart–Launceston line, but it proved erratic, isolating that colony from telegraphic communication with mainland Australia until the advent of a second cable in 1869. In 1872, the Overland Telegraph Line from Adelaide to Darwin linked Australia’s spreading lines to the Java cable connection and the world. Three years later, in 1877, the East–West Telegraph Line, edging its way from Albury, Western Australia via transmitter stations around the Great Australian Bight, joined South Australian telegraphy and the eastern colonies at Eucla. Australians took to the telegraph like ducks to water. It rapidly became a vital instrument of government, business and the law, issuing orders, transferring public servants, conveying legal judgments and directives, and tracking bushrangers and criminals. In business, the Morse code tapped out prosperity and wealth,

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telecommunications linking trade and commerce, connecting investors with markets, gold diggers with buyers and pastoralists with agents. Yet nowhere was the effect of the telegraph more evident than in the business of communication itself. As lines spread, newspapers began to publish a few inches daily—by-lined ‘By Electric Telegraph’—that presented information from neighbouring colonies, shipping movements, the price of goods, reports from parliament and sport. Until the 1870s, overseas news was telegraphed from Adelaide as the first point of shipping entry to the eastern colonies, exciting deep rivalry between reporters from Sydney and Melbourne newspapers for command of the single line to the eastern colonies. From 1877 to 1887, the adoption of new telegraph technology that increased transmission speeds from four to 40 words per minute enabled metropolitan newspapers to publish an average of 700 words of overseas news daily. The second major telecommunication technology to bridge distance, the telephone, reached Australia from America in the late 1870s. Telephone exchanges were installed in Melbourne and Brisbane in 1880, Sydney in 1882, Hobart and Adelaide in 1883 and Perth in 1887, and in country towns in association with colonial post offices by the late 1880s. In 1901, some 33,000 telephones were ringing in Australia. The telephone exchange, as one Melbourne writer noted, was the ‘cerebellum of the social and commercial system of the busy city incessantly receiving and transmitting from and to every portion of the vital organism’. From 1907, trunk connections accelerated press, business and government operations. While the technically skilled, well-educated telegraphists employed in city, suburb and lonely repeater stations had furnished the new manpower of telegraphy, telephony swiftly became the preserve of women in metropolitan and suburban exchanges, who doubled as postmistresses in rural areas. Their presence influenced the domestic and social adoption of the telephone, and gave it critical national spread. The centralisation at Federation in 1901 of six colonial ‘electric telegraph departments’ into the Commonwealth Postmaster-General’s Department (the PMG) created an institutional goliath. Employing 90 per cent of Commonwealth government human resources, and charged with the exclusive construction and management of the changing telecommunications demands of a vast and diverse continent, it gave institutional expression to the unique importance of telecommunications in Australia. Embracing posts, telegraphs and telephones, ‘and other like services’, the Post and Telegraph Bill of February 1901 conferred a monopoly that, in the words of the initiating PMG, Senator James Drake, ‘enables us to look ahead; take advantage of every innovation, and adapt it to the benefit of the public’. It was a concept of steadily extending

and upgrading service that underlay national telecommunications policy for more than 80 years. Australia adopted wireless telegraphy in 1909. By 1914, a total of 14 wireless stations dotted the coastline. In 1918, Australia was in direct wireless communication with Britain via wireless telegraphy, and in 1922 the Commonwealth government participated in a partnership with Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd to support the construction and operation of direct wireless telegraphy services between Australia and Britain that opened in 1927 and extended to Canada in 1928. Under (Sir) H.P. Brown, the PMG shaped a national broadcasting policy as a ‘dual system’ of national and commercial licensed channels operating within the international medium wave, while the PMG became responsible for the installation, operation and maintenance of the complete servicing of a national system. Beam wireless telephone connection was established between Australia and Britain in 1930, extending swiftly to other countries. In 1930, Western Australia was joined to the eastern states by landline telephony and the telephone voice was heard at last across the broad girth of the continent. World War II put significant pressure on carrier-wave telegraph technology, prompting crucial local production and innovative approaches to meet General Douglas MacArthur’s communication demands. Notably in 1943, an old 1909 Bass Strait cable was hauled from its bed, shipped to New Guinea and laid from the village of Delena 145 kilometres west of Port Moresby to form a communication link to Cape York in a critical holding operation in the northward communication drive. Post-war Australia entered a dynamic new telecommunication era that spanned developments in automatic telephony and telegraphy, underground coaxial cables, international radio telephony, television, microwave radio, transistors and other solid-state devices, and a national commitment to progressive automation and carrier telephone systems. In 1946, the management of Australia’s overseas telecommunications was transferred to a new statutory authority, the Overseas Telecommunication Commission (OTC). As telephony became a prime mover, it—together with digitalisation—increasingly challenged telegraph use. Entering Australia’s communications network in 1954, telex progressively transformed the old teleprinter mode of message delivery through the introduction of manually operated telex exchanges that linked teleprinter terminals and receivers in capital cities. Four years later, OTC opened an overseas telex service with the direct exchange of printed correspondence with similarly equipped offices in Australia and abroad. Fully automated by 1966, it became the precursor of the new, automatically linked information society that sounded the death-knell for Morse code.

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Delay and political hesitation marked the introduction of television in Australia. Following a Royal Commission on Television in 1953, the Broadcasting and Television Act 1956 provided for a dual national (ABC) and commercial television service, similar to radio broadcasting, which began in September 1956. By 1960, television had reached all capital cities and 94 per cent of all homes had a television set by 1975, when colour was introduced. As the speed of communication mounted, underground coaxial cables, with their high-quality multiple communication circuits and microwave relay systems, girdled the continent while television towers and transmitting stations—the new ‘superhighway of the sky’—signalled change in the landscape and life of Australia. Parliament’s partition of the PMG into two separate statutory bodies, the Australian Telecommunications Commission (Telecom Australia) and the Australian Postal Commission (Australia Post), in July 1975 was a major institutional change. The reconstitution of Australia’s telecommunication network under Telecom was seen as a ‘flashpoint of transformation’, in which business management, responsibility to a commission of seven for long-term policy and a managing director replacing the Director-General were central. Telecom retained the exclusive right to install, maintain and operate domestic telecommunications infrastructure and continue in its regulatory function of authorising others to attach lines and equipment to the telecommunications system, but it would face increasing pressure in the following decade to open the system to competition. The structural division between domestic and international telecommunications remained, with OTC as the Overseas Telecommunications Corporation endowed with exclusive right to install, maintain and operate international cable and satellite facilities between Australia and other countries. Pressure for a geostationary domestic satellite, DOMSAT, mounted through the 1970s. Australia’s land network had been joined by OTC’s earth station at Carnarvon, Western Australia in 1966 (and another at Moree, NSW in 1968) via INTELSAT satellites to the United States, Canada and Japan. In 1970 OTC’s earth station at Ceduna, South Australia, transmitting to the Indian INTELSAT satellites, connected Australia’s television networks to Asia, Africa, Britain and Europe. But the challenge of ‘dead’ communication areas in Australia, and of extending telephony to remote, environmentally inhospitable regions, focused the concept of a domestic satellite. An entirely new telecommunications form, it would alter the way television was distributed, as well as how telephone calls were transmitted, remote regions connected and business information carried globally. In 1985, Aussat Pty Ltd, a company owned jointly by the Commonwealth government and Telecom, was established to operate the

(brisbane)

national satellite telecommunications system and provide enhanced domestic business communication links and broadcasting services to remote Australia. The first two domestic satellites were launched in 1985. In 1987, Telecom launched its first cellular mobile phone, with rapid uptake. Under Aussat, Australia’s satellite footprint embraced Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guineas and the southwest Pacific, but the company’s mounting debt forced its sale in 1991 to the private company Optus Communications. Aussat’s financial decline proved to be the trigger for greater competition in Australian telecommunications. Under the Telecommunications Act 1989, Telecom retained its monopoly on fixed telephony, but AUSTEL, the Australian Telecommunications Authority, was introduced as an independent regulator charged with responsibility for protecting carrier rights, protecting competitors from unfair competition and protecting consumers. In 1991, Optus was licensed to become the second telecommunications carrier, with access to the fixed telecommunications regime, while retaining its satellite control. The amalgamation by a Labor government of Telecom and OTC in 1992 to form Telstra ushered in a transformative period in Australian telecommunications. Across its history, a cornucopia of advanced new telecommunication technologies and services has endowed the Australian people with rapidly changing, accelerating styles and increasingly powerful tools of communication. High standards of telephone technology, digital techniques, integrated circuits, optical fibres, ‘intelligent terminals’, videotex and three domestic satellites with a large component of earth stations have been added to the long-line terrestrial and microwave systems. Australia’s connection to the global internet was made in 1989, with its take-up second only to that in the United States. From telegraph to the internet, Australians have emerged as early and rapid adopters of new media and communication technologies, with a strong appetite for telecommunication advance, sustained through government ownership into the early 1990s. In the 21st century, the infrastructure of a new telecommunication revolution, high-speed national broadband, moves outwards across the nation. REF: A. Moyal, Clear Across Australia (1984). ANN MOYAL

T E L E GRA PH see Overland Telegraph Line

TELEG R AP H (B R ISB AN E) A group of businessmen established the Telegraph Newspaper Co. Ltd in Brisbane in 1871, and on 1 October the following year the first edition of the Telegraph was published.

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television comedy This afternoon newspaper would survive for more than 115 years. The Telegraph began as a broadsheet of four pages with a cover price of one penny. The print run for the first edition was just 200 copies. The first editor was Theophilus Pugh (1831–96), a remarkable figure in the early history of Queensland and the publisher of Pugh’s Queensland Almanac (1862–1927). The Telegraph was originally published from premises near the corner of George and Queen Streets in Brisbane. In 1891, a striking Italianate edifice was constructed in Queen Street to house the newspaper and provide professional offices in the city. It was designed by George Cowlishaw who, with his brother James, played a leading role in the company’s affairs from the early 1890s. There was a serious fire in the Telegraph machine room on Friday, 8 December 1893, but the staff were still able to get the paper out that afternoon. In 1963, the Telegraph moved to its final home at Bowen Hills, headquarters of Queensland Press Ltd. In 1876, the Telegraph began publishing a weekly newspaper, the Week, which continued until 1934. As news-pictorial newspapers gained popularity and circulation, the Telegraph was thought by many observers to be among the best of this genre. Its Saturday evening sports edition, printed on pink newsprint, was a slick and distinctive offering produced under punishing deadlines. For most of its long life, the Telegraph was a broadsheet; however, it switched to tabloid format early in 1948. Pugh was one of many talented newspapermen and women who worked on the Telegraph, and made their mark in journalism and elsewhere. Those who had a major impact included Nathaniel ‘Nat’ Gould, a sports writer for the paper in the 1880s who became a celebrated writer of racing novels; early editors like the distinguished journalist Dr F.W. Ward and Thomas Heney, a former editor of the Sydney Morning Herald; Keith Noud, one-time turf editor of the Telegraph and renowned track and radio race caller in the 1940s and 1950s; crime reporter Ken Blanch; World War II correspondent and later Telegraph chief-of-staff Mervyn Warren; and Erica Parker, who in the 1950s and later redrafted the boundaries for reporting on issues of significance for women readers. Sallyanne Atkinson, subsequently Lord Mayor of Brisbane, was a cadet journalist at the Telegraph, and John Dickie, who served two terms as Commonwealth Censor, was a cadet journalist at the Telegraph in the 1950s. So too were John Larkin, who became a respected writer for the Age in Melbourne, and Hugh Curnow, who went on to the Daily Mirror in London. Journalist and newspaper executive Bill Boyan has written an engaging memoir of his life and times at the Telegraph, where he worked for 45 years from 1926. Telegraph: City Final (1991) is a rare and invaluable

record of a newspaper era now gone, briefing readers on stories ranging from some of the city’s major murders to the famous Stinson air crash of 1937. The colourful Brisbane characters of those years keep popping up—some of them newspaper people, others their readers and contacts. The Telegraph that Boyan joined as a cadet occupied ‘a rather prim and proper world’. Four-letter words of even mild meaning were banned, along with the words ‘damn’, ‘bastard’ and even ‘pregnant’. The last Saturday edition of the Telegraph appeared on 29 December 1979. The paper was a victim of changing lifestyles, and expanded television and radio coverage of news and sport. Around Australia, afternoon newspapers were in trouble, and by the early 1990s they would all be gone. In the five years to the end of 1987, there were no fewer than six reviews of the Telegraph’s future. When Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited succeeded in taking over the Herald and Weekly Times in 1987, one of the dailies it now controlled was the Telegraph. The final issue of the newspaper appeared on 5 February 1988. The Daily Sun (est. 1982) switched from morning to afternoon publication and changed its name to the Sun, but by the end of 1991 it too was gone, and after 119 years Brisbane was without a paid afternoon daily newspaper. JOHN TIDEY

TELEVISIO N C O M ED Y Comedy has been a staple of the Australian television schedule since regular broadcasting began in Sydney in 1956. However, in this early period, comedy programs were imported. Take That (HSV7, 1957), a 15-minute sit-com broadcast live in Melbourne, was the exception. If Australian viewers wanted homegrown comedy, they could tune into the many locally produced variety programs that interspersed musical numbers with comedy skits. A number of seasoned stage performers, such as Buster Fiddess, Syd Heylen, Dawn Lake and George Wallace Junior, became an integral part of television culture. The program that made the biggest splash in terms of comedy entertainment was In Melbourne Tonight (IMT, GTV9, 1957–70) with Graham Kennedy. IMT was well known for its skits, but audiences most enjoyed Kennedy’s improvisational style, in particular the way he would ‘rubbish’ the products he was advertising. IMT was broadcast live in Melbourne, and by 1960 was screened in various formats around Australia. By the mid-1960s, Australian television production had begun to diversify. ATN7 Sydney launched the satirical revue-style program The Mavis Bramston Show (1964–68), featuring Carol Raye, Gordon Chater and Barry Creyton. Partly inspired by Britain’s That Was the Week That Was and drawing on the comedy revues

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television comedy at Sydney’s Phillip Street Theatre, Bramston became a hugely popular national program in 1965. Bramston stood out for its risqué humour. More sketch comedy than biting political satire, Bramston produced some memorable characters, including the eponymous Mavis and Ocker, Ron Fraser’s heavy-drinking yobbo. Gordon Chater, one of Bramston’s original team, became the star of ATN7’s next successful comedy project, the sit-com My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours? (1966–68). A couple of years earlier, GTV9 had tested the waters with the moderately successful Barley Charlie (1964), but the success of McGooley was resounding, thanks to the long-term commitment of writer and creator Ralph Peterson and the on-screen chemistry of the cast. The comic premise, based on the incompatibility of the elderly Dominic McGooley (Chater) and his aspirational sonin-law, Wally Stiller (John Meillon), had clear similarities to the British sitcom Steptoe and Son. However, the comedy was played out in a distinctively Australian accent. The ABC tested the waters with Nice’n Juicy (1966), a sit-com about two citrus growers. By the 1970s, there was no doubt that locally produced television comedy could find an audience. In 1972, the ABC launched a bold experiment in comedy with The Aunty Jack Show (1972–73), featuring Grahame Bond and Rory O’Donoghue. Aunty Jack’s humour, which lurched between the satirical and the absurd, was articulated in a distinctively Australian vernacular and had a particular appeal for younger viewers, a number of whom tuned to the ABC for the first time to watch this iconoclastic program. As well as the memorable Aunty Jack, played by Bond, The Aunty Jack Show also produced the character Norman Gunston (played by Garry McDonald), a gormless loser from Wollongong who would go on to host the spoof variety show The Norman Gunston Show (ABC, 1975–76; Seven Network, 1978–79, 1993) and become the only fictional character to win a Gold Logie. In a series of interviews with celebrities from overseas, Gunston used his cringing, sycophantic persona to undermine the hierarchy of fame. The Aunty Jack Show and The Norman Gunston Show demonstrated on the ABC that Australian audiences were keen for television comedy that was identifiably Australian. The Paul Hogan Show (Seven Network, 1973–77; Nine Network, 1978–84) provided even more resounding evidence that 1970s nationalism had infiltrated the landscape of prime-time television. Hogan’s on-screen persona, ‘Hoges’, was a reinterpretation of the ocker character satirised on The Mavis Bramston Show as a symbol of anti-authoritarian defiance and nationalist affirmation. The Paul Hogan Show was a sketch comedy show featuring characters such as Leo Wanker, a bungling stuntman, and Super Dag, a super hero wearing a towelling hat and wielding

an esky. Producer John Cornell played Hoges’ dim-witted friend Strop. The Seven Network ultimately lost Hogan to Nine, but had further sketch comedy success with The Naked Vicar Show (1977–78), created by comedy writing team Gary Reilly and Tony Sattler and earlier heard on radio. Naked Vicar bore a resemblance to The Mavis Bramston Show, including the introductory segment where the regular team of two men and a woman would perch on stools and read parodic news items from notes. However, Naked Vicar star Noeline Brown has commented that the show eschewed the risqué adult appeal of Bramston in favour of a more sustained silliness. This silliness produced a series of sketches featuring the character Ted Bullpit, whose obsession with his Holden Kingswood car and resistance to change inspired the spin-off sitcom Kingswood Country (Seven Network, 1979– 84), also written by Reilly and Sattler. With similarities to the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, Kingswood Country gave the bigoted lead character a licence to offend, and audiences could choose to laugh at Ted’s ignorance or enjoy his comic transgressions. The broadness of this style of comedy contrasted with Gary Reilly’s next project for the Seven Network, the much milder sit-com Hey Dad …! (1984–94). The ABC struck gold in the 1980s with Geoffrey Atherden’s Mother and Son (1985–94). At the end of the 1980s, the team that created a huge hit with the stage show Wogs out of Work went on to make the sit-com Acropolis Now (Seven Network, 1989–92), the first comedy program on Australian television to feature writers and actors from predominantly non-English speaking backgrounds. The 1980s was a good decade for television comedy, with an explosion of sketch comedy that continued into the 1990s. If the success of a sketch comedy show can be measured by the memorable characters and catchphrases it produces, then shows like Australia You’re Standing In It (the Dodgy Brothers, and Tim and Debbie), The Comedy Company (Kylie Mole and Con the Fruiterer) and Fast Forward (Pixie Anne Wheatley) undoubtedly made their mark. However, arguably the most memorable comedy characters are those created by Max Gillies in his satirical caricatures of prominent public figures such as Bob Hawke and Kerry Packer in The Gillies Report (ABC, 1984–85) and The Gillies Republic (ABC, 1986). The ABC’s The Big Gig (1989–91) picked up on the excitement of live comedy performance, giving television audiences a taste of the burgeoning live comedy scene and providing exposure to a new generation of talented Australian comedians. Many of the people involved in this period of sketch comedy have gone on to cement their television comedy credentials. Notably, Working Dog Productions, which debuted with the sketch show The D-Generation (ABC, 1986–87), was

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television documentary responsible for programs such as the celebrated Frontline (ABC, 1994–97), satirising the tabloid world of current affairs television; the parodic outback adventure series Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures (ABC, 2001–02); and the improvisational comedy show Thank God You’re Here (Ten Network, 2006–07; Seven Network, 2009). Gina Riley and Jane Turner transformed a regular sketch from their show Big Girl’s Blouse (Seven Network, 1994–95) into the hit sitcom Kath and Kim (ABC, 2002–04; Seven Network, 2007). As well as their enormous ratings success, sales overseas and the production of an American version, the impact of Kath and Kim can be traced in the way that their colourful suburban idiolect has infiltrated Australian life. Australian television comedy has historically been aimed at a particular idea of mainstream Australian culture, and has used this idea to police difference. However, the 21st century has brought a different understanding of the rules and subject matter of Australian television comedy. The shambolic and irreverent SBS comedy Pizza (2000–07) broke through television’s love of comic boundaries by using a ‘carpet bomber’ approach. The documentaries John Safran vs God (SBS, 2004) and John Safran’s Race Relations (ABC, 2009) operate according to a similar principle. Launched on SBS in 2013, Legally Brown is a sketch comedy show exploring the experience of Muslims in Australian society. Chris Lilley’s ABC series We Can Be Heroes (2005), Summer Heights High (2007) and Angry Boys (2011), as well as Summer Heights High spinoffs Ja’mie: Private School Girl (2013) and Jonah from Tonga (2014) explore cultural difference through a combination of caricature and mockumentary. Lilley’s satirical portrayals of a variety of characters, both male and female and from different ethnic and social backgrounds, challenge audiences to think about the function of stereotypes in Australian society. With characters such as Perth housewife Pat Mullins (We Can Be Heroes) and schoolboy bully Jonah Takalua (Summer Heights High, Jonah from Tonga), Lilley moves beyond caricature to reveal the humanity of his subjects. Lilley’s work functions as social satire, and has divided audiences and produced controversy. In fact, while the blandness of Hey Dad …! and the universality of Mother and Son gave these shows longevity and international sales, the shows that could be said to define Australian television comedy culture are those that operate more dangerously at the boundary between the acceptable and the unacceptable. This has defined the work of The Chaser team since they first began ambushing politicians in The Election Chaser (ABC, 2001). Most famously, in 2007 when making The Chaser’s War on Everything (ABC, 2006–09), the team breached the enormously expensive security cordon surrounding the APEC Summit. Subsequently, in 2009, a skit aired as part of the third series

of The Chaser’s War created a different kind of sensation, as many viewers perceived the parodic ‘Make a Realistic Wish’ to have crossed the line. The subject of comic transgression re-emerged in 2011 with At Home with Julia, a four-part comedy series that imagined the private lives of Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her partner, Tim Mathieson. Comedy’s cultural specificity has been a challenge to funding television comedy production in Australia as, historically, overseas sales could not be relied on. However, within the global economy, the television industry has become increasingly transnational. As well as foreign sales of programs such as Kath and Kim, We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, the expanding reach of Australian television comedy can be traced through the sale of scripts, concepts and formats (such as Mother and Son, Kath and Kim, Thank God You’re Here and Wilfred). Indeed, the format of At Home with Julia was auctioned in Cannes not long after the program aired in Australia. REFs: S. Bye, F. Collins and S. Turnbull, ‘Comic Interventions: Aunty Jack, Norman Gunston and ABCTV’, Australian Cultural History, 26 (2007); J. McCallum, ‘Cringe and Strut: Comedy and National Identity in Post-War Australia’, in S. Wragg (ed.), Because I Tell a Joke or Two (1998); S. Turnbull, ‘Mapping the Vast Suburban Tundra: Australian Comedy from Dame Edna to Kath and Kim’, International Jnl of Cultural Studies, 11(1) (2008). SUSAN BYE

TELEVISIO N D O C U M EN TARY Documentary is arguably the most continuous audio-visual tradition in Australia. Since 1956, when Australian television first went to air just before the Melbourne Olympic Games, television has played an increasingly significant role in the genre. On opening night, the ABC screened the BBC documentary War in the Air; however, it would be two years before it broadcast Allan Ashbolt’s locally produced Report from South Africa (1958), which implicitly questioned Australian race relations. A year earlier, on GTV9 Melbourne, William Grayden’s Manslaughter (1957) had exposed the impact of the Maralinga atomic bomb tests on Aboriginal people and roused public agitation to change the legal status of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Governments have played a key role in supporting Australian documentary: directly, through institutions such as the ABC, the SBS and the Commonwealth Film Unit (later Film Australia); and indirectly via taxation and Australian content regulation. This has led to ongoing questions about how to define documentary. Before television, documentary was understood primarily in contrast to dramatic cinema features, as non-fiction. But with around half the television schedule consisting of non-fiction, questions of what was specific to documentary

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television documentary became harder to answer. From 1961, commercial television licensees were required to screen a minimum quota of local content, with documentary part of a broader information category. The ‘social documentary’ was first defined by broadcasting regulation in 1989, but only in 1996, after industry lobbying, was a specific documentary quota of 10 hours of first-run material annually implemented. By 2005, this quota would be doubled to 20 hours. Commercial television paid little attention to documentary in its first two decades, with the form making up only an estimated 2.5 per cent of the schedule in the early 1970s—mainly travelogues and light entertainment series. Filmmaker Tom Haydon remembered that in the 1960s, commercial television was ‘remarkable for the almost total absence of documentary from its screens’. Stefan Sargent’s The Australian Londoners (1965), screening on TCN9, was an exception, but in poet and journalist Elizabeth Riddell’s view such anomalies gave proprietors a defence when meeting ‘a vice chancellor or a bishop or a visiting British under-secretary’. Meanwhile, at the ABC, broadcasters such as Robert Raymond and Tom Manefield brought international models of documentary to Australia, often disguised as ‘current affairs’ and ‘features’. Australian-born, Raymond worked in Britain and Africa, and gained experience with Ed Murrow and the See it Now team of the American CBS network before returning to Australia. He pioneered ABC live studio documentary and a location film production unit, worked with Michael Charlton to establish the Four Corners current affairs documentary program in 1961, then moved to TCN9 to set up its ‘special projects division’. With lightweight 16mm cameras and synchronised sound newly available, ABC 1960s broadcasters made increasing use of location filming techniques. Therese Denny’s A Changing Race (1964) was the first Australian documentary to be entirely voiced by Aboriginal people. But in 1968 Kit Denton—respected author and broadcaster—asserted that ‘We are still a good way short of documentary maturity’, and that television documentary makers, ‘like the women of old China … have feet on which to stand … but bones misshapen by the shoes they’re forced to wear’. In a sign of growing maturity, the Rural Department launched the A Big Country series that same year, bringing urban viewers profiles of life in the country. In 1969, the ABC set up a Features Department under Humphrey Fisher, who came direct from the BBC’s Features Department. Alongside presenter-led factual series such as Peter Wherrett’s Torque (1973–80) and Bill Peach’s Australia (1975–76), the features slate included John Power’s dramatised historical documentaries, such as Billy and Percy (1974) about William Hughes. Tom Manefield returned from Britain to produce Chequerboard

(1969–75), a ground-breaking social documentary series inspired by the BBC’s Man Alive. In keeping with the international cinéma verité/ direct cinema movements, Chequerboard rarely had a presenter or a narrator, instead using interview and observational cinema techniques. Many ABC Features personnel, including Aviva Ziegler, Robin Hughes, Tony Wilson and Bob Connolly, would move on to significant careers as independent filmmakers, a parallel stream of production that would impact on and eventually merge with the Australian television documentary. In the late 1960s and 1970s, a strong tradition of independent and often activist documentary developed, first in Sydney and then in other capital cities. Often formally experimental, this work was linked to the re-emergent Australian film industry, and its associated funding and institutions—especially the Australian Film Commission (AFC)—rather than to television. Frequently, this work related to feminist (Margot Nash and Robin Laurie’s We Aim to Please, 1976), urban (Tom Zubrycki’s Waterloo, 1981) and Indigenous (Alec Morgan and Gerry Bostock’s Lousy Little Sixpence, 1983) politics, as well as to re-evaluating Australia’s place in the world (Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson’s First Contact, 1983). The audience for these documentaries was initially found in cinemas and filmmakers’ cooperatives, and at festivals and community screenings, but for funders and filmmakers, television increasingly seemed the way to reach a wider public. But the broadcasters needed convincing. Although the first program broadcast by SBS Television in 1980 was Peter Luck’s Who Are We?—a documentary about the history of Australian immigration—the network mainly screened international documentaries, and in its early stages lacked funding for in-house production or the purchase of independent work. With commercial television largely uninterested, despite the success of landmark projects such as Chris Noonan’s Stepping Out (1980) on the Seven Network on Boxing Day, 1981, the ABC became the focus of efforts to achieve the broadcast of independent documentary. Filmmakers concentrated on persuading the ABC to purchase completed films that had garnered international sales and success, such as Frontline (1979), David Bradbury’s portrait of war cameraman Neil Davis. Next, attention turned to securing a systematic pre-sale system. One step towards this was a documentary fellowship scheme jointly managed by the ABC and the AFC from 1984. Projects included films such as Landslides (Susan Lambert and Sarah Gibson, 1986) and All That is Solid (John Hughes, 1988), which pushed the limits of television documentary form. In 1987, the ABC set up a television documentary unit under Jonathan Holmes, with a brief to produce in-house documentaries and series such as

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television drama David Goldie’s Out of Sight, Out of Mind (1987), and to pre-purchase independent work. With the establishment of SBS Independent (SBSi, 1994) and its remit to commission independent filmmakers, television became the decisive outlet for Australian documentary and the programs that resulted tended to become less cinematic and more televisual. A set of interlocking institutions, schemes and programming arrangements, together with local content regulation, facilitated this shift. From 1987, the Australian National (later International) Documentary Conference (AIDC) brought together independent filmmakers and local and international broadcasters to trade in television documentaries. In 1988, the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) was set up and could only invest in documentaries with domestic broadcaster pre-sales—evidence of ‘market interest’. Documentary ‘accords’, developed by the FFC in 1991–92 and offered to all broadcasters, but only ever fully functional with the public broadcasters, were a mechanism to ensure a regular number of Australian independent productions. The Commonwealth government established the Audio Visual Copyright Society (known as Screenrights) to derive income for filmmakers from educational institutions recording television programs. Documentary is the largest single genre copied, comprising 28 per cent of copying in 2012–13. Ever-larger independent production companies and specialised documentary producers, such as Electric Pictures and Essential Media and Entertainment, sprang up to manage these institutions and schemes. If the late 1980s found documentary on television being carefully distinguished from a wider features category, a stand-alone form for which broadcast was the means of meeting a wider audience, the 2000s saw documentary largely folded back into a broader ‘factual’ programming category. This was linked to the international growth of pay television, where documentary-themed channels and infotainment generally became drivers of broadcaster profit. The rise of reality television and the trade in documentary formats such as Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC 2004–ongoing and 11 international variants) and The Family (Channel 4 UK and SBS, 2008– ) also raised questions about how exactly the genre should be defined. Industrially, series have overtaken one-offs as the staple of Australian documentary production. While the ABC and SBS still dominate annual hours tallies, commercial broadcasters are more than filling their documentary quotas, often with programs that owe much to reality television and docu-soap. The highest rating documentaries on Australian television continue to be locally produced (such as Border Security, Seven, 2004– ), but the audience for individual programs is tending to fall amidst the proliferation of digital television channels.

The documentary sector as a whole was only 3 per cent of Australian audio-visual output in 2007, but television documentary has been central to creating in Australia what Benedict Anderson terms the ‘imagined community’. Documentaries such as Living on the Fringe (Gian Carlo Manara, 1965), The Last Tasmanian (Tom Haydon, 1978), For Love or Money (Megan McMurchy, Margot Nash, Margot Oliver and Jeni Thornley, 1983) and The First Australians (Beck Cole and Rachel Perkins, 2008) have informed public debate, created mutual empathy and entertained the Australian community for almost six decades. REFs: A. Moran, Projecting Australia (1988); T. FitzSimons, P. Laughren and D. Williamson, Australian Documentary (2011); R. Raymond, Out of the Box (1999). TRISH FITZSIMONS and PAT LAUGHREN

TELEVISIO N D R AM A The goal of including Australian-made drama and local talent on television was expressed in 1956, even before television began. The Australian Broadcasting Act 1942 requested licensees to use Australian services in the production and presentation of programs. In 1954, the Royal Commission on Television stated that television stations should use Australian talent. The period from the late 1950s onwards witnessed policy intervention into Australian content on commercial television, as a means of securing a space for national culture, with television drama being the most contested and important genre for the next 40 years of broadcasting regulation and production. In the early days, television screens were dominated by American content—especially drama. The Senate Select Committee on the Encouragement of Australian Productions for Television (the Vincent Report) found that 97 per cent of drama on Australian television in the early 1960s was imported. In 1961, the Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) introduced percentage requirements for local content and quotas for peak viewing periods. At the end of the 1960s, content regulation required 50 per cent of all content to be local, with 12 hours of local content per month dedicated to peak viewing times. The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal first introduced the term ‘an Australian look’ for drama in 1977. Over the decades, that reflection of ourselves in drama has developed from assimilationist white Anglo sentimentality in shows such as Skippy (1966–70), Power Without Glory (1976) and The Sullivans (1976–83) to culturally diverse and gritty dramas such as Wildside (1997–99), The Secret Life of Us (2001–05) and Redfern Now (2012– ). However, it was the early and overwhelming success of Crawfords Productions’ police drama Homicide (Seven Network, 1964–75)

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television drama that proved a significant incentive for local production companies to partner with networks and produce more local drama. Crawfords went on to produce a slew of crime dramas in the 1960s and 1970s, with Division 4 (1969–75), Matlock Police (1971–75), Ryan (1973), Solo One (1976), Bluey (1976–77) and Cop Shop (1977–84). During the same period, the ABC had the country town serial Bellbird (1967–77). These early programs, while significant, certainly did not reflect post-war multiculturalism, and had more in common with a 1920s Australia than that of the 1970s. Shows like The Sullivans and A Country Practice (1981–94) harked back to the simple happy days of wartime and rural Australia. Australian drama of the 1970s did more edgy programming, however. Number 96 (1972–77) and The Box (1974–77) took a liberal attitude to sex, nudity and censorship, and enabled exploration of storylines involving gay, lesbian and bi-sexual characters. Prisoner (1979–84) also pushed the envelope with its gay themes and strong women. In the 1980s, drama expanded into the mini-series, with more than a hundred produced from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. They relied on iconic Australian historical events and the adaption of successful local novels. Examples include A Town Like Alice (1981), The Dismissal (1983), Vietnam (1987), Brides of Christ (1991), The Man From Snowy River (1993) and an adaptation of Colleen McCullough’s book The Thorn Birds (1983). While reflecting Australian to Australians was one motivation for the production of these dramas, the 10BA tax incentive scheme in the early 1980s was another. The era of the mini-series was a rich training ground for casts and crews and provided a smorgasbord of expensive Australian drama not seen since. The entry in the 1980s of two of our most successful exports—Neighbours (1985– ) and Home and Away (1988– )—reflected a suburban Australia identity and carefree lifestyle, one that was embraced by overseas viewers (particularly in the United Kingdom). Global investment in Australiana provided a push for series drama in the late 1980s and 1990s—possibly thanks to Paul Hogan and his 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. The Flying Doctors (1986–92) was produced at a time when Australian television series were attracting international interest. In 1994, the Keating Labor government’s Creative Nation initiative made two specific pledges to enhance contemporary and culturally diverse drama programming. SBS Television was provided with $13 million to leverage more than $45 million in new programming and the Commercial Television Production Fund was established to give Australians access to a wide range of high-quality Australian programs. SBS created a new production arm, SBS Independent (SBSi), which still makes multicultural

dramas like East West 101 (2007–11). Also in the 1990s, the ABC series Wildside drew on the grunge heritage of another ABC crime series, Phoenix (1992–93). Wildside’s inner-city themes and dirty filmmaking style was influenced by feature films from the early 1990s such as Death in Brunswick, Romper Stomper and Bad Boy Bubby. The other noteworthy element of Wildside was its engagement with the tensions and everyday life of a culturally diverse urban Australia. Actors of culturally diverse backgrounds (including Indigenous actors) began to be cast in everyday roles in mainstream drama, such as Aaron Pedersen in the Nine Network’s Water Rats (1996–2001). However, perhaps the most popular drama of this period was the ABC’s SeaChange (1998–2000), mixing elements of romance and comedy. Another ABC series, The Straits (2012), attempted to introduce the familiar tropes of the crime drama to the less familiar setting of the Torres Strait Islands; it rated poorly and was not renewed. In the 21st century, pay television has contributed to opportunities for Australian drama. Many of the dramas produced by pay television providers have been aimed at a particular generation, with Love My Way (2004–07), Tangle (2009–12) and The Slap (2011) appealing to forty-something viewers. Probably the most significant television drama in the last decade has been the Underbelly ‘real crime’ franchise, which began in 2008. It can be seen as an evolution from the ABC’s Wildside, based on a range of very identifiable local settings and actual criminals with media notoriety. Underbelly has garnered real success for the Nine Network, achieving audiences of two million people. Underbelly showed that Australians still want to see local stories and not just the endless ‘dramas’ of reality television. To a degree, the success of concurrent dramas, such as SBS’s East West 101 and Seven’s Packed to the Rafters (2008–13), has led to the most recent investments in drama like The Slap, Puberty Blues (2012– ) and Secrets and Lies (2014)—all moderately successful. The ABC has invested in Australian period crime dramas, including Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012– ) and The Doctor Blake Mysteries (2013– ). Drama in Australia began with a lack of any culturally diverse representation, resonating with post-war assimilation policy. This was followed by the problematic, where issues were explored from a paternal liberal axis—mostly by the mainstream looking at the margins (shows such as A Country Practice, The Flying Doctors and earlier episodes of Neighbours and Home and Away assumed these problematic portrayals), which reflected the policy turn of the 1970s to the era of multiculturalism. This was then fractured by the comedic, which defused the anxiety of the problematic, whether it related to a community from a diverse cultural or linguistic background, gay representation

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television magazines or the disabled—with comedy like Acropolis Now (1989–92) and then the scandalous Pizza (SBS, 2000–07). Finally, the banal and everyday portrayal has evolved and made it to television drama, with audiences interested in characters’ motivations, emotions, history and futures. Race and sexuality are no longer issues in their own right when it comes to Australian identity. How the future representations of Australian life and the ‘Australian look’ will develop as television drama evolves into something else remains to be seen. REFs: N. Herd, Networking (2012); A. McKee, Australian Television (2001); A. Moran, Australian Television Drama Series 1956–1981 (1989); T. O’Regan, Australian Television Culture (1993). HARVEY MAY

T E L E V I SI ON MAGAZI NES Less than a year after regular television broadcasting began in September 1956, Australia had its own dedicated television program guide. Television Preview, produced by the Television Owners Club of Australia, was launched in 1957. In Melbourne, Southdown Press, the magazine arm of News Limited, established TV-Radio Week in December 1957 as a counter to Listener In-TV. The long-running weekly broadsheet radio magazine published by the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) had recently changed its title and begun to incorporate television articles and programs. As the HWT controlled HSV7, the rival GTV9 decided to collaborate with Southdown to produce TV-Radio Week in order to provide publicity for its programs. In June 1958, the ABC launched TV News as a counterpart to the ABC Weekly. A little over a fortnight later, Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) launched its own guide, TV Times. TV Week, as Southdown’s magazine was now known, added a Sydney edition in July. Four competing weekly magazines—Television Preview, TV News, TV Times and TV Week—were unsustainable. ACP entered into a co-publishing deal with the ABC, which saw their respective magazines merged to become TV News-Times (soon simplified to TV Times). By the end of the year, Television Preview had been incorporated into TV Week, and the stage was set for a rivalry that would last for the next two decades. TV Week introduced a viewer-voted award in 1958, with the first recipients being In Melbourne Tonight hosts Graham Kennedy and Panda Lisner. Kennedy was given the honour of naming the awards, which he christened the ‘Logies’ (after John Logie Baird). TV Times would later create a rival award, the ‘Sammies’. TV Times entered the Melbourne market in August 1959, with both it and TV Week subsequently being published in each state as broadcasting began there. By 1961, there were editions covering every capital city except Hobart, which received Melbourne editions plus a local supplement.

In 1960, TV-Radio Tonight, which morphed into TV Guide, was launched in South Australia, where it maintained a circulation healthy enough to rival its two national competitors. Initially, TV Week and TV Times were largely equal, the primary difference being in their format. Editorially, TV Times was arguably more informative, and notably gave far more space—including featured covers—to ABC programs than its rival. Stylistically, TV Week soon began to edge ahead, adding matte colour internal pages in 1962. TV Times seemingly did little to keep up; when TV Week moved to a larger format (matching that of TV Times) in July 1968, it immediately looked superior to its rival, featuring glossy colour pages and a cleaner layout. Even when it became a full-colour publication, the quality of TV Times was inferior to that of TV Week. By 1971, TV Week could boast a national weekly circulation of 400,000. An attempt to launch a Melbourne edition of South Australia’s TV Guide in 1973 lasted little more than four months, with TV Week and TV Times effectively splitting the market for the remainder of the 1970s. TV Guide became TV-Radio Extra in August 1980. In 1979, Family Circle Publications introduced a local version of its American Family TV Guide. The following year, the ABC elected to end its agreement with ACP, which purchased the ABC’s interest and entered into a partnership with News Limited, with TV Times immediately being incorporated into TV Week. ACP and News Limited were equal partners in the joint venture. Family Circle soon sold the national TV Guide to ACP, and it too was incorporated into TV Week, which effectively had the national market to itself from that point on. In May 1980, ACP’s Australian Women’s Weekly began including a free television magazine as part of its publication. Family Circle followed suit in August 1980, and Woman’s Day introduced its own publication in 1981. Another attempt to float a national television magazine was made in 1984, when the Federal Publishing Company’s tabloid celebrity gossip magazine Star Enquirer was restyled to become TV Star, running until 1985. In Melbourne, the only stand-alone rival was the venerable Listener In-TV (now titled TV Scene), with circulation hovering around 60,000. However, after the News Limited takeover of the HWT in 1987, TV Scene was moved to Southdown Press under the cross-media ownership laws, and duly closed. TV Week’s circulation at this time was approximately 800,000, down from a mid-1980s peak of 850,000. Following a sharp decline in sales, Adelaide’s TV-Radio Extra was discontinued in 1988, and incorporated into the Sunday Mail’s free television guide, TV Plus. The 1990s saw TV Week lose significant circulation to an increasing number of these free magazine supplements, which were now included with most Sunday newspapers.

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telstra In 2002, ACP sought to end the partnership that was co-producing TV Week, then with a circulation of 265,000. Under a clause in the agreement, ACP was required to offer its percentage of the venture to Pacific Publications, for a pre-determined fee. If Pacific didn’t take up the option within a fortnight, it had to sell its share to ACP for the same sum. Pacific declined and TV Week was sold to ACP for $60 million, with the former TV Week staff at Pacific Publications immediately producing a rival guide, What’s on Weekly. A legal battle ensued over the rights to the Logie Awards, which finally went to ACP. The new publication lasted for 19 issues, the final few being heavily discounted in a forlorn attempt to gain sales. To date, this has been the last attempt to launch a national rival to TV Week. More recently, the proliferation of online program guides has made significant inroads into the magazine’s traditional market, while a noticeable bias towards Seven Network programs—in particular, teen-oriented soap Home And Away—has seen the magazine’s demographic narrow, with circulation now as low as 181,000. Currently, TV Week remains Australia’s only stand-alone weekly television magazine. CHRIS KEATING

T EL ST RA The Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) had responsibility for domestic Post, Telephone and Telegraph operations in Australia from Federation. In practice, international telegraph and telecommunications services were contracted to Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) in 1922 and service were provided by AWA between 1926 and 1946, when the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) was formed to take over the international telecommunications service. The Australian Telecommunications Commission (ATC) was formed in 1975 when the PMG split its services, with mail going to Australia Post and domestic telecommunications to Telecom Australia. In 1989, the ATC became the Australian Telecommunications Corporation but continued trading as Telecom Australia. OTC and Telecom Australia merged in 1992 as part of the start of a ‘managed duopoly’ to form the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation, renamed ‘Telstra’ in 1993—although Telstra branding was only used domestically from 1995. The Australian satellite operator AUSSAT was granted a telecommunications licence and offered for sale: it was bought by Optus. Optus resold Telstra’s analogue mobile service and provided competitive fixed-line services. Telstra, Optus and Vodafone each provided digital mobile services after Vodafone won the third mobile licence in 1993. Hutchison has provided 2G services with the ‘Orange’ CDMA network in Sydney and Melbourne and 3G

services branded as ‘3’. Telstra initially entered into a joint venture with Hutchinson to deliver 3G services. Hutchison and Vodafone merged in 2009 and now trade as Vodafone. Telstra built a second-generation (2G) digital mobile network using the GSM standard and replaced the analogue network with a different technology (CDMA) 2G digital mobile network in 1999. After the launch of its NextG network using third-generation (3G) UMTS technology in 2006, Telstra closed the CDMA network in 2008. Telstra has continued with the delivery of mobile voice and data services, and now has an extensive network using 3G and Long Term Evolution (4G) services. Telstra uses its large optical fibre-based backbone network to provide data, internet and telephony services. It acquired a substantial portion of Australia’s domestic internet in 1995 when the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee ceased providing commercial internet access. Telstra’s local loop has remained mainly copper, although it also has the most extensive hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) cable network which passes about 2.5 million homes and is used to deliver Foxtel services. Telstra owns 50 per cent of Foxtel with the balance held by News Corp. It provides fixed broadband services using the copper network and the HFC. Telstra is the leading provider of fixed broadband services using the technology known as Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL). Telstra’s broadband over HFC service uses Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification version 3 (DOCSIS 3.0). Telstra was part privatised in three tranches. One-third of Telstra was sold in 1997, a further 16 per cent in 1999 and 31 per cent in 2006. The balance of 17 per cent was held by the Future Fund (a sovereign wealth fund to finance public servant superannuation). The Future Fund has sold down its stake to a level that is not ‘overweight’. In 2011, Telstra entered into definitive agreements with NBN Co and the government to lease and sell infrastructure required to construct the National Broadband Network. In 2012, Telstra gave a Structural Separation Undertaking (SSU) to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which committed Telstra to become a wholesale customer of NBN Co and not to use its own local loop infrastructure to provide both wholesale and retail services. The SSU has extensive migration provisions and there is a Migration Plan, which was also accepted by the ACCC. The SSU positions Telstra as a retail-focused business in the provision of fixed-line services as well as being the largest provider of mobile services competing with Optus and Vodafone. Telstra offers a range of retail media services that are usually bundled with voice and internet access services. These include packages that use Internet Protocol (IP) delivery using the Telstra T-Box as well as Foxtel services. The Foxtel

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theatre reviewing services delivered to wireless devices (such as Foxtel Go, Presto and Foxtel Play) and set-top boxes (Foxtel on demand services) do not incur download charges when they are delivered using the Telstra network. REFs: J. Given, ‘Talking Over Water: History, Wireless and the Telephone’, MIA, 125 (2007); M. McCutcheon and J. Given, ‘Audiences as Consumers: Broadcasting Meets Telecoms’, Telecommunications Jnl of Australia, 59(3) (2009). ROB NICHOLLS

T H E ATRE REVI E W I NG Australia’s first theatre ‘critics’ were government officials. Commenting on a performance of George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer on 4 June 1789, Captain Watkin Tench noted that some of the actors ‘acquitted themselves with great spirit’. The Judge-Advocate, David Collins, reviewing a performance in the colony’s first playhouse in 1796, was less concerned with the performances of the actors than with the unlawful behaviour of the audience. While theatrical performances continued until 1804 or 1805, they received little local publicity—perhaps reflecting successive governors’ sensitivities to the existence of a playhouse in what was intended as a place of punishment. In the late 1820s, as the convict proportion of the population diminished, critics argued for the need to re-establish theatre as a cultural institution that provided intellectual and moral stimulation. In 1832, Governor Richard Bourke sanctioned the establishment of a playhouse. The sporadic and anonymous reviews that appeared in the Sydney press in the 1830s were often critical of the inferior performances of the actors and the rowdy behaviour of audiences. They also disapproved of some of the plays chosen. In the 1840s, the poor performances by actors and riotous behaviour of audiences continued to draw the censure of Melbourne critics, but in Sydney the emergence of a repertoire grounded in Shakespeare and opera, combined with higher quality acting and more attentive audiences, led reviewers to claim that the colonial stage had finally emerged as a refined institution. After the gold rushes, Melbourne replaced Sydney as Australia’s theatrical centre. This period also witnessed the emergence of publications providing space for theatre material, including those that specialised in theatre programs and reviews. Both in Sydney and Melbourne, publishers of dailies like Sydney Morning Herald and the Argus also produced weeklies, namely the Australasian and the Sydney Mail. Specific theatre journals included Entr’acte (1861), Green Room (1863), Lorgnette: A Journal of Amusements (1876–98), and later, Theatre Magazine (1904–23). A number of colonial poets and novelists—including Henry Kendall and Marcus Clarke—worked occasionally as drama critics, but the most influential reviewers

were Dr James Edward Neild (Australasian) and James Smith (Argus) in Melbourne and F.C. Brewer and Gerald Marr Thompson (both Sydney Morning Herald). Sara Jenny Fischer, who from 1879 wrote music and drama reviews for the Sydney Morning Herald and Sydney Mail, was Australia’s first well-known female theatre reviewer. These influential reviewers were united in their conservative views. They supported the notion of high culture as morally and aesthetically superior, and believed that theatre had an important role to play in nurturing an educated colonial elite. Neild was critical of the traditional declamatory style of acting and favoured a more realistic approach. World War I cut off Australia’s access to overseas productions, and was followed by the arrival of ‘the talkies’. Both diminished the role and influence of theatre in Australia. With the larger operations like J.C. Williamson and Fullers focusing on musical comedy and vaudeville, it was left to small, mostly amateur theatrical outfits like Allan Wilkie’s Shakespearean company, Gregan McMahon’s and Doris Fitton’s repertory companies and the New Theatre movement to perform classic and contemporary drama. Mainstream critics ignored New Theatre performances. Although they praised the repertory and Shakespeare companies for their attempts to introduce ‘intelligence and literacy’, they condemned them for their acting and production standards. As the status of theatre fell, so did that of reviewers. (Sir) Paul Hasluck, who reviewed for the West Australian between 1933 and 1938, was regarded as the last of the classical reviewers. In Sydney, theatre reviewers wrote in the long shadow of Neville Cardus, the Herald’s music reviewer during World War II. In the 1940s, Leslie Rees led a number of critics in lobbying for the re-establishment of an Australian theatre. He called for local playwrights to write plays that focused on their own culture and environment, but related local to universal experience. Vance Palmer and A.A.  Phillips proposed the establishment of a subsidised national company as well as statebased troupes with repertoires that included Shakespeare, Eugene O’Neill and the works of local writers. This agenda anticipated the direction that the Australian stage was to follow in the 1950s and 1960s. Hugh Hunt, the artistic director of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust (est. 1954), disliked Australian plays, with their plebeian language and ‘slice of life’ themes. But the Trust’s staging of The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll led to an explosion in Australian playwriting and performance. It also stimulated a revival of the craft of theatre reviewing, and new journals like Nation and Theatregoer appeared. The Sydney Morning Herald brought Lindsay Browne back from New York in 1946 to review drama, music and

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film, and John (‘Griff’) Griffen-Foley reviewed drama, ballet and film for the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs (1954–69). Bruce Grant (1949–57) and Geoffrey Hutton (1959–74) were influential Age theatre critics. However, the two reviewers who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as perhaps the most influential of their era were Katharine Brisbane and H.G. Kippax. Kippax wrote theatre reviews for Nation before becoming the Herald’s drama critic. A cultural conservative, he admired Shakespeare’s plays not only because of their intrinsic merit, but because they provided actors with effective training for contemporary drama. He appraised the plays of Ray Lawler, Alan Seymour and Patrick White, but was critical of the works of subsequent Australian writers. As national theatre critic for the Australian (1967–74), Brisbane exerted greater influence than Kippax, and was more radical in her understanding of the role of theatre. Brisbane accurately predicted the direction in which Australian theatre was headed. The actors and directors setting the agenda at the Pram Factory in Melbourne and the Nimrod in Sydney in the late 1960s and early 1970s were bent on breaking down the formal threeact structure and the barrier between high and popular culture. All the major companies now included Australian works in their repertoires, a development supported by the most influential critics such as the Age’s Leonard Radic. The boom in Australian theatre was accompanied by the launch of new magazines like Theatre Australia (1976–82) and Australian Theatre Record (1987–96). In the 1990s, the capital dailies began to include dedicated arts/ entertainment pages. Yet since the 1980s the influence of theatre critics has declined, a direct corollary of the blending of high culture into entertainment, the emergence of a more educated audience, the widespread view that aesthetic judgements are always subjective and the opportunities provided by the new social media for anyone to become a public critic. Alison Croggon, who reviewed theatre for the Bulletin and the Australian before being appointed performance critic-at-large for ABC Online, argues that the internet offers informed criticism and that newspaper reviewers can no longer claim to be exclusively authoritative. Critics of mainstream press reviews have also suggested that these have become uncritically promotional as a means of ensuring advertising revenue from performance companies. REFs: K. Brisbane, Not Wrong but Different (2005); P. Parsons, A Companion to Theatre in Australia (1995). RICHARD WATERHOUSE

T HI S DAY TONIGHT The first nightly national current affairs program on Australian television, This Day Tonight was

the brainchild of Ken Watts, federal director of ABC Television, who believed a live and lively current affairs show in peak viewing time could have an impact on the ABC’s dismal ratings. The first edition of This Day Tonight appeared on 10 April 1967. It was over-prepared, and full of lame jokes and stunts—many of them performed by Bill Peach, the first presenter. The second program was everything the first wasn’t—lively, topical, fast-moving and offensive to the great and powerful. It included a bombshell prediction: that the government was going to drop the chairman of the ABC, Dr James Darling. The story angered the Holt Coalition government and infuriated the ABC’s management, which had never permitted any discussion of Aunty’s own affairs. This Day Tonight was engaged in the first of many battles it would wage against authority. The program was not afraid to confront or uncover anything it deemed unfair or shady, including a procession of con artists. It was also willing to ask the hard questions of politicians and other figures of authority. The public became interested in this unpredictable newcomer, whose name they quickly shortened to TDT. At the end of 1967, Sydney people rated TDT their favourite show, and the program continued to win a large share of the audience for its first five years. The commercial television networks then emulated TDT by starting their own prime-time current affairs programs. Although it officially ended in 1978, TDT lives on at ABC Television as 7.30. TDT was an important training ground for some of Australian television’s leading current affairs reporters, presenters and producers, among them Gerald Stone (who would go on to produce 60 Minutes), Mike Willesee, Stuart Littlemore, George Negus, Caroline Jones, Mike Carlton and Richard Carleton. TDT contained many strands that later evolved into programs like Media Watch and The Chaser. If there was an underlying theme, it was the public’s right to hear multiple points of view on any topic. TDT was also willing to bring an irreverent and witty approach to stories. And if a prominent figure declined to appear on the show, the presenter did not hesitate to say so—with the camera sometimes panning to an empty chair to reinforce the fact. If TDT changed the face of Australian television, it also changed Australian attitudes—its 1971 debate about the controversial Vietnam War is one example, with the show interviewing draft resisters in the studio while police waited outside to arrest them. Critics said it was subversive and illegal; admirers said it was free speech in action. During its time on air, TDT won numerous awards, including three Logies. A glow of nostalgia surrounds the program today. It was a defining program for a generation of baby boomers, and set a high standard for current

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affairs on television—one that continues on the ABC right up to the present day. REFs: K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983); B. Peach, This Day Tonight (1992). BILL PEACH*

T H IS I S YOUR L I F E This is Your Life is a docu-soap cum chat-show program that surprises celebrity guests and brings them into the studio for the presentation of their life story. Since its Australian debut in 1975, This is Your Life has featured more than 400 Australians. The program was created in 1948 by Ralph Edwards as a US radio show, moving to NBC television in 1952 and BBC television in 1955. The Australian version was first broadcast on the Seven Network. This is Your Life has had five hosts: Mike Willesee (1975), Englishman Digby Wolfe (1976), Roger Climpson (1977–80), Mike Munro (1995–2008) and Eddie McGuire (2011). Having honoured 217 Australians under producer Bill Lovelock, This is Your Life moved to the Nine Network in 1995. In 2011, Nine gave This is Your Life a revamp, hosting the program from Melbourne’s Crown Casino with a new set, big band and live audience. With the network hoping to attract a younger, more contemporary audience, the new season was met with mixed reviews. Notable guests on the program have included entertainers such as Peter Allen, Olivia Newton-John and Dame Joan Sutherland; politicians such as Neville Bonner, Don Dunstan and Sir William McMahon; sports stars such as Betty Cuthbert, Evonne Goolagong Cawley and Greg Norman; media figures such as Ita Buttrose, Bert Newton and John Laws; and other figures such as army surgeon Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop and entrepreneur Alan Bond. A compilation based on the Australian series, edited by David Mitchell, was published in 1998. JOHANNA DORE and ALAN McKEE

T IME A ND S PA CE The most famous Australian spatial metaphor, ‘the tyranny of distance’, invented by the historian Geoffrey Blainey in 1966, became an all-purpose catchphrase to explain not only Australia’s geographical position but also its culture, economy and politics. Whatever the circumstances, they could be explained by Australia’s apparent isolation from its European heritage and, later still, its political reliance on the United States. The sub-title of Blainey’s book says it all: ‘How distance shaped Australia’s history’. The idea that this one aspect of space is the overall determinant of historical process conveniently ignores Australia’s geographic location and proximity to Asia. Little attention has been paid

to an even more recent metaphor: ‘the world is shrinking’, which on the surface appears to be about spatial relations but actually refers to the time an action takes—whether that is to travel by jet to Europe or receive a message via the internet. Space has been problematic for Australians since the foundation of the modern nation-state. It is a demographic fact that Europeans have settled close to the shores of the island continent, but have drawn their inspiration from its ‘dead heart’, mythologising the bushman and his ideology expressed graphically in the literature of the Bulletin school, best exemplified in the poems of Henry Lawson and the art of Arthur Streeton, and historicised in the work of Russel Ward. Sparsely populated, seemingly barren and unknowable, the vast bulk of the Australian geographic space was inhabited by the original occupants, who didn’t exist legally until Australia realised it required a degree of antiquity in order to imagine itself fully as a country. Thus space has always been problematic in the construction of the national narrative—viewed as something to be conquered. In many respects, the media’s role in Australian history has been to conquer space: to end the sense of isolation and to traverse the distance between the margins and the centre. There has been a particular trajectory to this conquest. In the first place, railways not only connected capitals to the productive hinterlands but also standardised time: train timetables—required to ensure safety—meant that people in Kalgoorlie followed the same time regime as those in Perth. The telegraph, closely associated with the introduction and expansion of railways, performed a similar function—albeit on a larger scale. The telegraph not only connected Sydney and Melbourne, but also London to both, as well as linking the cities to the outback, with significant economic consequences. Squatters no longer had to wait three months to discover whether they were solvent, because the telegraph tied Australia firmly to global markets for commodities. In The Wired Nation (1996), K.T. Livingstone makes a compelling case to regard the history of Australia’s Federation as the history of technological nationalism. The early modern history of Australia is a period where Australians came to terms with the new communication technologies, which in fact ended ‘the tyranny of distance’. Canadian historian Harold Innis argued persuasively in The Bias of Communication (1952) that space and time are the two axes long which civilisation develops, and that this development is closely allied to the predominant communication technology of an era: civilisations that were static and time bound were dominated by immovable communication technologies, while those characterised by portable means of

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trade press communication became space oriented. It has become commonplace to argue that the world has shrunk as a consequence of the introduction of space-binding technologies such as radio, television, satellites and computers. This appears to be particularly true for Australia. During the inter-war years, time calls became a standard feature of Australian radio. In Sydney by 1938, 2UE was commencing its broadcasts with The Alarm Clock at 6 a.m., while 2SM broadcast the GPO chimes at 7 a.m. In the push to regulate listening behaviour, and to package parcels of time to sell to advertisers, programmers exhibited an increasing concern about punctuality. Radio was geared to the rhythms dictated by work, household and school. Radio has now become part of the fabric of modern life, but it was initially considered ‘a marvel’, an ‘unseen voice’ emerging from the ether. Radio transcended space, making people feel connected to their capital city and even to Britain. Radio developed vast networks based on technological innovation, moving from the circulation of huge acetate records, through wire services, microwave links, satellite connections and ultimately the internet, with each step representing the further conquest of Australian space. A similar pattern emerged with respect to television, which was initially a highly regionalised medium, with true networks only emerging after the introduction of satellite communication. Before that, various technologies were used to link Australia’s urban centres with the rural areas, as television stations were established throughout Australia between 1960 and 1993. Coaxial cable, microwave line-sight links across the continent and the introduction of videotape, which ended the reliance on 16mm film, helped form recognisable networks—particularly the ABC, enabling it to fulfil its charter. The improvements in technology presented particular political and commercial problems. Politicians, often responding to the demands of their electorates, sought to prevent the creation of monopolies—or at best duopolies—among the television networks, with legislation defining markets and audiences, and prescribing what share of this a network could claim. In short, the technological progress of television had created a situation where centralisation and standardisation made eminent commercial sense but were politically unappealing. Over a period of 40 years, Australia moved from being a regionalised market for television to one with the potential to service the whole of Australia from a single office in Sydney. This situation was confirmed with the introduction of satellite broadcasting. The problem of Australia’s vast distances had been solved by the introduction of the time-delay mechanism. However, such views ignore the significance of time as a determinant of culture, civilisation and history. Harold Innis was aware of the problems

of undue emphasis on space when he released A Plea for Time (1950). He observed that the fashionable mind was a time-denying mind. The one significant work on the importance time in the Australian narrative is Graeme Davison’s The Unforgiving Minute (1993). Essentially, Davison’s book is a history of how Australians adjusted to the introduction of international standard time advocated by Sir Stamford Flemming, another Canadian, and finally introduced in 1912. In agreeing to observe the protocols of standardised time, Australia was effectively divided into three time zones, which were grudgingly accepted and have been subverted ever since due to the inconsistent adoption of daylight saving, thus denying the conquest of distance expressed in standardised television broadcasting. In March 1964, J. Russell Wiggins, editor of the Washington Post, stated that for geographical reasons a national Australian newspaper was ‘physically not feasible’. Four months later, the Australian proved him wrong. Overcoming the problems of distribution and time differences, it developed two editions: 11 p.m. for Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania and inland New South Wales; and 1.30 a.m. for Sydney and Melbourne. As the 21st century dawned, the media’s role in telling the time underwent another fundamental transformation. Podcasting, along with digital radio and television, allowed audiences to listen to programs of their own choice at times of their own choosing. REFs: L. Edmonds and B. Shoesmith, ‘Making Culture out of the Air—Radio and Television’, in G. Bolton et al., Farewell Cinderella (2003); H. Mayer, The Press in Australia (1968 edn); A. Moyal, Clear Across Australia (1984). BRIAN SHOESMITH

T ODD, S IR CHA RL E S see Overland Telegraph Line

TR AD E P R ESS When the number of Australian periodicals doubled between 1890 and 1922, trade and commercial publications provided the bulk of the increase to reach a total of 139 titles. The 1930s Depression shook out 105, but there were still 260 in 1947 and 464 by 1964. Trade periodicals exist because manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers need to inform each other about innovations, and their availability and prices. The process was exemplified by the Journal of Commerce, which began in 1854 as a shipping register. In 1870, the diversity of commodities encouraged its publisher to print the Australasian Trade Review and Manufacturers Journal as one of the first periodicals to service wholesalers, agents and retailers; its advertising content grew to 60 per cent by 1882. During the next 20 years, the arrival of

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trade press branded products in the areas of hardware, clothing, food, beverages and medicinals led to the launch of rival periodicals for each of the trades that advertised in the Review, which by 1903 had shrunk to 20  pages, with only one of advertising; it was absorbed back into the Journal of Commerce. The inaugural editorial of the Australasian Hairdressers’ Journal and Tobacco Trade Review in 1900 contended that: ‘In these fast-living days of ours each particular interest has its “organ” of communication between its own circle, and those beyond its perimeter.’ Indeed, most journals came out on behalf of trade associations. Once launched, a publication could strengthen the parent body. For example, the staff of the Australasian Bakers and Confectioners Journal organised that trade’s first national conference in 1904. Starting in 1911 for the Victorian Grocers’ Association, the Southern Grocer recognised that ‘the trade press is the advance of all organisation movement to-day the world over’. The core of that organisation was price-fixing, which must ‘always remain the very first and foremost plank in any fighting platform worthy of the name, and hang the public!’ Trade journals were also backed by the firms they serviced, such as when Prouds and Angus & Coote underwrote the Commonwealth Jeweller and Watchmaker (1915). Trade journals earned less from subscriptions than from advertisers, who found it more effective to pay a premium to reach 500 subscribers with proven purchasing power than to access a circulation of 50,000. Firms also took advertisements to support their trade organisation or to square a chum. However, sales and subscriptions do not necessarily measure readership, and process engravers were sceptical throughout the 1930s about promoting their services to rural and suburban printers who did not read the trade journals. The proliferation of trade journals in the late 1920s allowed what Newspaper News described as ‘The Unscrupulous Publisher’ to profit from a journal that was ‘either “written” with the scissors, or complied by cheap, journalistic hacks’. Publishers also launched magazines to fill up slack times in their print shops. Since almost no printer employed a full-time accountant before the 1950s, costings were woeful; they escaped scrutiny because so few printers were public companies. Postal arrangements allowed almost any British periodical to be delivered in Australia for the penny post paid at ‘home’. However, despite this ‘dumping’ of UK publication into Australia, the appeal of the local versions was their summarising of the overseas trade press. American journals were available only by subscription until the 1920s, when G. Jervis Manton imported titles on ‘Advertising and Business, Mining and Engineering, Dress and Fashion, Office System, Factory Organisation’.

Why do trade periodicals appear when they do? The Industrial Australian and Mining Standard started in 1888, the year BHP issued shares. Three years later, the Pastoralists’ Review united the squatters against the shearers’ insurrection. The London publishers of the Draper of Australasia (1901) hoped to profit from ‘the change of conditions of business caused by the establishing of free-trade throughout Australia’. Media periodicals matched new media, printing techniques and mass marketing. The arrival of plastics transformed all mass products, and added rivals the Australian Plastics Journal (1946) and Practical Plastics (1950). The pattern of proprietorship was diverse. Some houses produced similar journals and economised by carrying the same editorials and news items in the same typeface and column-widths. J.C. Macartie managed monthlies for cordial-makers, confectioners and bakers, but also the leather trades. Peter Guthrie Tait (1880–1953) started with Mining and Engineering Review in 1908; he later divided it into the monthlies Chemical Engineering and Mining Review and the Commonwealth Engineer, before adding a weekly newsletter, Tenders. In 1924, he began Electrical Engineer and Merchandiser, and finally Manufacturing and Management in 1946. George A. Taylor (1872–1928) founded five journals in the domain of building, town planning and engineering with his architect wife, Florence (1869–1969). Their Building Publishing Co. Ltd ran 11 titles, including the Radio Journal of Australia and Australian Home, which incorporated Real Estate and Soldier. On George’s death, Florence closed eight titles but continued to edit Building (later Building, Lighting and Engineering), Construction and the Australasian Engineer. The trade journals provided berths for men of letters. In 1891, Richard Twopenny co-founded the Australasian Pastoralists’ Review with a literary section to rival the Bulletin’s ‘Red Page’, while the editor of the Australasian Builder and Contractors’ News, James Green, was documenting the Sydney art scene. As well as resisting British imports, local journals voiced interstate rivalries. Victoria’s electrical trade supported its own journal from 1924, and in 1936 the Queensland Electrical and Radio World appeared as ‘yet another outcome of the recent moves from Sydney’ to treat the rest of Australia as its outer suburbs. United Press in Perth had the west sewn up in the 1920s by publishing for farmers, grocers, motorists and Masonic Lodges. New Zealand had to be content with ‘Australasian’ in the title of assorted trade journals. Newspaper News observed that trade journals, ‘to be of any real use’, must be ‘written by men who not only understand trade conditions, but who also have some grasp of economics, industrial organisation, banking, currency,

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traffic reporting national finance, and so on’. In 1889, one had scorned US ‘grandmotherly legislation’ for pure food. The founder of a chain edited the People’s Weekly for the colliery-owners during the 1923 NSW lockout. Many campaigned for ‘sane optimism’ to counter ‘Depression propaganda’, or linked Bolshevism to racial pollution. Hence the middle classes were not as forgotten as (Sir) Robert Menzies declared when marshalling anti-Labor forces in 1942. The Tailors’ Art Journal and Cutters’ Review closed in 1913, with moans against the ‘cringing, scorpulated mind’ in the trade against advertising itself. However, the Tailor appeared later that year with a third of its pages taken by advertisements before seeing the advertising share of the journal grow to 45 per cent with promotions of food and alcohol. Because trade journals could not produce full-colour advertisements, clothiers distributed tear-sheets from the Australian Women’s Weekly. Few circulation figures are reliable before the 1960s, when readership of Australian Fashion News increased from 3750 to 5540, while that of Tailor and Men’s Wear plummeted from over 5000 to below 2000. Retail Week fluctuated around 20,000—the largest subscriber base—followed by Building and Decorating Materials at 10,000 and Australasian Hardware Retailer—which had been redesigned in response to an ABC Television program for handymen—at 8000. Trade journals today are brighter in appearance, breezier in content and accessible online. Analysis and technical advice have mostly disappeared, with some going to academic journals. Hard copies look like printed web pages, with snippets in place of the ocean of expertise that confronted readers before the 1970s. HUMPHREY McQUEEN

T RAFFI C RE PO RTING Traffic reporting in Australia preceded the invention of motor vehicles. In the second half of the 19th century, metropolitan, regional and suburban newspapers regularly reported on congestion and collisions involving bicycles, carriages and conveyances carrying people and livestock. There were reports and letters about road conditions, the effects of floods on roads and the need for bridges in various locations. The rise of the motor car meant that until the 1950s, there were frequent newspaper reports of events where congestion was likely to occur and arrangements that were being made, often around horse racing events. The West Australian reported in 1945: ‘In an attempt to relieve traffic congestion after the races and to permit a free flow of traffic city bound, two streets will be closed for a time after the meeting.’ Letters and articles called for improvements in various locations around major centres. For example, a letter in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1923

complained about the ‘disgraceful congestion of traffic caused by peanut barrows at the Stadium’. There were also cries for greater care on the part of motorists, debate about speed limits and the need for new rules. As early as 1938, the number of motor vehicles was reported by the Camperdown Chronicle in Victoria to be increasing by 50,000 annually as the ‘essential usefulness of the car’ was no longer questioned. Two-way radios were installed in police cars, ambulances, fire engines and taxis during the 1950s. Radio employees monitored scanners for information about crashes, explosions, fires and the progress of ambulances after major events. Collision reports in newspapers often included the names and addresses of those killed, injured or charged, and the likely causes of the crash. Radio would also report major collisions as news stories and include details of those involved. This was stopped in the 1970s due to the distress caused to family members who may not have been informed. By the 1960s, several radio stations were providing peak-hour traffic information, in part to demonstrate radio’s usefulness compared with the new medium of television. As the spread of car radios increased, radio could provide upto-date information directly to drivers in their cars. Such information was sometimes offered in conjunction with other organisations—for example, in Brisbane 4BH partnered with the Royal Automobile Club of Queensland. In Sydney, 2UE’s breakfast host, Gary O’Callaghan, had special landline connections with operational and emergency centres installed. Dedicated police media officers were employed to convey reliable and prompt news to the public. Meanwhile, the Australian Women’s Weekly was including ‘Good Motoring’ guides with advice for its readers (for example, from 1960: ‘Don’t hang transistor radios on the rear vision window of the car’). In the 1960s, 3XY Melbourne and 2SM Sydney pioneered traffic reports by helicopter; in doing so, they also secured an additional avenue for breaking news stories. Thirty years later, the Australian Traffic Network (ATN), modelled on a Milwaukee (US) enterprise, was established in Sydney with one helicopter and two fixed-wing aircraft. ATN’s services were to expand to other states, and also to television, with stations paying a fee for reports based on their market share. Road authorities have set up traffic control centres where reporters can be stationed to provide regular updates. These centres, equipped with camera views in major areas of congestion around cities, provide continual updates via internet sites feeding information to computers, mobile devices and radio stations. Television news reports on breakfast programs offer regular traffic updates with visuals from helicopters, and road authorities have

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travel reporting smartphone apps giving up-to-date information on road incidents. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); http://www.trafficnet.com.au. SARAH REDSHAW

T R AV EL REPORT I NG The European history of Australia was profoundly affected by travel writing, beginning with the work of William Dampier. During the 19th century, a number of popular novelists travelled to Australia and wrote insightful travel books about the experience. The most impressive were Anthony Trollope, who wrote Australia and New Zealand (published in London in 1873), and Mark Twain, whose oft-quoted Following the Equator appeared in 1897. Trollope was a regular contributing travel writer to newspapers in both Australia and Britain. In 1871–72, he wrote a series of letters commenting on life in the colonies, which were published in London’s Daily Telegraph; Australia and New Zealand was also serialised in the Australasian. When he returned in 1875, he wrote a series of 20 letters for the Liverpool Mercury in England. Travel writing continued through the 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was most commonly recorded in books, personal journals and diaries. The arrival of radio in Australia in the 1920s saw occasional travel talks—for example, in 1927, Theosophist Hilda Wood lectured on Sydney’s 2GB about the manners and customs of women she had met in the countries she had visited. From the 1930s, popular non-fiction writers with high profiles, such as Frank Clune, Ernestine Hill and Ion Idriess, were often invited to contribute travel articles to magazines and newspapers, ranging from the Bulletin and Smith’s Weekly to Man and Walkabout. Clune could also be heard on radio—first on 2KY Sydney, then on the ABC, where Roaming Round Australia (1945–57) boasted an audience of one million. Walkabout published travel articles by later writers such as Keith Dunstan and Patsy Adam-Smith. A decade after Walkabout’s demise in 1974, Australian Geographic emerged, and is still published today. By the 1950s, travel writing had become a small and integrated part of the increasingly successful mass-circulation magazines, including popular men’s magazines like Australasian Post. The Australian Women’s Weekly had a weekly ‘Traveller’s Tale’, and launched the successful ‘Australian Women’s Weekly World Discovery Tours’ in 1966; Australian Consolidated Press bought into World Travel Headquarters Pty Ltd in 1959. Australian editions of magazines such as Rolling Stone, Penthouse and Playboy also accepted long-form travel journalism. Some airline magazines, including Panorama

(1950–98) and Flight Deck (1986–94) carried pieces that were humorous and off-beat, and not advertorial. However, today’s style of travel reporting, in the sense of a separate and dedicated travel section in a newspaper or a magazine-style program on television, is a recent phenomenon. The Sydney Morning Herald’s first travel section was known as Travel and Leisure. It first appeared on 25 May 1989, and was described in publicity as a ‘new weekly supplement taking you to top destinations, in Australia and abroad, on and off the beaten track’. When the newspaper moved to its new printing plant in western Sydney in March 1996, it proudly announced that a ‘new colourful Travel section is doubling in size and moving to our weekend edition’. It was targeted reporting for an increasingly travel-obsessed generation of baby boomers. The growth of television magazine travel reporting started as recently as 1987, with the ABC’s lifestyle series Holiday. On commercial television, travel magazine-style shows started in the early 1990s. Getaway started the Nine Network in 1992. The following year, the Seven Network launched The Great Outdoors, which was so popular that in 2002 it expanded from a 30-minute program on a Tuesday at 8 p.m. to occupy 60 minutes on Monday nights at 7.30 p.m. It ran until 2009. For 20 years, former cricketer Mike Whitney has been hosting Sydney Weekender on the Seven Network. Prior to the weekly shows with regular presenters, television travel reporting had largely been the work of enthusiastic sole reporters and filmmakers. Possibly the first example of Australian television travel reporting was Australian Walkabout, made in the 1950s by Charles Chauvel Productions for BBC Television. (There had been an ABC Radio series of the same name made by Colin Simpson a decade earlier.) The 13-part television series was written, produced and narrated by famous Australian filmmakers Charles and Elsa Chauvel, and shown in the United Kingdom in colour. ABC Television broadcast the series in black and white in 1958–59. Mike and Mal Leyland hosted Ask the Leyland Brothers, focusing on their travels across Australia and New Zealand, on the Nine Network in 1976–80. Shows like In the Wild with Harry Butler (1976–81) mixed travel with history and wildlife. In 1975–76, Bill Peach— the hugely popular host of the ABC current affairs program This Day Tonight—produced a 52-part series titled Peach’s Australia, described as a ‘travelogue cum history series’. A recent example of this personal lifestyle-travel genre was the 13-part series, A River Somewhere (1997–98), in which comedians Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner travelled to places they believed were ideal for fly fishing. Contemporary travel writing is, sadly, largely driven by the power of the travel industry.

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Symbolic of this is the fact that the Australian Society of Travel Writers (ASTW)—once, as the name suggests, a society of like-minded travel writers—has expanded its membership to tourism representatives and public relations people specialising in travel. In 2013, the ASTW website listed 310 members, of whom 144 identified themselves as PR or tourism representatives. Increasingly, as media budgets shrink, travel writing is funded or sponsored by local and state tourism authorities, and often by specific destinations seeking favourable publicity. Magazines such as Traveller (1890–1905), published by the Commercial Travellers’ Association of Victoria, have been succeeded by specialist titles such as Travel and Living (2004– ) and Travel Weekly (2006– ). Adventure travel magazines include Get Lost (2004– ), an international title published in Melbourne, Outer Edge (2007– ) and Australian Geographic Outdoor (2009– ). Increasingly, travel writers have augmented their incomes from traditional outlets by moving into the online space. Ben Groundwater, who has written for newspapers ranging from the Sun-Herald to FHM, has since 2006 been writing a weekly blog for Fairfax Media, the Backpacker. The challenge for travel bloggers is to be paid for their writing. As travel writing and reporting have become increasingly important as a lucrative source of advertising revenue for media organisations, the prevailing styles have narrowed. Many readers and viewers now see travel television programs and sections of newspapers as an arm of the travel PR industry rather than locations for balanced reporting. Gone are the quirky styles of Twain and Trollope. They have been replaced by hard facts, costings, available accommodation and eating options, ‘how to’ advice and guides that are quick overviews of destinations—the written equivalent of a hasty day trip. Invariably—because the writers’ expenses have been paid—the stories are positive rather than objective and analytic. REFs: D. Clark and S. Samuelson, 50 Years (2006); P. Rolfe, The Journalistic Javelin 1880–1980 (1979). BRUCE ELDER

T RUT H Launched in Sydney in 1890 as a weekly, for a century Truth remained unique in Australia for its lurid muck-raking and scandal-mongering. Its specialties were crime, politics, sport, sex and the divorce courts—a formula that made it a key player in Australian tabloid journalism. Its initiators were Sydney businessmen and political identities who had been embroiled in scandals of their own. The Sunday newspaper’s founder, William Willis, was a member of the Legislative Assembly who was to become notorious for his part in the NSW land scandals

alleging that he and William ‘Paddy’ Crick—the Minister for Lands—took bribes from pastoralists for Crown leases. The paper’s internal politics were just as controversial—especially when John Norton, an ambitious, hard-drinking journalist and aspiring politician, came aboard. There were many brawls among the group, culminating in an extended bout of litigation that ended in 1896 when Willis agreed to let Norton buy the paper. Norton promptly turned it into a vehicle for driving his political ambitions and airing his personal crusades and grudges. The paper’s particular targets were wowsers, monarchists, the evils of sectarianism and sections of the labour movement. The paper was also viciously racist and xenophobic, and Norton took delight in the numerous defamation actions it attracted. It proved a popular formula—despite Norton’s extended periods of alcohol-induced illness. When he died in 1916, it was being distributed nationally with individual editions in the main capitals. He disinherited his wife, Ada, and their son, Ezra, after Ada sued him for divorce—later altered to a plea for judicial separation. But the will was challenged successfully, and in 1920, Ezra took over the running of Truth. His was a more pragmatic approach. While the paper leaned towards the Labor Party, its stance on specific issues was often dictated by Ezra’s business interests. But it was basically a working-class paper. It continued to thrive in a competitive market. In 1927, sales stood at 432,500—an increase of 155,000 in seven years. Crime had replaced politics on the front page, and there was a motoring section. Overall, it was thought of as a man’s paper, which no respectable woman would read—despite a column of domestic tips, ‘Making Good Wives Better’. It retained the racist stance established by John Norton, and pursued certain vendettas. One was against the NSW Police Commissioner, Bill MacKay, for failing to solve several major crimes. It also tapped the deep vein of philistinism running through Australian society. In 1956, it joined other Sydney newspapers in hounding the Sydney Symphony’s conductor, Eugene Goossens, who was at risk of being charged with ‘scandalous conduct’ after films, photographs and books deemed to be indecent were found in his luggage. The following year, it was equally ruthless in pursuing the visiting concert pianist, Claudio Arrau, who had used a public lavatory in a park patrolled by Vice Squad officers. The end of the Nortons’ ownership of Truth came in the late 1950s, when their rivals were jostling for the chance to become involved in the newly established television industry. Norton was already contemplating his retirement and Truth was past its heyday—at least in Sydney, where it was replaced in 1958 by the Sunday Mirror.

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turnbull, clive (1906–75) Norton retired in the same year, selling to a shelf company set up by John Fairfax & Sons. In 1960, his interests were sold on to Rupert Murdoch, who kept Truth going in the other states. The paper’s combination of hard news and soft porn was still working, especially in Brisbane and Melbourne. In 1967, it campaigned against Victorian Premier Henry Bolte’s refusal to abolish capital punishment, and in 1969 it supported Dr Bertram Wainer in his crusade to have abortion laws reformed. But the paper’s circulation fell towards the end of the 1970s, and in 1980 Murdoch sold it to two of his former editors, Mark Day and Owen Thomson, who did well with it for several years. By 1987, the paper’s circulation was falling steadily, however. When it finally died, it was almost 105 years old and a very different publication from the one established by the Nortons. Its brand of prurience had become thoroughly outdated, superseded by the modern tabloid’s taste for celebrity gossip, while its cheeky, muck-raking role had been taken on by more up-market publications. REF: S. Hall, Tabloid Man (2008). SANDRA HALL

T U R N BULL , CL I V E (1906–75) Clive Turnbull was a notable Melbourne journalist and author, who started his journalistic career in his home state of Tasmania but came to Melbourne in 1926 to join the Argus. He moved to the Herald in 1932, beginning a long association with Sir Keith Murdoch, an association interrupted only by the war years when Turnbull was press officer to Essington Lewis (1940) and Far Eastern Representative (1940–41) of Australian Associated Press. At the Herald, Turnbull contributed a widely read ‘Free Speech’ column and spent time as its representative in London. In 1942, Murdoch made Turnbull the newspaper’s art critic, in addition to his duties as a staff writer. Like

Murdoch, he supported the modernist art movement in Australia. In 1949, by assisting in the acquisition of a block of shares, Turnbull played a key role in the London Daily Mirror’s takeover of the Argus and he joined the revamped paper with his own column of ‘candid comments on the Australian scene’. In August 1950, he was appointed assistant editor. He left the Argus in 1952 and thereafter ran his own public relations company while continuing with occasional journalism and book reviews for the Age. He gained unwanted publicity when he was called before the Royal Commission on Espionage in January 1955, probably due to the communist connections of his wife Joyce. Turnbull was a noted author as well as a prominent journalist. He published two volumes of verse, several books on Australian art, numerous short biographical sketches of interesting Australians collected as Australian Lives (1965), a bibliography of material relating to Ned Kelly, and a Concise History of Australia (1965). His best-known work was probably Black War: The Extermination of the Tasmanian Aborigines. He was also a noted book collector and his extensive collection of Australiana was sold at auction in 1981, fetching over $300,000. Turnbull was at home—especially in his younger days—in the semi-bohemian drinking journalistic culture but, according to his friend, publisher Peter Ryan, he had ‘beneath the surface a sombre melancholy’. Clive Turnbull belonged to that very distinguished group of Melbourne journalists that included George Johnston, Alan Moorehead and John Hetherington. Keith Dunstan was arguably one of his successors in being a both a prominent Melbourne journalist and an author of books on Australian subjects. REF: Age, 26 May 1975.

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JOHN ARNOLD

V VARI E TY As in many other countries, the early days of Australian radio and television drew heavily on theatrical traditions of variety performance dating back to the Victorian music hall. Largely comprising musical performance and sketch comedy, variety programming’s heyday on Australian radio began in the 1930s and ended with the arrival of television in the 1950s; this was the period historian Bridget Griffen-Foley describes as ‘the golden age of entertainment’ for Australian radio, when local production of drama, quiz shows and variety dramatically expanded—partly because of a wartime demand for light entertainment. Talent shows such as Australia’s Amateur Hour (1940–58) were particularly important for variety programming on radio, unearthing an impressive number of future stars, including Rolf Harris, Johnny O’Keefe and Joan Sutherland. Over these decades, the radio production industry went through a number of significant developments, which embedded the production of variety programming into its structure. Radio stations and networks established their own troupes of performers, studios, orchestras and performance venues. Sydney’s 2GB built the Macquarie Auditorium in 1942 as a venue for its variety, drama and quiz programs. The ABC established the ABC Dance Band in 1935, which was transformed under Brian May into the ABC Show Band in the late 1960s. A second important change was the direct involvement of advertising agencies in program production. Colgate-Palmolive set up a special radio unit, which operated from 1940 to 1955, producing drama, comedy, quiz and variety programs; it employed its own 40-piece orchestra and directly contracted stars such as Jack Davey and Roy ‘Mo’ Rene. When television arrived, the programming shifts required to respond to this new competition resulted in the gradual phasing out of variety programming on radio. In any case, variety had almost instantly moved to television as one of the most attractive forms of locally produced programming possible at the time—despite the fact that much of it had to be performed ‘live’ well into the 1960s. Lacking the slickness and the stars that were available via the top US variety

shows—such as The Ed Sullivan Show—local variety programming migrated from prime-time into slightly later night-time slots, where it became a standard feature. Significant exceptions to this pattern were the prime-time local talent shows New Faces (hosted by Frank Wilson, 1963–76 and by Bert Newton, 1976–85) and Young Talent Time (hosted by Johnny Young, 1971–88 and by Rob Mills for its revival in 2012). Like the radio talent contests, major future performers were discovered through these shows: New Faces found Paul Hogan and Daryl Somers, while Young Talent Time found Jamie Redfern, Tina Arena and Dannii Minogue. Three notable tendencies shape variety programming’s history on Australian television. The first is the early establishment of a number of long-running programs with roots in vaudeville, burlesque and live theatre, which were among the first genuine ratings successes of the local industry. Prominent is the series of programs produced and hosted by Bobby Limb: The Bobby Limb Show, which became The Mobil–Limb Show (1958–64) and Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music (1963–72). Sharing the hosting duties with his wife, Dawn Lake, Bobby Limb presented middle-of-the-road light entertainment—show tunes, dance numbers and slapstick comedy sketches featuring the Buster Fiddess. The Mobil-Limb Show is reputed to have been the first national Australian television program. The Bobby Limb Show was voted the Most Popular Program in New South Wales in 1961, the third year of the Logie Awards; Bobby Limb and Buster Fiddess were awarded a joint Logie as Best Comedians in that year, and Bobby Limb picked up the Gold Logie in 1964. A slightly more classy, prime-time variety show was Digby Wolfe’s Revue ’61 (1961) and Revue ’62 (1962), which copied the look of the big American variety shows—dinner jacket for the host, the infinity look produced by the studio’s white walls and floor, classic wardrobes for the dancers. Further still up the class ladder were Eric Jupp’s orchestral presentation of light classics, The Magic of Music (ABC, 1961–74) and the slightly more populist Lorrae Desmond Show (1959–63); Desmond was the first variety star to pick up the Gold Logie, in 1962.

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viewers One of the hallmarks of Australian television since the late 1960s until relatively recently has been the longevity of various versions of the ‘Tonight’ format. The initial model was NBC’s Tonight Show in the United States, which was a talk and variety show hosted first by Steve Allen (1954–57), then Jack Paar (1957–62), but most definitively by Johnny Carson (1962–92). Australia had at least two versions, usually identified with their host cities. Graham Kennedy’s raucous, iconoclastic and ramshackle nightly variety show, In Melbourne Tonight (IMT), began in 1957 on GTV9 and ran until 1970. Building upon their early partnership in radio, it featured Kennedy’s famous sidekick, Bert Newton, from 1959. The Sydney variant was slick and slightly better disciplined, with the most successful example being Tonight with Don Lane (1965–69). The two versions eventually combined in the Melbourne-based production of The Don Lane Show (1975–83), where Lane was joined by Newton for a twice-weekly, two-hour show with the improvisational unpredictability of the earlier IMT, constantly running over time and generating surprises. The variety element remained important, however: the show had its own orchestra and played a significant role in discovering new local talent. The cheerfully subversive approach to the conventions of television formats that distinguished both IMT and The Don Lane Show has been an almost generic characteristic of variety programming in Australia ever since. Possibly the best example of this—and certainly the longest running—is Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Initially a children’s program, it began in 1971, with three apparently unscripted hours produced every Saturday morning. When it moved to prime-time in 1984, Hey Hey brought its own idiosyncratic mix of interviews, popular music, talent contests, quiz formats, audience participation, stunts and general mayhem. It ran—mostly with great success—on Saturday nights until 1999 (its host, Daryl Somers won Gold Logies in 1983, 1986 and 1989). A decade later, in response to a popular campaign for its return, Hey Hey enjoyed a reunion season in 2009–10 but the show was not renewed. As a format, variety lost some of its mainstream presence over the 1990s as its audience aged and as advertisers became more interested in attracting a younger audience. From this time on, the tonight show format mutated: variety gave way to talk as the dominant form of content. At the same time, the programs clearly targeted a younger audience, featuring young stand-up comedians, rock musicians and rising stars from film and television as their guests. Tonight Live with Steve Vizard (1990–93) was modelled on the next generation of US late-night talk shows—such those hosted by Arsenio Hall and by David Letterman—with an in-house band, a boisterous audience and a focus on the fashions of popular culture and

celebrity. Unafraid of breaking the conventions of the format, Vizard included a controversial news segment; the focus on newsreader Jennifer Keyte’s appearance was thought to undermine her authority as a journalist. Rove McManus’s Rove (1999) and Rove Live (2000) used a team of in-house comedians and a highly targeted schedule of celebrity guests to secure the youth demographic for Network Ten. It too had a news segment, but it was a parody, with fake news items presented by comedian Carrie Bickmore. The variety focus was on comedy—stand-up, chat, sketches and stunts—but there were also musical performances. Rove Live ran as a tonight show until 2006; a reformatted Rove ran in a Sunday night prime-time slot with mixed success in 2007 and 2008. At the time of writing, there are no direct equivalents of these programs on air; no local tonight shows and limited opportunities for variety performers to appear on television. Elements of the Rove style of talk survives, along with former Rove Live alumni such as Carrie Bickmore, on Network Ten’s The Project, but live variety has moved elsewhere: into the high-profile hybrid reality television talent shows such Australia’s Got Talent, Australian Idol, The Voice, Dancing with the Stars and I Will Survive. Many of these formats, in line with their reality television orientation, foreground the ‘ordinary’ contestant rather than the professional, and offer audiences a narrative of their discovery and success rather than the presentation of favourite performers. The ‘light entertainment’ variety program that was a staple of wartime radio and early Australian television has effectively disappeared. REFs: B. Griffen-Foley, Changing Stations (2009); K.S. Inglis, This is the ABC (1983); J. Tulloch and G. Turner (eds), Australian Television (1989). GRAEME TURNER

VIEW ER S Although television broadcasting officially began in Australia in 1956, audiences were already well prepared for its arrival. Between 1885 and 1940, there were more than 12,000 mentions of the word ‘television’ in Australian newspapers. In 1938, the Brisbane Courier-Mail even carried a photograph of two Australian Test cricketers seated before a television set in their hotel room in London with the caption ‘Test Players Try Television’. From the early 1950s, manufacturing companies such as Astor began staging demonstrations of television across urban and regional Australia. These often involved the live telecast of performances by local entertainers in makeshift studios located in public halls. Signals were sent to outside broadcast vans parked outside the venue and then transmitted to receivers strategically placed throughout the hall, where they were viewed by an enthusiastic local

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vincent family audience. On 25 April 1950, the Illawarra Mercury reported that Wollongong audiences had been ‘intrigued’ by the workings of television after one such event. Television test broadcasts began in 1955, watched by many in public spaces such as bars, clubs and outside electrical stores. The cost of buying a television set at this time was very high—the equivalent of six to eight weeks’ pay for the average worker. By the end of 1956, it was estimated that only 1 per cent of Sydney residents and 5 per cent of Melbourne residents owned a television set. On the evening of 16 September 1956, when announcer Bruce Gyngell announced ‘Good evening and welcome to television’ on TCN9 in Sydney (an event that the network subsequently ‘lost’ and later had to re-stage), there were only a select number of people able to witness this event in their own homes—and those lucky few were likely to have held a television viewing party involving neighbours and friends. According to the Australian Women’s Weekly on 26 September, Australians were ‘fascinated’ by the new medium and ‘scores’ of children were allowed to stay up late to witness the inaugural transmission. Within a year, this excitement had dissipated in the popular press and television was being promoted and understood in terms of its familiarity as a medium—at least in those locations where television had been available for the last 12 months. The coming of television was, however, experienced differently in different parts of the country. While broadcast television officially began in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth in 1959, and in Hobart in 1960, the rollout to other centres was much slower, with Darwin only switching on in 1971. For viewers in regional areas of Australia, many memories of early television include tales about the difficulty of obtaining a reliable broadcast signal. As evidence of this dissatisfaction, every parliamentary session from the late 1950s to the late 1970s had to deal with the issue of inadequate television service to country areas. By 1980, close to 90 per cent of all Australian homes had a television set, although the situation was clearly very different for Indigenous communities in the outback. Partly to address this problem, in 1985 the first AUSSAT domestic satellite was launched, enabling television broadcasts to be received in remote areas. A significant change to the broadcast viewing experience in the 1980s was enabled by the introduction of the video recorder, which allowed viewers to ‘time-shift’ programs, thus freeing them from the scheduling practices of the networks. Australian audiences were early and enthusiastic adopters of this technology. Pay television, on the other hand, was slow to establish itself. Introduced in 1993, by 2012 only 28 per cent of households had subscribed to the Foxtel and Austar services offered. How-

ever, new technologies and social media allowed viewers to have greater interaction with reality television and other shows. From 2010, the analogue broadcast signal was gradually switched off, and in December 2013, Sydney converted to a digital television signal, followed by Melbourne and remote central and eastern Australia. It was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald that 23,000 homes in southern NSW and 28,000 homes in northern New South Wales had ‘not yet’ converted to digital receivers and were facing a ‘blank screen’. For some this may not have been a problem, given that watching television on a television set had declined across all age groups between 2012 and 2013 with young people far less likely to watch broadcast television except in the case of a ‘live’ event. REFs: K. Darian-Smith and S. Turnbull (eds), Remembering Television (2012); http://www. tvlandaustralia.com. STEPHANIE HANSON and SUE TURNBULL

VIN C EN T FAM ILY This was one of Australia’s more unusual newspaper dynasties. Between 1839 and 1929, three generations established 18 papers in three countries—16 in Australia—and were involved with two others. The family ceased owning newspapers with the sale of the Uralla Times to the Armidale Newspapers Company Ltd in 1946, but a fourth generation of the Vincents was actively involved in the industry until 1977. The Vincents’ Australian papers were concentrated mostly across northern New South Wales, including several in Grafton, the Armidale Chronicle, the Glen Innes Examiner, the Gwydir Examiner (Moree), the Kyogle Examiner and, in the Blue Mountains, the Blackheath Bulletin. The Vincent story began in 1839 with the publication of the first edition of the Western Vindicator (Bath, UK) by Henry Vincent (1813–79). He had become involved in the Chartist Movement, and the paper was a voice for his ideas. Vincent’s radical views twice led to his imprisonment, leading his brother, William Edward Vincent (1821–61) to emigrate to New Zealand in 1841, where he joined the New Zealand Gazette. The second Vincent newspaper, the Wellington Independent, began in 1845. After a failed diversion into another business, William crossed the Tasman in 1853 and worked for the Sydney Morning Herald before joining John Dunmore Lang’s pro-separatists to establish the Clarence & Richmond Examiner in Grafton in northern New South Wales. When William was pushed out of the paper in 1860, he established the Clarence & Richmond Independent. He died suddenly after just 16 issues. Following the death of their father, 14-yearold Henry Cleave (1847–1925), supported by 11-year-old Frank Walter (1850–1903), took over the paper. These two boys and their

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vincent family descendants were to spread the Vincent newspaper influence across northern New South Wales. Many of the papers were small and shortlived; five others continue in the mastheads of today’s changing newspaper world. The Vincents did not establish a single central vehicle to coordinate their newspaper interests, although the Glen Innes Examiner was their effective flagship from 1874 to 1914. (In 1910 the Vincent brothers leased this newspaper to the Powter brothers; it was subsequently bought by E.C. Sommerlad and, in 1924, merged with the Glenn Innes Guardian.) Rather, the Vincents worked with each other in different roles—editor, journalist, printer, publisher—depending on the circumstances of the time.

Roy Stanley Vincent (1892–1965) was one of the founders of the NSW Country Party, a leader of the Northern New State Movement, and a NSW minister (1932–1941). Other family members also played a role in politics and community life, including Henry Cleave St Vincent (1874–1955), who assumed the mantle of ‘head of the tribe’; Ernest (Lloyd) Vincent (1885–1979); and Reginald Henry Vincent (1888–1969). REF: R. Kirkpatrick, Country Conscience (2000). JIM BELSHAW

V IOL E NCE see media and violence

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W WAL KABOUT The illustrated monthly magazine Walkabout was first published in November 1934 by the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA), which was known as the Australian National Publicity Association from 1940 to 1954. Walkabout’s purpose was to promote travel throughout Australia and attract emigrants. However, under founding managing editor (until 1957) Charles Holmes (1891–1981), the magazine was essentially a geographic magazine aimed at a broad readership. Walkabout’s content reflected its interest in remote and regional Australia. Articles focused on the unique flora and fauna of these regions, descriptions of the livelihoods of those who lived and worked there, geographic information, regional histories, stories about outback towns and cities, and descriptions of scenic wonders. Technological innovation, such as extensive irrigation schemes, was also a recurring theme, as was the conservation of vulnerable habitats, flora and fauna. Contributors included several of the mid20th century’s most popular writers, including Ion Idriess, Arthur Upfield, Ernestine Hill and (Dame) Mary Durack, and naturalists, including Charles Barrett, David Fleay and Vincent Serventy. Illustrating the magazine were black and white photographs (until the 1960s) and the occasional sketch. On 1 May 1946, the Australian Geographical Society (AGS) was incorporated, and from August 1946 Walkabout became the society’s official journal. Having always claimed in its subtitle to be ‘Australia’s Geographic Magazine’, it was hoped that the link with the AGS would lend Walkabout greater gravitas and boost its sales. To generate additional articles and photographs befitting a geographic journal, extensive expeditions through Australia’s more remote regions were commissioned, but by late 1955, the cost of mounting such expeditions saw them discontinued. Walkabout’s initial print run of 20,000 copies increased gradually until paper restrictions during World War II forced a reduction in copies printed and pages per issue, but the magazine managed to maintain its high production values. By the mid-1950s, increasing competition

and rising costs necessitated subscription drives—1800 schools were targeted—and saw the introduction of full-colour covers (1959) and an annual 24-page colour supplement from 1961. Colour photographs accompanying articles were introduced in 1965. These efforts were rewarded with average monthly sales peaking in the 1965–66 financial year at 46,908 copies. A number of illustrated anthologies appeared in the 1960s. This was still not enough for the magazine to realise a net profit, and for the first time it had to be subsidised by the ANTA. Hitherto, Walkabout’s net profits were used by the ANTA to support its other promotional activities. Walkabout did not again become profitable, and a change of publisher—to Sungravure—in late 1970, and a change of direction to more explicitly link the magazine to the travel and leisure consumer—including the addition from August 1971 of a lift-out travel marketing section—failed to boost sales sufficiently. Editorial policy appeared confused in this more competitive and complex market, and a combined June/July 1974 issue was the last published by Sungravure. An attempt was made to relaunch the magazine in 1978 with the publisher Leisure, Boating, and Speedway Magazines. Commencing in August, it published three consecutive issues; however, the October 1978 issue was the final Walkabout. REFs: Australian National Travel Association and Walkabout Magazine Records (SLNSW). MITCHELL ROLLS

WALKER , STEP H EN D AN IEL M ALLIKO FF (1871–1925) Stephen Walker knew newspapers from the bottom up—he was a run boy, printer’s devil, compositor, overseer, editor, manager and owner. Without any advantage of birth, Walker wrote what long-time editor George Groom described as ‘one of the most brilliant chapters in Queensland Newspaperdom’. Walker began with the Bundaberg Mail (est. 1876), where he rose to become overseer. In 1893, he helped start the labour newspaper, the Bundaberg Guardian. There he developed his

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walkley awards journalistic skills under a great labour editor, Henry Boote. The Guardian survived only 18 months and Walker soon rejoined the Bundaberg Mail, this time in the literary department; soon he became the editor. In October 1907, the Mail became a daily because an opposition paper, the Daily News, was about to be launched. In March 1908, Walker joined the Daily News as editor and eventually became the owner. During his 17 years with the News, he became an expert on the sugar industry and fought for the ordinary Australian. Walker’s advocacy of sugar-cane causes won such wide support that his advice on major issues in the industry was sought by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher, Premier T.J.  Ryan, and other community leaders. Walker was regarded as the author of important Queensland cane-prices legislation. He made the Daily News a ‘people’s paper—one that never looked with any favour upon vested interests’. It reflected ‘the ideals and character of a great democrat and a greater Australian’. In Groom’s view, the News was bought mainly because it was ‘Steve Walker’s paper’. Within three months of his death in 1925, the News was acquired by and amalgamated with the Mail. That paper survives as the Bundaberg NewsMail. REFs: R. Kirkpatrick, Sworn to No Master (1984) and interview with W.H.G. Groom, 1981. ROD KIRKPATRICK

WA L K LEY AWARDS These annual prizes for excellence in journalism, created in 1956, are the Australian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. They were the brainchild of Sir William Gaston Walkley (1896–1976), a dynamic business executive and founder of the Ampol Petroleum Company. Described by the Melbourne Age as a ‘friend to journalism’, Walkley liked journalists, appreciated their support for his oil-exploration efforts and wanted to recognise their achievements in a practical way, and to improve journalistic standards. Australian news proprietors, hostile as a rule to outsiders meddling in the press, initially refused to participate. Yet while Walkley funded and personally presented the prizes each year until 1976, they were administered by the Australian Journalists’ Association (now the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, or MEAA), and his company’s brand name was kept out of the proceedings. His final goodwill gesture was a $10,000 bequest to perpetuate the awards. Alongside many high-profile corporate sponsors, most major Australian media organisations are now Walkley partners, including News Corp Australia, which introduced its own in-house annual News Awards from 2005. The Gold Walkley is the highest award, chosen each year from other category winners. It was introduced in 1979 at the same time as the original five categories of prizes for print journalism were expanded to include radio and

television news and current affairs. All-media categories were added in 1997 for specialist areas such as business, sport, social equity and investigative journalism. Following a review in 2008–09, these expanded to include online journalism, continuous coverage of a story and scoop of the year. By 2011, there were 34 categories covering print, wire service, broadcast and online journalism, photography, artwork, cartoons, headlines, long-form journalism and journalism leadership. While national and metro daily newspapers, and the ABC, dominate the Gold Walkleys, commercial television journalists from the Nine Network have taken the top prize three times in the past decade. Cartoonist Ron Tandberg holds the record for winning the most Walkleys (10) and is the only person to have won two Gold Walkleys. The awards are sometimes dismissed by critics as a self-congratulatory exercise. The MEAA’s 1997 review addressed three persistent complaints—closed-shop entry requirements, bias in favour of ‘worthy’ stories, and inconsistent judging—by changing the eligibility rules to include all journalists (not just union members), widening the range of award categories and creating the Walkley Foundation as an independent administrator. Publication of judging criteria and rules, as well as the judges’ comments, has increased transparency. More than 100 senior industry figures participate in judging over 1300 submissions each year. Recent major prizewinners include Joanne McCarthy, Caroline Jones, Gerard Ryle, Steve Pennells, Peter Cave, Sarah Ferguson, Paul Lockyer and WikiLeaks. In 2002, Julie Nimmo became the first Indigenous journalist to win a Walkley and, in the same year, Ghassan Nakhoul won the first Walkley awarded for journalism in a language other than English. While there is little doubt that the Walkleys succeed in their aim of rewarding journalistic achievement each year, Sir William’s other goal of improving journalistic standards is more complex and fraught. First, the awards are a comparatively weak incentive to uphold high journalistic standards, given other measures of achievement. Commercial radio and television only rarely win prizes for high-quality journalism but remain the most popular and profitable news and current affairs sources. The digital revolution poses a second, related dilemma: are current journalism standards still relevant? Investigative journalism wins more Gold Walkleys than any other all-media category, and has long been the ‘gold standard’ of professional excellence because of its impact and public benefit. Yet, as digital journalism requires different skills, from multimedia storytelling to moderating public contributions, journalism standards need to evolve. While the Walkley Foundation is mindful of the need to embrace the digital future—the 2011 prize for most outstanding contribution to journalism went to the

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war reporting open-access, citizen media site WikiLeaks—the awards have yet to fully recognise digital media expertise and provide a variety of good examples of online journalism for others to emulate. Important changes followed a major review of the awards in 2013: the competition was opened up to bloggers for the first time, gave new classifications (text, audio and audio-visual) to traditional platform categories (print, radio and television) and introduced a new all-media award for boundary-pushing, multi-platform storytelling. The Alliance Magazine was renamed the Walkley Magazine in 1996, and the Walkley Foundation hosts a year-round professional development program for journalists and media professionals. REFs: J. Hurst, The Walkley Awards (1988); http:// www.walkleys.com. PENNY O’DONNELL and DAVID McKNIGHT

Group of Companies. He restored and refurbished cinemas, becoming a major independent exhibitor, and his company, Hayden Attractions, became one of Australia’s most entrepreneurial theatrical producers. In the early 1990s, Walsh established a base in England and, in partnership with West End producer Helen Montagu, produced Prisoner: Cell Block H The Musical on London’s West End in 1995. The Mike Walsh Fellowship was established in 1996, awarded each year to National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) graduates. In November 1999, Walsh bought Her Majesty’s Theatre in Melbourne and restored the historic venue to make it Australia’s leading lyric theatre. In 2008, he formed Hayden Scott Productions with Daniel Sparrow. Its first project was a co-production of the play Three Days of Rain, staged in the West End in 2009. Walsh now divides his time between Sydney, Melbourne and London. REF: http://www.mikewalsh.com.au/. GRAEME BLUNDELL

WAL SH, MI CHAEL (‘M IKE’) HAYDEN (1938– ) Born in Corowa, New South Wales, Michael (Mike) Walsh spent his secondary school years at Xavier College in Melbourne, then studied at the University of Melbourne, where he became involved in university revues, with Germaine Greer and other contemporaries. He began his career in radio as an announcer with 3SR in Shepparton, Victoria, moving to 3XY in Melbourne to become the station’s first disc jockey. In 1962, he was invited by Sydney’s 2SM to help form the legendary ‘Good Guys’, gaining the highest evening ratings in Australian radio since Jack Davey. Walsh’s first foray into television, compering 10 on the Town for the 0/10 Network, was followed by a satirical variety show, 66 and All That. Walsh, a born communicator with a legendary gift of the gab, maintained his program on 2SM. In 1967, he helped introduce talkback radio to Australia, an innovation that tripled the station’s ratings. After compering shows for Nine and Seven and working in the United Kingdom as a freelance broadcaster, Walsh was headhunted to return to Australia by Columbia Pictures Screen Gems to host The Mike Walsh Show for the 0/10 Network in 1977; the program soon moved to Nine. Walsh transformed daytime television with an astutely conceived and produced formula that was part entertainment and part current affairs. He established himself as one of television’s most polished and skilful interviewers, with his great wit and a penetrating line of questioning. The show ran from 1973 to 1985 and was watched by more than five million viewers on 130 stations nationally on the Ten and Nine Networks. His accomplished team notched up a total of 24 Logie Awards. During The Mike Walsh Show years, Walsh developed a diverse range of show-business interests through the newly formed Hayden

WAR R EP O R TIN G Australian war reporting commenced with Howard Willoughby of the Melbourne Argus, who accompanied Victorian volunteers to New Zealand during the Third New Zealand War (1863–64). In 1885, several Australian journalists travelled with the NSW detachment to the Sudan, which saw very little action. However, one of the correspondents, William Lambie of the Sydney Morning Herald, suffered a leg wound—the first Australian journalist to be injured in reporting conflict. The Second Boer War (1899–1902) involved much larger Australian forces than the conflicts described above. The Boer War also attracted a large number of Australian war correspondents. Several of them were already well known, the most famous being A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, who witnessed the capture of one of the Boer capitals, Bloemfontein. Another prominent name was A.G. ‘Smiler’ Hales, who was captured by the Boers in a skirmish at Jasfontein on 9 February 1900. The luckless William Lambie was killed in the same action, becoming the first Australian war correspondent to die in battle. By October 1900, Australian correspondents had left South Africa, as it looked like the war was about to end. Thus they missed the bestknown Australian story of the Boer War—the execution in February 1902 of Lieutenants Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant and Peter Handcock. Yet the Boer War still had some significant features for future war reporting. First, political and military censorship was extensive in South Africa, paralleling similar moves in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Second, Australian reporters frequently emphasised the specific Australian contribution to the wider imperial cause—a trait that would be even more marked in World War  I. Australian journalism often described

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war reporting native South Africans in the most blatantly racist manner—also a feature of Australian reporting from the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901). World War I (1914–18) dwarfed the Boer War, and remains one of the most important events in Australian history. The scale of Australian enrolments and the huge casualty rates are well known. Yet the massive war effort was not matched by the number of Australian war reporters. Generously interpreted, 11 Australians served as war correspondents and two—Frank Hurley and George Hubert Wilkins—as photographers. Louise Mack, who was working in London, reported on the German invasion of Belgium, making her one of Australia’s first female war correspondents. The towering figure of Australian First World War reporting is C.E.W. Bean, though his journalism was less significant than his other roles as official war historian, founder of the Australian War Memorial and leading spirit in the establishment of the Anzac legend. Bean defeated (Sir) Keith Murdoch in a vote of their journalist peers to become Australia’s first official war correspondent. He then travelled with the Australian forces to Egypt and Gallipoli. Famously, British journalist Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett beat Bean to the punch in publishing the first account of the Australians on 25 April 1915. While at Gallipoli, Bean—as was inevitable when living on the peninsula—was close to the action and the life of the troops. On the Western Front from 1916 onwards, he was more distant from the fighting. Most reporting from World War I—including Australian reporting—was of poor quality. Fighting was described unrealistically and was bleached of detail. Journalists operated under several layers of censorship, which stifled accurate and timely journalism. There was field censorship and then several layers of military and political interference. Importantly, selfcensorship also occurred. Correspondents like Bean believed in the Allied cause and, while chafing at inane examples of censorship, wished to spare their readers the horrors of industrialised slaughter. In the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War and the Sino-Japanese conflict provided the opportunity for two Australians working in London to commence long careers as war correspondents. Noel Monks’ account of the aftermath of the bombing of Guernica by German aircraft in April 1937 is one of the most significant pieces of war writing by an Australian. Ronald Monson briefly covered Spain and was then sent to China, writing about the aftermath of the Rape of Nanking. In terms of size, Australian coverage of the World War II dwarfs that of World War  I. By 1945, well over 250 Australians had served as journalists, photographers, radio broadcasters and cinematographers. The range of occupations indicates the technological changes that had

occurred over the previous 20 years. Newsreels and the greater use of photography in newspapers meant that some of the most enduring work by Australians in the Pacific theatre came from Damien Parer and George Silk. At the outbreak of the war, the Australian government was happy to again limit the number of war correspondents, but the vast canvas and multiple theatres of the conflict made this impossible. As well, in World War II politicians and generals often took a more sophisticated view of war reporters, rather than seeing them as nuisances to be barely tolerated. Wearing uniforms and holding honorary commissions, war correspondents played an important role in disseminating the idea of the ‘people’s war’. Yet General Sir Thomas Blamey, the Australian commander, was unforgiving towards those journalists who crossed him. Kenneth Slessor, a controversial choice as official war correspondent, and Chester Wilmot both lost their accreditation in New Guinea after offending Blamey. Australian journalists had long been a presence on Fleet Street. From their number came many correspondents who reported on the desert campaigns, the fighting in Europe and the air war. Two of these were Monson and Monks, but the most famous Australian expatriate reporting on World War II was Alan Moorehead, whose work prompted his London editor to label him the ‘prince of war correspondents’. Closer to home, the New Guinea campaign—especially Kokoda—established enduring reputations for Wilmot and Osmar White. Like Moorehead, George Johnston parlayed his fame as a war correspondent into a post-war career as a wellpaid writer. Possibly the best piece of Australian journalism from World War II was one of the least known at the time: Wilfred Burchett’s account of the consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima, ‘The Atomic Plague’, published in the London Daily Express. Australian media coverage of the Korean War (1950–53) divides into two halves. In the first year of the war, the rapid movement of the armies and the charismatic presence of General Douglas MacArthur attracted much media interest. For example, one of Australia’s longest serving foreign correspondents, Denis Warner, was on the spot in the first confused days of the campaign. However, from mid-1951, the fighting settled down into the prolonged stalemate known as the Static War. For much of 1951 and 1952, there were few Australian journalists of any sort in Korea. Public interest in Korea had waned, and newspapers were discouraged by the high cost of maintaining their staff on the peninsula. In May 1952, the federal government introduced a limited sponsorship scheme to encourage some reporting of Australian troops’ activities in Korea. However, this had limited success. The Malaysian Emergency was by its nature a difficult war to cover. By the time Australian

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warnecke, glen william (‘george’) (1894–1981) troops went into action in January 1956, clashes with communist guerillas were sporadic and small in scale. Furthermore, British authorities did not always welcome the media’s presence. The Indonesian Confrontation (1963–66) was even more difficult for Australian journalists to report on. Australian troops fought in Sabah between 1965 and 1966, but the military’s disinformation policy meant that the Australian public knew little of the fighting and were not told that our troops had ventured into Indonesian territory. The Vietnam War has provoked much discussion of the media’s role in shaping its course. From an Australian viewpoint, the media’s performance was patchy. First, some media outlets, such as commercial television, sent few of their staff to Vietnam for prolonged periods. The Sydney Morning Herald did not send a single journalist to Vietnam throughout the entire period of Australian involvement. The ABC’s effort was more sustained and, towards the end of Australian participation in Vietnam, programs such as Four Corners and This Day Tonight had partly overcome their management’s fear of controversy to produce high-quality programs on the war. The most famous Australian journalist from Vietnam was photojournalist Neil Davis. The stuff of legend, he was a brave but not foolhardy correspondent in South-East Asia until he died filming an attempted coup in Thailand in September 1985. The American military’s willingness to assist the media was not always matched by that of the Australian Task Force in Vietnam. As ABC veteran Peter Couchman remarked, ‘you were sort of welcomed through gritted teeth’. In the same year that the Vietnam War ended, Indonesian forces invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor. The deaths of the Balibo Five, and later Roger East, in 1975 at the hands of the Indonesian military rightly shocked Australians, with their deaths continuing to resonate today. In 1999, with the UN-sponsored ballot on East Timorese independence, Australian journalists returned to Dili, with much attention given to General (Sir) Peter Cosgrove and the INTERFET peacekeepers. Australia played a minor role in the First Gulf War (1999–91). This was probably just as well, as journalists were frustrated by their inability to report from close to the battlefield. The United States exercised tight control over the media, on the one hand bombarding them with information and on the other keeping them at arm’s length from anything vital. The more recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have raised a number of questions about the media in modern warfare. One significant issue is the embedding of correspondents—the placing of reporters within military units, ostensibly to enable them to understand war at its most immediate. Many Australian journalists have complained that they were unable to report

fully on Australia’s engagement in Afghanistan. This was partly due to the major role played by the Australian SAS and partly due to the threat posed to friendly civilians if their identity was inadvertently exposed. Whatever the reason, Australian reporting from Afghanistan struggled for distinctiveness. Thus censorship has been a perennial issue for Australian war reporters, as it has been for most of the world’s press. More recently, the Australian Defence Force has publicly stated its wish to work cooperatively with the Australian media so that each party can more fully understand the other’s role. It is fair to say, though, that Australian governments of all persuasions have been quite happy for the media to be sidelined in our Middle Eastern engagements. It is perhaps not surprising that some of the best Australian war reporting over the last two decades has been of conflicts in which this country has not been involved—for example, in the Balkans and the Arab-Israeli stand-off. An excellent example was Cameron Forbes’ moving descriptions of the Rwandan genocide for the Australian. The advent of new technology has meant that war can be reported in real time, going to air as it happens. While this has meant that images of fighting and its casualties are commonplace, it has not necessarily resulted in more profound analysis of the complexities of conflict. If anything, the closer reporters are to the action, the less acute are their observations. There is also a more profound change occurring to journalism. With the ubiquity of mobile phones and social media, many of the most disturbing images and stories from unrest in Iran or the Arab Spring have come from civilians, non-journalists and the participants themselves. Newspapers are in retreat, leaving much foreign reporting to the global networks. The days of the ‘traditional’ war journalist might be numbered. REF: F. Anderson and R. Trembath, Witnesses to War (2011). RICHARD TREMBATH

WAR N EC KE, G LEN W ILLIAM (‘ G EO R G E’ ) (1894–1981) George Warnecke helped conceive the Australian Women’s Weekly, and was its first editor from June 1933. He wanted a magazine that took women seriously, but also kept them upto-date with domestic and popular culture. When Warnecke dreamed up his concept for the Weekly, he was editing Associated Newspaper Ltd’s Sunday Guardian. His career had begun in Sydney on the Evening News and Woman’s Budget before he left to serve in the AIF. In the 1920s, he had moved from the Evening News and the Daily Mail to Smith’s Weekly (whose cable service he started in London) and the Daily Guardian. Lacking the funds to start the Australian Women’s Weekly himself, Warnecke approached

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weather and natural disasters reporting (Sir) Frank Packer, son of newspaper proprietor R.C. Packer, and Frank’s partner, the former Labor premier of Queensland, E.G. (Ted) Theodore. Warnecke believed his left-wing politics and his closeness to R.C. Packer contributed to Frank never giving George an equal share in the parent company, Consolidated Press Ltd. Under Warnecke, the Weekly ran stories on women’s unequal representation in parliament, and hired feminist Jessie Street’s associate, Linda Littlejohn, as a major feature writer in the early months. Progressive stories appeared alongside other pieces on fashion, food and royalty. As an employee, Warnecke was quickly rendered powerless to influence the direction of the Weekly. After 18 months, Frank Packer changed it from a progressive news, domestic and fashion magazine to one less focused on politics and more interested in Hollywood, in pursuit of a global agenda. Warnecke was moved sideways to also oversee the editorship of the Daily Telegraph. Even as chief executive of both publications, he felt compromised. In 1939, he left Australia with his Irish-born wife. Over the next two decades, Warnecke worked as a consultant to the Herald and Weekly Times, for the US Office of War Information and Newspaper News, and set up his own business publishing comics and Family Circle. He retired to Dublin in 1957, concentrating on book-length projects. But Warnecke’s passion remained the Australian Women’s Weekly. His unpublished memoir, ‘Miracle Magazine’, shows that towards the end of his life he increasingly became disillusioned by what he saw as Sir Frank’s broken promises. REF: G.W. Warnecke Papers (SLNSW). CHRIS LAWE DAVIES

W E ATHE R A ND NATURAL DISASTERS REPORTING Weather reporting in Australia has evolved over the past 150 years, mostly in response to the emergence of new media, with the pace of change accelerating in the 21st century. Newspapers were the first media to contain regular weather reports, first with past weather summaries and then, from the second half of the 19th century, with weather predictions. On 5 February 1877, the first ‘weather map’—a synoptic chart—to be published in Australia was included on page 6 of the Sydney Morning Herald. The presentation was instantly popular, and synoptic charts became a permanent fixture of the Herald and steadily began appearing in other newspapers. When the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) was established in 1908, one of its functions was the preparation and dissemination to newspapers of synoptic charts and weather predictions. In recent times, newspaper weather presentations have become increasingly sophisticated, appearing in all the major metropolitan dailies

and containing a large amount of information on both past and forecast weather. Some presentations, such as those contained in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian, now occupy nearly a page. Newspapers also provide a platform for editorial and public criticism of forecasts, and in recent times this has extended to the issue of climate change. The first Australian weather broadcast on radio seems to have been made in 1924, probably by Melbourne’s 3LO. Radio stations presented state weather broadcasts, working with the BOM’s divisional offices. Weather information was particularly appreciated by rural listeners, whose livelihood depended on it. In the 1930s, radio also displayed its utility during natural disasters—for instance, in 1931 the fledgling 4BC Brisbane relayed reports from meteorologists, police and other officials when South-East Queensland was flooded; during catastrophic bushfires in Victoria and New South Wales in 1939, stations mobilised volunteers and solicited cars to evacuate stranded people. It is not known how the public, or meteorologists, reacted to the launch of ‘Singing Weather Reports’ on 2CH Sydney in 1948. More important was the agreement by the BOM, in the second half of the 1950s, to the request of the ABC and commercial stations, led by 3AW Melbourne, to allow direct broadcasts from divisional offices. This innovation suited radio’s emphasis on immediacy and ‘actuality’ broadcasting, as it sought to compete with the new medium of television. With many local stations already part of formal post-war emergency-management plans, the spread of car radios and battery-powered transistors increased radio’s utility. With the arrival of television in 1956, weather presentations to the public underwent another transformation, with the information displays usually provided by a dedicated weather presenter. In the early days of television, the ABC used meteorologists from the BOM as presenters. The best known was probably Alan Wilkie, who in 1968 was lured to ATN7. As time progressed meteorologists were replaced by professional television presenters, some of whom, such as Brian Bury, became ‘personalities’ in their own right; by the 1990s the figure of the ‘zany’ weather presenter was a fixture on commercial television. Eventually, animated sequences of weather charts, together with ‘live’ radar and satellite imagery, become part of television presentations. Usually broadcast at the end of news bulletins, weather was amongst the highest rating of all segments. The Weather Channel was launched in 1999, later joining Foxtel. Australia’s extreme weather conditions have always meant that on occasion reporting weather could be a matter of life and death. The Dandenongs bushfire of 1962, which was covered by reporters in cars and aeroplanes, resulted in perhaps the first substantive criticism

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weekly newspapers of the role played by Australian broadcasters during a natural disaster. Television (and to a lesser extent radio) stations were accused of running reports that appeared to be no more than personal opinion, and of contributing to panic. Officials levelled similar allegations at ABC and commercial radio stations during bushfires in Tasmania in 1967 and 1982. However, there was more of a consensus that broadcasting contributed to the public good. The fledgling Natural Disasters Organisation, governments and the press were shocked by the lack of communication that occurred during Cyclone Tracy in 1974, when the ABC and 8DN’s transmitters shut down. A special emergency-management conference in 1977 heard that disaster authorities must recognise the media’s need to obtain factual, authoritative information as soon as possible, and therefore must employ media liaison officers. Murray Nicolls’ reporting for 5DN Adelaide during the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, as he watched his own house burn down, earned him a Walkley Award. Since the mid-1990s, the distribution of weather information to the public has undergone a revolution. The internet provides virtually instant updates on data from automatic weather stations, radar and satellite imagery, and weather warnings. National weather services from around the world soon established home pages, and international information became readily available. The BOM’s website, http://www.bom. gov.au, typically attracts several million ‘hits’ per week, with massive spikes generated during severe weather events. The internet and the refinement of mobile telephone technology and social media enable instant updates. Twitter and Facebook mean that the onset of severe weather such as hail and flash-flooding can be reported ‘as it happens’, often accompanied by images or videos. The speed of these updates is well ahead of the official weather-reporting capability of the national weather service, but it lacks quality control. This has created problems for the BOM, as there are concerns that content can be lost or skewed due to editing by non-meteorologists. The growing amount of coverage due to the sharply rising availability of imagery has significantly raised the public profile of severe weather events, with two major examples being the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 and the Queensland floods of January 2011. This has helped raise public awareness of severe weather, with the result that communities generally are better prepared to handle its onset. Together with improved accuracy of weather prediction, this has helped to reduce mortality. A good comparison is provided by tropical cyclones Tracy and Yasi (2011), which hit 40 years apart. Both cyclones were of similar strength, but 65 people lost their lives during Tracy, while there were no known deaths attributed to Yasi.

The improved efficiency and accuracy of disaster reporting have likely contributed to this. REFs: R. Whitaker, Australia’s Natural Disasters (2005) and Understanding Climate Change (2008). RICHARD WHITAKER

W EEKLY N EW SP AP ER S The newspaper illustration ‘Diggers’ Saturday Night’ (Illustrated Australian News, 4 December 1873) depicts four prospectors gathered in a hut on a Saturday night at an undisclosed location. One of them is reading a newspaper aloud, while the others listen. In the article accompanying the illustration, there is the comment, ‘The weekly papers have just come up from town—the dailies seldom penetrate the ranges.’ This one line encapsulates the role of the weekly newspaper in 19th-century Australian media: disseminating news in a weekly summary format for rural readers. The term ‘weekly newspaper’ refers to a paper published as a weekly companion newspaper by a metropolitan daily paper for distribution to a rural readership. This definition serves to distinguish the term from both the numerous country town newspapers that were issued once a week and various metropolitan weekly papers that were not connected to the dailies, whether suburban newspapers or more specialist papers such as the Melbourne Punch or the Sydney Bulletin. The weekly paper should also be distinguished from Sunday newspapers. The concept of the weekly newspaper was developed by the dailies in 1850s gold rush-era Victoria, when less than a quarter of the population lived in Melbourne and the transport network for distribution to a rural readership was rudimentary. The earliest Australian companion newspaper was News of the Week (1852–1924), an adjunct to the Geelong Advertiser. Two other Victorian regional cities whose daily papers had companion weeklies commencing publication in the 1850s were Ballarat (Miner and Weekly Star) and Bendigo, then known as Sandhurst (Weekly Advertiser and Weekly Mercury). The confusion that can arise from the publishing history of Australian weekly papers due to title changes and mergers is clear from the following example. A year after its founding in 1854, the Melbourne Age launched the Melbourne Weekly Age as a weekly digest of the previous week’s daily issues for distribution to a rural readership. In 1856, the Melbourne Leader was established as a weekly paper targeted at city readers, and finally in 1860 came the Farmer’s Journal as a weekly paper targeted at the selector. In 1864, this last paper was merged into the Melbourne Weekly Age, which in turn was merged in 1868 into what was now simply known as the Leader. The Leader ran until 1957, catering to a large country readership as well as a Melbourne one.

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In Town Life in Australia (1883), Englishman Richard Twopenny described the weekly newspaper as ‘partly a newspaper, partly a magazine’. As a newspaper, it had a news digest component, and as a magazine, there were not only handy hints for the farmer, but sections devoted to literature, sport, theatre and travel, as well as women’s pages. In time, the weeklies also carried imagery—initially wood engravings, and then, with the advent of the halftone process in around 1890, photography (the dailies did not begin to carry imagery regularly until closer to World War I) and, increasingly, brand namebased, pictorial-style commercial advertising. Other weekly newspapers had a similar publication history and format to that of the Leader. They were published by nearly all the colonial capital dailies, the best known being Melbourne’s Australasian (1864–1946), published by the Argus; the Weekly Times (1869– ), published first by the Daily Telegraph and then the Herald; the Sydney Mail (1860–1938), published by the Sydney Morning Herald; the Australian Town and Country Journal (1870– 1919), published by the Evening News; the Queenslander (1866–1939), published by the Brisbane Courier-Mail; and the Western Mail (1885–1955), published by the West Australian. Twopenny’s article also accounts for the longevity of the weeklies: ‘The wants of the bushman, who relies on the one weekly paper for his sole intellectual food, and who, though often well educated, is far from libraries or books of any kind, have given rise to a class of weekly papers which are quite sui generis’. Yet it was not just the bushman who was catered for by the weekly, as its readership spanned the full spectrum of rural society, from the wealthy property owner and his household to the miner and his mates. Continuing into the 20th century, in the absence of a fully developed publishing industry, the weeklies produced a range of material that would subsequently find outlets in books and specialist periodicals; Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms was originally published as a serial (1882–83) in the Sydney Mail. However, the inter-war years saw the peak of Australia’s rail system as well as an expanding road network, which together facilitated increasing competition from daily newspapers, including the new tabloid press. This period also witnessed the development of new forms of media—radio and newsreels—that further undermined the weekly newspaper. REF: L. Stuart, Nineteenth Century Australian Periodicals (1979). PETER DOWLING

W E E KLY T I MES The Victorian Weekly Times is Australia’s biggest-selling rural newspaper. When launched in September 1869 as the weekly companion

to Melbourne’s Daily Telegraph (1869–92), its founders declared it would be a ‘journal of literature, sport, agriculture, science and politics’. In 1892, the papers were sold to the operators of Melbourne’s afternoon newspaper, the Herald, providing the basis for the Herald and Weekly Times, now a subsidiary of News Corp Australia. The Weekly Times circulates primarily in Victoria’s rural and regional areas, although sales in Melbourne remain high. Peak sales in the late 1960s reached nearly 120,000. For much of its first century, the paper carried world and general news alongside coverage of regional and agricultural matters. It devoted five pages to the capture of the Kelly Gang in 1880, and one to the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. It published pictures from country shows and school sports days, and news about regional development. Such authors as C.J. Dennis, Miles Franklin, Sumner Locke Elliott and Patsy Adam-Smith have graced its pages. In 1966 the paper took classified advertising from the front page and shifted its editorial focus to exclusively cover rural and regional news. Its personality comes from a unique collection of long-running columns reflecting rural life, its distinctive salmon-coloured cover and the magpie that sits on its masthead. The advice columns are so thorough that, since 1933, they have been republished in a multi-edition bestseller, The Weekly Times’ Farmers Handbook. REF: H. Jones, The Bible of the Bush (1994). HUGH JONES

W EN D T, JAN A (1956– ) Jana Wendt has spent her adult life in the public eye, primarily as a television journalist and news program host. She is a popular figure, who is known for controversial relations with her employers, stemming from differing ideologies of ‘news’. After completing a BA at the University of Melbourne, Wendt began working at ATV10 in 1978, debuting as a reporter on Eyewitness News. In 1980, she became co-anchor with David Johnson. At this time, executives had just started to realise that audiences wanted women delivering the news, and female anchors quickly became the new trend. In 1982, Wendt became a reporter on the Nine Network’s high-rating weekly current affairs program 60 Minutes. She held this position for six years before moving to Nine’s nightly A Current Affair, this time as anchor. Nicknamed the ‘Perfumed Steamroller’, she developed a reputation for conducting revealing and often dramatic interviews with high-profile national and international figures. Wendt won the Gold Logie in 1992 before returning to 60 Minutes in 1994, also contributing to the American CBS version of the program. With high cheekbones,

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a mane of brown hair and an enigmatic quality, she was described by producer Gerald Stone as ‘closer to the archetypal movie star than anyone to come out of Australian television’ and reportedly earned $1 million a year at her peak. Wendt presented several major current affairs programs, including Witness (Seven, 1996–97), Uncensored (ABC, 1998), Dateline (SBS, 1999–2003) and Sunday (Nine, 2003–06), which won the 2003 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Public Affairs Program on Australian Television. Her contracts with both Witness and Sunday ended prematurely with disagreements and court action over what Wendt saw as failure of the networks to uphold the journalistic standards they had promised. In her Andrew Olle Media Lecture in 1997, she alienated some fellow journalists by saying that objectivity in journalism had been replaced by ‘cheap opinion and popular prejudices’. Since leaving the television networks in 2006, Wendt has largely devoted her time to writing, producing two books of interviews, A Matter of Principle: New Meetings with the Good, the Great and the Formidable (2007) and Nice Work (2010). REF: Sun Herald Sunday Life magazine, 29 March 2010. CAROLYNE LEE

W EST AUST RALIAN This newspaper’s origins lie in the Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, a weekly founded in January 1833 by Charles Macfaull (1800–46). Macfaull’s widow Elizabeth sold the paper on to Arthur Shenton (1816–71), who twice renamed it as the Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News (1848–64) and the Perth Gazette and Western Australian Times (1864–74), each time recommencing with volume 1, number 1. Competition was provided by a more conservative weekly, the Inquirer and Commercial News (1840–1901). After Shenton’s death in 1871, his widow entrusted the editorship to William Hullick, who was too radical for the Perth establishment. A syndicate of local businessmen bought the newspaper, and in July 1874 made another fresh start, changing its name to the Western Australian Times. In November 1879, two members of the syndicate, Charles Harper and Sir Thomas Cockburn-Campbell, assumed sole control and proclaimed a totally distinct line of policy, symbolised by moving to biweekly publication and yet another change of name to the West Australian. It has survived under this guise to the present day, claiming continuity with the original Perth Gazette of 1833, and thus to be the oldest newspaper in Australia apart from the Sydney Morning Herald. Harper and Cockburn-Campbell were joined in 1883 by an Anglo-Irish lawyer, (Sir) (John) Winthrop Hackett, as business manager; he took over from Cockburn-Campbell as editor

and managing partner from 1887. The new ownership converted the paper into a tri-weekly in 1883 and a daily in 1885. Harper and Hackett established the Western Mail (1885–1955), a weekly digest of the West Australian catering for rural readers. In his early years as editor, Hackett embroiled the West Australian in several lawsuits, including an unsuccessful suit for libel brought by J.B. Gribble, whom Hackett termed ‘a lying, canting humbug’ because he alleged abuses against Aboriginal people by pastoral workers. With the coming of responsible government in 1890, the editorial style gradually mellowed, although Hackett pushed a successful campaign against government support for church schools. The 1890s gold rush quadrupled Western Australia’s population, and the West Australian seized the opportunity to become the state’s premier journal of record. Modern printing and distribution technology was introduced, advertising rates were trimmed and the Western Mail featured photographs and cartoons. Credited with influencing Premier Sir John Forrest (1890–1901), the West Australian supported his bold developmental policies, but only belatedly supported Australian Federation. After 1901, Hackett’s editorials strenuously opposed reform of the conservative Legislative Council, but otherwise aimed for a balance. They played an important role in increasing support for Western Australia’s cultural institutions. After Harper’s death in 1912, Hackett became sole proprietor until his death in 1916. His traditions were continued by (Sir) Alfred Langler, journalist and administrator of the Hackett estate, who encountered a period of industrial disruption and political turmoil, but consolidated growth until the sale of the West Australian and the Western Mail in 1926 to West Australian Newspapers Limited (WAN), a Melbourne company with links to the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT). Editorial control remained in Perth. In 1933, production moved to custom-built premises at Newspaper House in St Georges Terrace. A weekly aimed at radio listeners, the Broadcaster, was launched. Together with the Western Mail, it provided a welcome outlet for local creative writers. With the acquisition of the afternoon daily, the Daily News (1882–1990), WAN achieved a near-monopoly. World War II was followed by a period of modernisation, personified by the dynamic James Macartney, managing editor from 1951 to 1966. In 1947, the West Australian abandoned its broadsheet format to become a tabloid. Two years later, news replaced advertisements on the front page. A women’s magazine, Milady, survived only three years (1948–51). In the second half of the 1950s, the Broadcaster ceased publication and the Western Mail was transformed into the Countryman. The West Australian began to publish zoned suburban supplements.

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white, eric (1915–89) The firm was awarded one of the first commercial television licences in Perth (TVW7), opening in 1958. Journalists from WAN gained prominence through coverage of the Monte Bello Island atomic tests in 1952–56, the Empire Games in Perth in 1962 and the discovery in the 1960s of a number of 17th- and 18th-century Dutch shipwrecks off the Western Australian coast. In 1969, WAN was taken over by the HWT, necessitating the sale of TVW7 in 1970 to conform to media ownership restrictions. Editorial policy continued to support the Coalition dominating state politics between 1959 and 1983. An energetic advocate of development in the North-West, the West Australian applauded the mineral boom of the 1960s and 1970s, but failed to please the mining magnate Lang Hancock, who backed a short-lived daily, the Independent Sun (1973). Improved computer technology fostered the appearance in the late 1970s and early 1980s of several independent suburban newspapers, sustained by advertising revenue and delivered free to householders’ letterboxes. The West Australian responded by dropping its suburban supplements and starting the West Advertiser (1984–85) as competition. Robert Holmes à Court’s Bell Group entered the field, launching a daily reviving the name of the Western Mail (1980– ). Competition for readers was fought out against the heady background of the ‘WA Inc’ years of the later 1980s. In 1985, most of the independent suburban newspapers sold out to the Community Newspaper Group, owned by West Australian Newspapers Holdings and News Limited, owners of Perth’s only Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Times. In 1987, the Bell Group managed to take over West Australian Newspapers. Control of the Bell Group soon shifted from Holmes à Court to Alan Bond, but after his commercial empire became enmeshed in difficulties in 1989, a group of senior journalists ran the West Australian for a few years before ownership moved to a public company whose directors were mainly drawn from the Perth business community. Since 1993, WAN has retained its Perth-based character, moving to new custom-built premises in suburban Osborne Park. Because of media regulations, News Limited has been unable, and Fairfax Media unwilling, to attempt a takeover, and the most significant shift in ownership was the move in 2008 by Kerry Stokes—already a major shareholder in the Seven Network and the Canberra Times—to acquire the largest stake in WAN. Combining a lively awareness of local issues with a sufficient coverage of international news, adhering to a moderate, and far from uncritical, right-of-centre political position, the West Australian in recent years has achieved one of the best records of any Australian newspaper

in maintaining its circulation—it averaged 178,385 for the weekday edition in 2013—in the face of increasing online competition. REFs: West Australian, 5 January 1933; O.K. Battye, ‘History of the West Australian Newspaper’, Battye Family Papers (SLWA). GEOFFREY BOLTON

W H ITE, ER IC (1915–89) Born in Newcastle, New South Wales, Eric White contributed to the Bulletin and may have worked as a provincial journalist before enlisting in the AIF in 1942. Discharged in 1944, he was present at the conference that formulated plans to establish the Liberal Party of Australia. He was director of public relations for the fledgling party until 1947, when blame for the party’s election loss centred on publicity. White then joined with Don Whitington, a journalist on (Sir) Frank Packer’s Daily and Sunday Telegraphs, to form Eric White Associates (EWA). Based in Sydney, the company took on PR accounts, as well as publishing newsletters (Inside Canberra, Canberra Survey and Money Matters) and provincial newspapers (the Northern Territory News and the Mt Isa Mail). Tall, slim and imperious, White had an almost legendary reputation for being able to sell accounts to major companies and government departments. He maintained that there was ‘only one place for PR—at the top. The responsibility for public relations must rest with management’. With Whitington nervous about the implications of the growing PR business for his status as a member of the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, the pair went their separate ways. By the early 1960s, White had built the biggest PR firm in the world outside the United States. There were offices in every Australian state, New Zealand, London and increasingly across Asia. White refused to allow any EWA staff to join the Public Relations Institute of Australia until 1962, when it instituted a binding professional Code of Practice. In 1964, EWA became the first publicly listed PR company in Australia; White sold out to the American agency Hill & Knowlton in 1974. He retired to take up oyster farming in coastal New South Wales, but remained on the board of Hill & Knowlton until 1987. Two years later, Oyster, a book by Brian Toohey and William Pinwell, revealed that an Australian PR firm was a cover for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service in Asia. White, by that stage terminally ill, would neither confirm nor deny the story. But his son, Hugh White, later recalled how his father had told him he did ‘secret work for the government to protect Australia’. REFs: SMH, 25 July and 23 November 1989; P. Golding, Just a Chattel of the Sale (2004). MARK SHEEHAN

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wikileaks W HI TE, OSMA R EGM ONT DORKIN (1909–91) Osmar White, journalist, war correspondent and author, was born in New Zealand, migrating to Townsville when he was five. White began his journalistic career at the Cumberland Times in Parramatta in 1931. He later worked for the Wagga Wagga Advertiser before travelling to the Pacific Islands, the Far East, the Dutch East Indies and New Guinea. Throughout the 1930s, he wrote hundreds of short stories and adventure articles. White returned to New Zealand in 1935 as chief of staff at the Taranaki Daily News, and later the Radio Record in Wellington. In 1938 he moved to Melbourne and joined the SunNews Pictorial. Although he intended to enlist in the AIF, his employer, Sir Keith Murdoch, retained his services as a journalist under the manpower regulations. White became an official war correspondent in late 1941, and in February 1942 he returned to New Guinea, where he established his reputation as one of Australia’s most acclaimed journalists. He travelled from Port Moresby to Wau with Damien Parer, taking supplies for the guerrilla Kanga Force fighting the Japanese at Lae and Salamaua, and covered the AIF’s campaign along the Kokoda Track. White was accredited to the US Pacific Fleet in April 1943 and later to the US Army. He was seriously wounded by Japanese dive-bombers in the Solomon Islands. While recuperating, White completed his first book, Green Armour (1945). By September 1944, he was in England reporting on the British home front; in February 1945, he was with General George Patton’s Third Army as the unit advanced across the Rhine into Berlin. The only Australian reporter to witness the German surrender, he stayed in Germany for the rest of the year reporting on the occupation and the war crimes trials. After the war, White remained with the Herald and Weekly Times as a senior writer. Retiring from journalism in 1963, he wrote a series of children’s books, two novels, plays, radio and television scripts. It was his non-fiction that distinguished him as one of Australia’s finest authors. Green Armour provided a vivid account of the Japanese invasion of New Guinea. His other wartime account, Conquerors’ Road, was slated for release in 1946 when the publishers abruptly cancelled. The book was finally published in 1996, after his death. White’s other books included Parliament of a Thousand Tribes: A Study of New Guinea (1965), Time Now, Time Before (1967) and Under the Iron Rainbow: Northwest Australia Today (1969). One of White’s daughters, journalist and author Sally A. White, endowed the Ossie Awards, organised by the Journalism Education Association of Australia. REF: O. White Papers (NLA). FAY ANDERSON

W H ITTA, C LIFFO R D N IC H O LLS (‘ N IC KY’ ) (1903–56) Clifford Nicholls Whitta (‘Nicky’) was one of the first Australian broadcasters to develop a distinctive personality as the main attraction of his broadcasts. After working briefly at 3LO Melbourne as a musician, he joined 3AW in 1932. Through his breakfast program with Fred Tupper (‘Tuppy’) and his children’s program, Chatterbox Corner, with Nancy Lee (Kathleen Lindgren), Nicky developed his image as an ordinary bloke with his characteristic acting the fool on the air. ‘Forgetting’ to turn off the microphone was one of his early techniques of drawing his listeners into his world of domestic troubles and pleasures. Nicky’s style was in sharp contrast to that of ABC announcers, who were expected to wear a dinner suit for evening programs. On Chatterbox Corner, he entertained the ‘Chums’ by playing the loveable naughty boy—a personality he and Nancy Lee took outside the world of radio to host fancy-dress and children’s parties to raise funds for Christmas and hospital appeals. He interspersed his programs with ‘friendly advice’ (his term for advertisements), bringing excellent results so that sponsors were lining up by 1935 waiting for space on his programs. Much to the delight of their fans, Nicky and Nancy Lee were married in 1935. Nancy attributed her own popularity to her ‘girlnext-door’ image. Nicky adapted his persona for daytime programs, becoming the cheeky but warm-hearted tease, even sending up his sponsors. He called his listeners ‘Mum’ and ‘Darl’, and treated his listeners to (usually fabricated) stories of his daily life. His success was highlighted when he briefly left Melbourne and 3AW in 1946 to move to 2CH in Sydney, with listeners bewailing their loss of a ‘close, personal friend’. Nicky returned to Melbourne nine months later to work on the 3KZ breakfast session, again exploiting the cute kid image with a character called ‘Georgie’. In 1950, he moved to 3UZ to present a program explicitly aimed at housewives. He teamed up with a young Graham Kennedy as his turntable operator. The session was eventually extended to five hours a day, with Kennedy joining Nicky on air as the perfect foil for his humour. In 1956, GTV9 signed Nicky up to be compere of its children’s session, but he died of a heart attack before he could begin this new phase of his broadcasting career. REFs: L. Johnson, The Unseen Voice (1988); N. Lee, Being a Chum was Fun (1979). LESLEY JOHNSON

W IKILEAKS Julian Paul Assange (1971– ), born in Townsville, began hacking in 1987 as ‘Mendax’ (Latin for ‘untruthful’), leading to a conviction in

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willesee, michael (1942– ) Victoria in 1995; he was released on a bond. Assange registered WikiLeaks.org on 4 October 2006 as ‘an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking’. It operated with 10 full-time staff, 1200 volunteers and an annual budget below €1 million. An early post exposed corruption and murder in Kenya, earning it the Amnesty International Reporting Award. Mainstream outlets paid more attention from November 2007 to the Guantanamo manuals on how to lie to the Red Cross, and even more in April 2008 to the ‘Collateral Murder’ video of US helicopter attacks on civilians. The 28 November 2010 release of information from 260,000 US State Department ‘Confidential’ cables made WikiLeaks as recognisable as Google; it also saw credit card corporates block donations, the Pentagon set up a war room and the Department of Justice initiate a secret grand jury. Australian Federal Police concluded that Assange had committed ‘no crime’ after Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s allegation on radio that he had broken the law. The US military sentenced WikiLeaks source Chelsea (Bradley) Manning to 35 years on 30 July 2013. While US voices called for Assange’s assassination as the ‘most dangerous man in the world’, he was readers’ choice for Time’s Person of the Year (2010). WikiLeaks unsettled the profession of journalism as much as did the new media. Was Assange an editor, investigative journalist, a leaker or a ‘newsman’? This uncertainty surfaced in 2011 when WikiLeaks won the Walkley Award for Journalistic Leadership. On 30 May 2012, Assange’s lawyers lost their fight against his extradition to Sweden on sexual molestation allegations, but he was granted diplomatic asylum in London’s Ecuadorian Embassy on 18 August 2012. His life turned into a television soap, with more media investigation into his private affairs than into the crimes documented by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is the prime source of information about the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, with its implications for Australian content. Hence WikiLeaks is as significant for what it indicates about the new and the old media as it is for the crimes and lies it reveals. ‘The internet’, Assange writes, ‘by itself does not give you freedom. The internet is simply a way to make publishing cheap’. He expected his leaks to ‘bubble up’ as if from a blog, but soon learnt that ‘publishing in the computer age therefore becomes about performing the task that the systems allow and facing down the ingrained, self-protecting habits of the old publishing way’. Seeking ‘the widest possible circulation’, WikiLeaks in 2010 dealt with five liberal press outlets, primarily the London Guardian, and in Australia through Fairfax Media. WikiLeaks is emblematic of a ‘Sunshine Journalism’ that shines light on crimes. Attracting

support across the political spectrum from those opposed to limits on the web, it broke into a social order shaken by the Global Financial Crisis to hit prominence in step with the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring. A WikiLeaks Party, registered in July 2013, fielded impressive Senate candidates in three states before imploding over the allocation of preferences to right-wingers, leaving Assange with 1.24 per cent of the Victorian vote. Although attention has shifted to Edward Snowden and his National Security Agency downloads, Assange is Rupert Murdoch’s only Australian-born rival for influence over the global mediascape. REFs: S. Dreyfus and J. Assange, Underground (2011); A. Fowler, The Most Dangerous Man in the World (2011). HUMPHREY McQUEEN

W ILLESEE, M IC H AEL (1942– ) Mike Willesee’s father, Don, became a minister in the Whitlam government, his brother Terry has been a commercial television star, and his children, Amy and Michael Junior, have gone into journalism, but Michael Senior is one of a kind. This product of Perth spent much of the 1960s on ABC Television’s two current affairs programs, as a reporter on This Day Tonight and as host (1969–71) of Four Corners, but moved quickly to the Nine Network. In 1971, Willesee designed, produced and presented A Current Affair, a program still pumping out nightly tabloid journalism more than 40 years later. He moved to the rival Network Ten in 1974, then hosted Willesee at Seven. He returned to Nine to host Willesee (1984–88). Having set up his own production company, Transmedia, Willesee sold the rights to A Current Affair to Nine in 1988. He returned as presenter for a year in 1993. Willesee was the pre-eminent, top-rating television interviewer in Australia for 25 years. His charismatic style involved personal charm, attentive listening, strategic use of research, persistence and reliance on anticipating interviewees’ answers. It also involved tactical use of what became known as ‘the Willesee pause’. Willesee is the winner of six Logie Awards. In 2002 he was inducted into the TV Week Logies Hall of Fame. Interviewed by Andrew Denton on ABC Television in 2006, Willesee said of his technique: ‘Quite seriously, I think I did more research and preparation than any of the other guys.’ His former producer at 60 Minutes, Gerald Stone, believes Willesee is the television journalist who ‘comes closest to displaying both substance and style’ in equal measure. Willesee’s most famous interview was with then federal opposition leader John Hewson 10 days prior to the 1993 federal election. During an interview about Hewson’s proposal to

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women in the media introduce a GST, Willesee asked whether a birthday cake would cost more or less under the GST. Hewson’s stumbling answers appeared to show Hewson had no answer. Transmedia produced many high-rating documentary series including, in the 1990s, those on new-found religious beliefs Willesee had developed. By 1998, he was listed in Business Review Weekly’s Rich 200 List with investments in the Sydney Swans AFL team, 2Day FM, thoroughbred racing and property. Since 2012, he has appeared as a reporter on the Seven Network’s Sunday Night.

another stroke and died in Melbourne on 19 March. His death was widely reported in the Melbourne and Sydney press, with the Argus concluding that Willoughby ‘was the most remarkable journalist who has yet appeared in Australia’. His high standards of journalism and the wide range of his interests enhanced both the Argus and his profession in general.

REF: G. Stone, Compulsive Viewing (2000). PETER MANNING

W O M EN IN TH E M ED IA The prominent public profile of women journalists in press, radio and television in recent decades presents an extraordinary contrast to the culture of even half a century ago. It is a revolutionary change since the forerunners of women journalists appeared in print in the 19th century. The initial handful of women who wrote for newspapers in Australia usually hid their identities behind pseudonyms. The more fortunate were engaged under arrangements with some continuity for a series of articles, but most were casual contributors with little security. Most wrote for the general reader, not specifically on women’s topics. Louisa Atkinson’s articles on the natural environment, published in the Sydney Morning Herald from 1860, were the first long-running series by a woman to be published in a major Australian newspaper. Pioneer social reformer and writer Catherine Helen Spence wrote on general-interest issues, usually under the gender-neutral name of ‘A Colonist of 1839’. Feminist Alice Henry, the first woman journalist to be taken on a staff of a metropolitan newspaper and trained on the job, was a versatile general reporter. Her description of her training on the Australasian in the 1880s is a unique record of this aspect of journalism before the start of the cadet training system. The situation of women who wrote for the press changed in the latter part of the 19th century, when periodicals and then newspapers began to publish columns of household hints and society notes aimed at women readers. Editors saw the advantage in employing women to write and edit these columns, opening up a larger and more regular avenue of employment. The women attracted to this occupation came from wide and varied backgrounds. Some were highly educated, activist women; some had family associations with newspapers or journalism; others began with a hopeful bombardment of newspaper offices with unsolicited contributions. Women with an entrée into society circles had some advantages; others were attracted to the glamour of the slightly Bohemian, rakish aura of newspaper work. In the country, some women became proprietors/editors of family newspapers following the deaths of their husbands. In the 1890s, women journalists were

W I LL OUGHBY, HOWARD (1839–1908) Born in Birmingham, Howard Willoughby migrated to Melbourne at the age of 19. He commenced his career as a journalist with the Age in 1861, moving to the Argus the following year. Late in 1863, he accompanied Victorian forces to New Zealand, where he reported on Lieutenant-General Duncan Cameron’s campaign against the Maori in Waikato, making him Australia’s first war correspondent. Though an ardent supporter of the imperial cause in New Zealand, Willoughby expressed some sympathy for the Maori. Willoughby next travelled to Western Australia, where he observed the final stages of the transportation system in that colony. He argued strongly against its retention in Transportation: The British Convict in Western Australia (1865), emphasising the dangers to the eastern colonies of ‘importing’ hardened criminals to Australia. From 1866, Willoughby was a Hansard reporter before becoming, in 1869, the founding editor of the Melbourne Daily Telegraph. His anonymous publication, The Critic in Church, or, Melbourne Preachers and Preaching (1872), is still a useful guide to religious practice in 19th-century Melbourne. By this time, he was crafting telling pen portraits of prominent Melbournians. Willoughby returned to the Argus in 1877, staying until his retirement. He used his weekly column, ‘Above the Speaker’ by ‘Timotheus’, to push the newspaper’s conservative political interests and to advance the cause of free trade. Even opponents such as Alfred Deakin admired the column’s style and wit. A hard worker, Willoughby published Australian Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil (1886), celebrating the formation of a national character. In Australian Federation, Its Aims and Its Possibilities (1891), Willoughby vigorously endorsed Federation, suggesting that the national capital could operate on a ‘rotatory principle’ between the existing colonial capitals. In 1898, Willoughby became editor of the Argus. Five years later, a stroke effectively ended his career, though he contributed occasional articles until 1907. The following year, he suffered

REF: F. Anderson and R. Trembath, Witnesses to War (2011). RICHARD TREMBATH

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women in the media sufficiently numerous to be noted in a survey of census data as being hard hit by unemployment in the depression. Soon, most women journalists were confined to the women’s pages. For many, this meant relegation to the social columns. Social changes, including the expansion of shops into department stores and the increasing availability of new household equipment and ready-made clothing, ensured an increase in advertising revenue to support women’s pages at a time when suffrage campaigns and other women’s issues were making women more newsworthy. Women’s page material reinforced the image of the traditional homemaker. Ironically, it was written by journalists who as working women led very different lives. Some periodicals aimed at women readers—notably Louisa Lawson’s the Dawn (1888–1905), with an all-female workforce, Maybanke Wolstenholme’s Woman’s Voice (1894–95) and Vida Goldstein’s Australian Woman’s Sphere (1900–04)—articulated the feminist issues and social problems missing in women’s page journalism. In the Worker, (Dame) Mary Gilmore offered her distinctive brand of wisdom and advice, ingrained with feminist and socialist values. Women’s sections in newspapers and periodicals built up small empires. The highly qualified Stella Allan (‘Vesta’), head of the Argus women’s section, had a staff of five by 1925. Although women journalists were paid at the same rate as men, this was largely negated as they were overwhelmingly employed on lower grades. The employment of women journalists in this confined field entrenched the view that this work was not only particularly suited to women, but was the only journalistic work they were capable of doing. A few determined and able women managed to break through barriers. Louise Mack, a former editor of the Bulletin’s women’s page, became the first British female war correspondent when she managed to get to the front to report the fighting in Belgium in 1915. Abigail Clancy is believed to have been the first female parliamentary reporter in Australia when she was assigned to report the NSW Parliament for the Daily Mail in 1923. Kathleen Commins joined the Sydney Morning Herald’s previously exclusively ‘male, clubby world’ of sports writers in 1934 at a time when most other women journalists were a discrete group clustered in the women’s section. These achievements were exceptional and either episodic or, in Commins’ case, partly overturned when after a short time she was moved to the women writers’ room although she continued to report on male as well as female sport. Moves by women into general reporting rounds were resisted. In 1921, male court reporters opposed women reporting the criminal courts, ostensibly to spare them from hearing ‘revolting and degrading indecencies’, although there is evidence that the real objection to

women entering a previously all-male section of the profession was a perceived threat to gradings and wage rates. The Australian Journalists’ Association (AJA, later the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) did little to tackle this situation. The Australian Women’s Weekly (1933– ) opened up a slightly wider range of employment for women journalists. Despite the widespread prejudice that women’s voices were too ‘high pitched’ and lacking in ‘authority’ to be effective on air, by the mid-1930s a few women were employed to present daytime chat shows aimed at women radio listeners. Mary Marlowe hosted a popular show at 2UE Sydney, and from the late 1930s and into the war years Elizabeth Webb attracted a substantial following with her Speaking Personally program on ABC Radio. World War II expanded opportunities for women in general reporting as male journalists left to join the armed services. A few became war reporters, led by Adele (Tilly) Shelton Smith, who reported from Malaya for the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1941; Lorraine Stumm, who reported the Japanese attack on Rabaul; and Elizabeth Riddell, who covered the Allied invasion of Europe and the liberation of Paris. In 1942, the ABC recruited a few women as journalists and newsreaders to its independent news service, and in 1943 there was a breakthrough in another area when Pat Holmes joined the Sydney Sun as a photographer. Towards the end of the war, the AJA paper, the Journalist, carried an indecisive discussion on whether women would retain their positions when men returned from the war. Although some did, most of the gains were lost. By 1948, the ratio of female to male journalists on the Sydney Morning Herald’s editorial staff had fallen to one in 13, appreciably lower than before the war. At the ABC, it would be three decades before a fulltime woman newsreader would be appointed. In the 1950s, women not only made up a small percentage of the journalistic workforce, but most were still employed on the women’s pages, which mirrored the most conservative, conformist aspects of post-war society. An Argus journalist described the 1950s as an era when reporting innocuous social news was ‘the bread and butter of women journalists’ work’. In the 1960s, a few women’s page editors ventured cautiously into controversial subjects such as equal opportunity in employment, while Charmian Clift’s enormously popular weekly columns in the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Herald indicated how much women readers craved a more meaty brand of social commentary. A few women journalists were recruited into specialist fields—the West Australian, for example, engaged Catherine Martin as a medical reporter. A few secured jobs reporting parliament and the courts, and there were more jobs in the expanding areas of suburban and

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women in the media country newspapers, specialist publications and government publicity. It was not until the later 1960s, however, that Margaret Jones became the first woman to be taken on the general reporting staff of the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC recruited its first female journalism cadet. Into the 1970s, the Journalist still consistently portrayed journalists as male, and the AJA executive remained an all-male body. On radio, the flamboyant newspaper columnist Dorothy Jenner (‘Andrea’) in Sydney and Claudia Wright, a trailblazer for talkback radio in Melbourne, established popular programs, but their experiences—either being taken off the air or coming under unrelenting attack—indicated that women who adopted confrontational attitudes were unacceptable. The Macquarie Network had a better record than other commercial radio networks or the ABC in employing women announcers, but only a very few secured popular timeslots as management persisted in the view that women’s voices were most suited to midnight-to-dawn sessions. Old debates about women’s ‘high-pitched’ voices reignited in the talkback era, effectively cutting women out of this field. When television began, women were employed more readily than in the early days of radio, but invariably they were young and attractive, and employed as hostesses. With few exceptions, current affairs programs and news presentation remained male preserves through most of the 1960s. The most promising portent occurred in 1968 when Caroline Jones joined the ABC’s This Day Tonight in Sydney as its first regular female reporter. Widespread social changes and the influence of the women’s liberation movement made the 1970s a turning point for participation of women in the media. There were dramatic changes in both the role of women in the media and the material that the media presented to women. The old staples of women’s reportage disappeared as the pages changed to more sexually neutral lifestyle sections with a wider social issues agenda. The Sydney Morning Herald’s women’s editor, Suzanne Baker, was termed a ‘campaigner’ when she introduced some of the excitement of the revolution women were experiencing in her material, and her publicising of controversial subjects was deemed ‘not the purpose of the women’s pages’. But by the end of the decade, old-style women’s pages had virtually disappeared. Newly liberated women journalists moved to previously out-of-bounds areas. Several, including the feminist Anne Summers, joined the National Times as investigative journalists writing on previously avoided or under-reported subjects, such as rape and prison reform. Others were employed as financial journalists on the Australian Financial Review, with editor Vic Carroll believing the talents of women journalists had been under-used in the past. In

1975, Canberra Times journalist Gay Davidson became the first woman to head a bureau in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery, and she was later the first woman president of the Gallery. Ita Buttrose, after a career as founding editor of Cleo and editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly, became the first editor-in-chief of a metropolitan newspaper when she was appointed to head the Sydney Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in 1981. Young women, observing the industry changing from its former status as a male bastion, began to flock to the new journalism courses. The radical Australian Women’s Broadcasting Cooperative’s Coming Out Show (1975–94), launched on ABC Radio to mark International Women’s Year, typified the assertiveness of second-wave feminism, prompting the establishment of a Task Force on Equal Opportunity for Women in the ABC. The report revealed that an overwhelming 90 per cent of women employed at the ABC were working in low-status support jobs, and that major barriers to breaking down the sexual division of labour included the discriminatory and prejudicial attitudes of management and staff. Only 7 per cent of journalists and an even smaller percentage of announcers and television producers were women. In 1975, one of the few announcers, Margaret Throsby, became the first woman since World War II to read a full-length main evening ABC Radio news bulletin and in 1978 she was the first woman to read the 7 p.m. ABC News on television. Over the next few decades, women became commonplace across the spectrum of reporting and presenting, with some achieving senior gradings and a few high-profile appointments. In 1991, Lyndall Crisp was appointed the first female editor of the Bulletin. Two years later, Michelle Grattan became the first woman to edit a major daily newspaper when she was appointed to the Canberra Times and Carmel Travers was made Network Ten’s general manager of news and current affairs. In the same year, a federal government report on the portrayal of women in the media found that there was entrenched inequality in the Australian news media, which continued to lag behind women’s lifestyle and economic power. Only 23 per cent of news and current affairs reporters were female. A survey on the status of women working in the media and issues affecting their role, conducted by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) in 1996, found that many media industry structures were fundamentally unequal and patriarchal. Most women remained in the lower grades, pigeon-holed in traditionally female areas such as women’s issues and fashion and to lesser extent in health, the arts, entertainment and education, rather than politics and sport. Nearly one-quarter of respondents had left a job in the media because they felt they were discriminated against in promotion. Opportunities for promotion were affected by

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women’s magazines child-care responsibilities, which made it difficult to work shifts. The survey found half the respondents had experienced sexual harassment in newsrooms. In the 21st century, the presence of women anchors of prestigious current affairs programs on radio and television, and as writers on the opinion pages of Australian newspapers, is an enormous advance on their small almost insignificant presence in the newsrooms of the middle of the last century. Although sometimes a token presence on pages otherwise dominated by male writers and sometimes assigned in all media to ‘softer’ areas, many women have made a mark reporting politics, war and public affairs. Women are well established as political commentators; the press, the ABC, commercial radio and commercial television regularly post women as foreign and war correspondents; and women have presented ABC Media Watch— arguably ‘the toughest gig’ on television. The public profile of notable women tends to disguise the fact that women journalists struggle to attain real influence in decision-making roles. Few reach influential leadership positions, with power over recruitment and promotion. Content is still determined predominantly by men, a situation that has implications for sexual bias in the presentation of news and opinion. In 2013, none of the major metropolitan newspapers was edited by a woman, and Cathy O’Connor, head of DMG Radio, was the sole female chief executive of a major Australian media company. Since the 1980s, females have greatly outnumbered males in tertiary journalism courses, yet women employed in the media are still found disproportionately in low- and middle-range positions, and work in a culture that is still described as ‘blokey’. A new national organisation, Women in Media, launched in 2013 by a group of senior women journalists, aims to overcome this culture by empowering women working in the industry through mentoring younger and mid-career women, providing networking opportunities and promoting improved workplace outcomes. Based on a successful Women in Media group established in Western Australia, it has the support of industry leaders including Caroline Jones, former Sydney Morning Herald editor Amanda Wilson, media academic Jenna Price and television, radio and print journalist Tracey Spicer, as well as the MEAA. REFs: P. Clarke, Pen Portraits (1988); K.S. Inglis, This the ABC (1983) and Whose ABC? (2006); C.J. Lloyd, Profession: Journalist (1985). PATRICIA CLARKE

W O M EN’S MA GA Z I NES Many people imagine that women’s magazines in Australia started with the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1933, but while this may be the most significant Australian magazine for women, it

was not the first. Imported British examples preceded the first locally produced instances. Two very short-lived examples targeted ‘cultivated’ women: the Spectator: Journal of Literature and Art, which ran for 13 issues in 1858, and the Interpreter, which managed just two issues in 1861. Subsequent examples, like the Australian Woman’s Magazine and Domestic Journal (1882–84), aimed to be more entertaining. Louisa Lawson published and edited the Dawn (1888–1905), combining arguments on women’s rights with domestic matters and (eventually) fashion, and attracted middle-class readers— both rural and urban. Although not specifically targeted to women, the Lone Hand (1907–21), published by the Bulletin, argued for women’s rights, noted unfair working conditions and acknowledged that women read more than just the fashion notes. Not all magazines took this view. Generalist mass market magazines like the monthly Australian Journal (1865–1962) and the weekly Table Talk (1885–1939) saw themselves as catering to women readers by carrying what Frank Greenop referred to as ‘departments at the back of the magazine catering to the private interests of its readers’. Here were located recipes, fashion and ‘family matters’. New Idea was started in 1902 by the Fitchett Brothers, explicitly as a magazine for women, but although the title continues, it has not had an unbroken run. In 1911 its title was changed to Everylady’s Journal and this ran until 1938. In 1928, the New Idea title was revived and has persisted, although it was sold to Southdown Press (now Pacific Magazines) after World War II. The Australian Woman’s Mirror (1924–61) was an early example of the mix of topics that are now regarded as standard for a generalist women’s magazine: fashion, craft, recipes, beauty hints, occasional articles on prominent professional women and pages of children’s activities. It made a feature of readers’ letters, soliciting them on domestic topics (overwhelmingly relating to marriage) for a highly popular section called ‘Pen Parliaments’. During the 1930s, it also published articles from a female solicitor on women’s rights and gave advice on financial matters. The Australian Women’s Weekly was established in 1933 by (Sir) Frank Packer, E.G. ‘Red Ted’ Theodore and George Warnecke, more to keep their presses turning than to become the profitable enterprise it did. It drew on Warnecke’s newspaper experience to include some topical news items and political news, as well as the more customary women’s interests: recipes, fashion and household advice. It quickly became the market leader in terms of circulation and readership, a position it has retained since. During the war, it included reporting from writers, artists and photographers sent overseas

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women’s magazines and from those reporting on the home front. Its male readership became substantial, and it was heavily sought after by soldiers posted abroad. Even though paper rationing reduced its size, its circulation rose from 400,000 before the war to 500,000 during it. The Weekly’s circulation continued to expand after the war. It launched special pages for teenagers in 1954, which became the lift-out ‘Teenagers Weekly’ in 1959. This was a harbinger of market segmentation. The market was divided into magazines for men, for women and a few for children, together with some generalist titles and a small range of special-interest publications. Imported fashion magazines like Vogue could perhaps be regarded as a special interest; a local Australian supplement was started in 1956. The licensing of overseas titles for Australian editions has proliferated since 1972, when John Fairfax & Sons obtained the Australian rights to Cosmopolitan—and Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) immediately launched Cleo as direct local competition. Both addressed a supposedly ‘liberated’ audience of 18–24-year-old women, mainly through articles on sexual topics and those concerned with being a young woman in the workforce, which included some reference to women’s rights, together with fashion and beauty. A top-rating 2011 mini-series, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, focused on the launch of Cleo under editor Ita Buttrose. The Bauer Media Group (a German-based company that acquired ACP in 2012) now owns both magazines. Since the 1970s, licensing of overseas titles for women has focused primarily on fashion and celebrity. In 1982, the Australian Women’s Weekly shifted from weekly to monthly publication. At the time, it was recording what was then its highest circulation ever (averaging well over 800,000 per issue and occasionally tipping one million). The shift followed a change to a glossier format and increased advertising costs. Advertisers were reluctant to pay more than was being charged by the competition, so advertising volume dropped. Changed frequency was the solution, demonstrating the comparative power of the two sources of magazine revenue: circulation and advertising. The shift to monthly publication was beneficial to Woman’s Day (1950– ), which—together with New Idea—is the third of the long-running triumvirate of generalist women’s magazines, since it became the weekly magazine market leader, retaining this position until very recently, when displaced by Better Homes and Gardens (1978– ). The top 20 circulation magazines at the end of 2013 included 10 targeted to women, four focused on food and four on house and garden topics, together with TV Week (1957– ) and Club Marine (1985– ). In other words, Australian magazine circulation is dominated by publications that target women. Magazine circulation is falling, and has been at least since the 1990s. From a peak of over

a million, the Australian Women’s Weekly is now less than half that, and the other long-running titles have fallen accordingly. Such is the centrality of women’s magazines to the general magazine market that the general figures are relevant here. Overall revenue and circulation has reduced between 6 and 8 per cent since 2008. The number of titles has increased, but turnover is high and many have very small circulations. Women’s magazines conceive of their audience in age and socio-economic terms, with the most popular grouping 24–39 years of age, reasonably well educated and with incomes a little to a lot above average. Monthly magazines like marie claire (1995– ) and Madison (2005– ), and weekly publications like Grazia (2008–13) have addressed this market segment with fashion, beauty, celebrities and, in the case of marie claire, feature articles on more general, socio-political topics. This last might be seen as a partial emulation of POL (1969–86), independently run and innovative both in design terms and content, which addressed women as interested in political and social issues as well as domestic ones. Dolly (1970– ), now owned by Bauer, targets girls 14–17 years of age (though much of its readership is younger) with fashion, beauty and celebrity articles. Second-ranked Girlfriend (1988– ) from Pacific Magazines is a direct competitor. When it comes to women older than 39, the top three mass-circulation magazines are regarded as still catering adequately to the older women who grew up with them and remained loyal. But there has been a further fragmentation, much less likely to be talked about in the industry, even though the two titles’ circulation are more substantial than the glossy monthlies. That’s Life! (1994– ) and Take 5 (1998– )—both based on readers’ own stories and contributions—are targeted at older (35+) working-class women. Distinctively, these magazines ignore celebrities, having their features generated from readers’ contributions, solicited each issue, paid for and revised by magazine staffers. These features are supplemented by the usual service sections. The magazines produce a participatory community of readers who exchange information about domestic familial events, and try to win prizes, and whose vicarious involvement in others’ lives is closer to that of neighbours than of looking on at the distant scandals of the famous. This content is reminiscent of the older issues of New Idea, with its many different pages of readers’ letters, but this is now a much smaller section of the magazine because it has been inflected by one of the greatest changes in magazines directed at women, evident since the 1990s: the emphasis on gossip and celebrities operating in tandem with a sensationalisation of content, purportedly to attract supermarket impulse sales. Gossip about celebrities such as film stars has long featured in women’s magazines, along with longer interviews with famous

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women’s pages visitors to the country and social pages about so-called ‘leaders of society’. For the most part, though, these were ingratiating and a minor part of the overall content. The change was both in the tone of the coverage and its extent. Several of the high-circulation magazines for women are now centrally focused on gossip about celebrities. This was a major component of another television mini-series, Paper Giants: Magazine Wars (2013), dramatising the battle between editors Nene King (Woman’s Day) and Dulcie Boling (New Idea) to make their magazine the number one seller in Australia between 1987 and 1997. New Idea followed this trend more than Woman’s Day, but both retain more of the older concerns than do the new additions: Who (1992– ), NW (1993– ), OK! (2004– ) and Famous (2006– ). Service sections in the latter publications are restricted to fashion and beauty, and the titles are differentiated a little by the proportion of snide to ingratiating stories. Much of the content is generated from paparazzi photographs, with captions devised to produce a story of relationship worries or dietary excesses. Pregnancy speculation is common, and pictures of celebrities with babies (when the pregnancies actually eventuate) are much sought after. While the older titles continue to provide generalised advice on child care, much of the coverage has been transmuted into admiring or condemnatory stories of how celebrities are raising their children. This is linked to another change in the content of magazines for women: a substantial increase in the representation of health information. As much of the responsibility for personal wellbeing has shifted from the medical profession to individuals, magazines have taken on the role of expert advisers. They speak of risk management, often in terms of which foods promote health and which contribute to disease. New magazines devoted solely to health reveal a further fragmentation in the market, based not on age but on interest. The role of women as guides and monitors of their own and their families’ health has ensured that most of these magazines, with the clearly marked exception of Men’s Health (1997– ), target women. A similar situation has arisen around the interest area of food, where specialist magazines of two broad types have proliferated: mass market, often with explicit supermarket links (Australian Good Taste, published by Woolworths, 1996–2013); or more upmarket publications like delicious (2001– ) and Donna Hay (2001– ). Although, given the shift in the perception of the activity of cooking, a substantial proportion of the purchasers and readers are male, women still comprise the main audience for this growth category. Despite all the fragmentation and the growth in titles, when it comes to high-circulation examples, most of the titles are owned by one of three major companies—Bauer, NewsLife-

Media (owned by News Limited) and Pacific Magazines (part of Seven West Media), all of which have substantial other media holdings. They try to ensure that they have titles to satisfy the needs and desires of every age and interest group, but there is nothing to suggest that readers are loyal to publishers, though they may be to individual titles. Given both the proportion of overall magazine purchasers who are female and the fact that only 15 per cent of Australian magazines are sold by subscription, magazines need to be especially attentive to attracting and retaining women readers. REFs: F. Bonner, ‘Magazines’, in S. Cunningham and S. Turnbull (eds), The Media and Communication in Australia, 4th edn (2014); F.S. Greenop, History of Magazine Publishing in Australia (1947); M. Le Masurier, ‘Reading the Flesh: Popular Feminism, the Second Wave and Cleo’s Male Centrefold’, Feminist Media Studies, 11(2) (2011). FRANCES BONNER

W O M EN ’ S P AG ES In 1924, Florence Riddick Boys tried to convince American editors to include her syndicated ‘Woman’s Page’ in their publications. She suggested that, ‘It will mark you as a man who is progressive and awake to women’s needs’. While this recognition of women as readers was indeed a form of progress, ‘women’s pages’ as a special interest section were set apart from the ‘rest of the paper’. From the 1870s to the 1970s, most Australian newspapers ran a section directed towards a woman reader written from a woman’s perspective and edited by a female journalist. These women’s pages were always surrounded by advertisements. The rise and fall of the women’s editor’s ‘empire within an empire’ provides insight into female journalists’ industrial situation, as well as a window on to gender relations in colonial and post-Federation Australia. The first mention of a page for women in an Australian newspaper was in Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer on 7 June 1851. ‘The Sense of Being Married’, a man’s account of the devotion and care that English wives showed their husbands, appeared about 20 years before the advent of women’s pages. Similarly, in May 1859, Empire carried a ‘Ladies Column’. The first women’s pages established as regular features in local publications were in the Australian Town and Country Journal, which from January 1870 until 1907 ran a ‘Ladies’ Column’, and the Illustrated Sydney News, which followed in May 1870. From January 1884 to April 1885, the News column brought together home and empire for Sydney readers with a column recording ‘Home Life in England, by a London Lady’. It was a potpourri of snippets and jokes, including a warning to lovers about kissing vain ladies, following a craze for wearing false ‘india-rubber’ lips. A few months

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women’s pages later, it transformed to ‘London Ladies’ Gossip’, which remained in print until 1887. The Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Woman’s Column’ appeared in early 1888, and also reported on overseas fashions until November 1891. In the mid-1890s, the Queenslander ran a ‘Ladies’ Column’ edited by the poet Mary Hannay Foott. The issue of 2 November 1895 comprised a page of advertising for mail-order goods aimed at women that included ‘ventilating corsets … specially adapted for our Queensland summer’. From 1898, the Melbourne Argus provided a section titled ‘Woman’s Realm’, which appeared weekly. In the early 20th century, women’s page editors became responsible for content. In December 1905, the Sydney Morning Herald instituted a ‘A Page for Women Notices’ asking for contributions ‘from women preferred … not exceed[ing] half a column in length’. In July 1918, following the retirement of women’s page editor Florence Baverstock (who had succeeded Alexina Wildman at the Bulletin), the Herald announced that, ‘Publication of the “Page for Women” on Wednesdays, has been suspended until after the war, but the features will be continued from day to day.’ The rise of department stores in tandem with the fashion industry saw the metropolitan dailies’ women’s pages and their editors flourish in the 1920s. From early in the decade, the Sydney Sun’s Connie Robertson edited a women’s page every day except Saturday, when it was a fourpage women’s supplement. Despite the shocks of the Great Depression— or perhaps because of them—developments in printing in the early 1930s contributed to the ascent of new magazines for women, and experienced women’s editors were poached from newspapers, including Robertson, who edited Woman’s Budget and then Woman from 1930 until 1936. Jean Williamson, who had succeeded Baverstock at the Herald, ran ‘A Page for Women’ until she left to work for the new Australian Women’s Weekly in June 1933. The next phase of women’s pages paralleled World War II, when women and women’s issues were drawn into the war effort. In 1941, the Argus included an item on child-care centres under the section title ‘Women to Women’ and the Sydney Morning Herald changed its layout to accommodate ‘Women’s News’. In February 1943, Connie Robertson, back at the Herald, was described as ‘Our Staff Correspondent’ when she reported on army women ‘Learning to “Man” Searchlights’. The end of the war effort meant more printing stock for advertising. By November 1945, Robertson was back on the fashion round, predicting ‘The Shape of Hats to Come’. The Argus continued its women’s page until its last issue on 19 January 1957. A feature on that day presaged the rise of another powerful consumer figure—the teenager—with beauty

advice from a ‘London cosmetician’: ‘What’s the use of teenagers buying a unit of expensive make-up, when their continuous late nights make complexions wrinkled and SO tired!’ The demise of women’s pages was signalled in March 1971 when the Sydney Morning Herald’s women’s section became ‘Look!’ under Suzanne Baker’s editorship; however, after two years as editor of the openly feminist section, Baker left when she was instructed by news editor David Bowman to reinstate social news. Further women’s editors were appointed at the Herald; the last was Christine Hogan in the mid-1980s. Reflecting on her time as the editor of ‘Look!’, Baker quoted Newsday’s David Lowenthal: ‘Women’s pages should be a thing of the past. They are frivolous, non-substantial and insulting to women.’ Yet, as Baker also pointed out, ‘The women’s section is the part of the paper that isn’t tied to inherited ideas of what an “event” is.’ These changes were reflected more widely in the Australian press during the 1970s. On 11 August 1982, the Australian Women’s Weekly was able to proclaim to its readers that ‘Women’s pages have taken on a new look’. The Weekly’s survey of 16 women’s section editors at Australian newspapers found that about a quarter had transformed their women’s pages into a ‘magazine section … set out to inform as well as to entertain’. While there were still staff broadly responsible for content aimed at women at broadsheets such as the Canberra Times, Melbourne’s Herald, Adelaide’s Advertiser, the West Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald, these papers no longer had a named women’s section; instead, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, they introduced ‘lifestyle’ and weekly magazine sections. Another group— mainly tabloids and rural newspapers such as the Land—continued to include women’s pages, although they were now much more focused on lifestyle topics and androgynously titled to implicitly attract male readers—for example, ‘Scene’ at the Sunday Telegraph and ‘Tempo’ at the Sun-Herald. The sexual revolution via women’s magazines was being felt in newspapers like Brisbane’s Telegraph, where women’s editor Debra Camden had recently introduced a weekly ‘beefcake’ photograph feature, ‘Man Friday’. Other innovations included editorial policies to address issues of interest to working women, cover changes to rape and domestic violence laws and provide sex education, resulting from long struggles waged by feminist journalists such as Sylvia da Costa-Roque at the Brisbane Sunday Mail and Jill McFarlane at the Sydney Daily Mirror. The debates over dedicated women’s sections have continued in the age of online media—for example, when Fairfax Media launched a new women’s news portal in 2012, Daily Life. Immediately, a welter of online comment appeared, ironically referencing the site via the

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world series cricket hashtag #dailywife, and thus rekindled a debate about the marginalising effect of a ‘new gender apartheid’. Both these digital publications and the lifestyle sections that have now universally replaced the women’s pages remain tied to their 19th-century inheritances. REFs: S. Baker and S. Clinch Baker Papers (SLNSW); P. Clarke, Pen Portraits (1988); http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/cal/intro.html. JUSTINE LLOYD

W O R LD SERI E S CRI CKET After a failed 1976 attempt to buy exclusive broadcasting rights to international cricket in Australia for his Nine Network, Kerry Packer was to sponsor an alternative that split the game worldwide: a professional troupe comprising the best players from Australia, the West Indies, South Africa, England and Pakistan participating in televised spectacular one- and five-day games. Cricket was enjoying special popularity in Australia, thanks to the Test success of charismatic teams led by Ian then Greg Chappell, and featuring such star players as Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Doug Walters. When secretly approached by Packer’s agents, John Cornell and Austin Robertson, these players and others signed up out of disaffection with the conservative Australian Cricket Board; England’s South Africa-born captain Tony Greig was another recruit.

Plans for World Series Cricket (WSC) in May 1977 caused indignation in established cricket circles. Both compromise negotiations and an attempt to ban players, which Packer fought in London’s High Court, failed. When the first ‘Supertest’ between a WSC Australian XI and a WSC West Indian XI began at Melbourne’s VFL Park on 2 December 1977, interest was desultory. Packer’s only significant success that summer was with night cricket. The next season, crowds and ratings improved significantly, stimulated by Mojo’s ‘C’mon Aussie C’mon’ advertising campaign, and access to the floodlit Sydney Cricket Ground. Test matches now looked dowdy by comparison, especially with Australia’s team shorn of its top players. With the Australian Cricket Board in acute financial straits, Packer acquired not only the broadcasting rights he had sought—which Nine still holds—but the right to market and promote Australian cricket, which Nine retained for 15 years. Traditional cricket adopted many innovations popularised by WSC, including night cricket, coloured clothing, drop-in pitches and batting helmets. But Packer was to benefit hugely from his entrepreneurial zeal: in many respects, WSC made his reputation as a media proprietor. REF: G. Haigh, The Cricket War (1993). GIDEON HAIGH

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Y YOUNG TAL ENT TIM E Young Talent Time was produced by Lewis Young Productions for Network Ten. The compere was songwriter and former pop idol Johnny Young (1947– ), who also served as executive producer in partnership with Kevin Lewis of Festival Records. The show debuted on 24 April 1971, featuring Rod Kirkham, Vicki Broughton, Philip Gould, Debbie (Debra) Byrne, Jamie Redfern and Jane Scali. Each week, three contestants were judged, with the winner progressing to the finals. The first winner was Johnny Lo Piccolo, who was to become known as John St Peeters. Over the show’s 18 years, 40 children were members of the talent team, generally leaving the show at 16. Tina Arena, Dannii Minogue and Jamie Redfern have enjoyed international success, while Debbie Byrne and Rod Kirkham had local hits. Byrne and Philip Gould have also had successful stage careers.

In the early days, Johnny Farnham, Russell Morris, Normie Rowe and Ronnie Burns made numerous guest appearances. In later years, clowns and sight acts were used. At the end of each show, Young would croon a ballad version of the Beatles’ hit ‘All My Lovin’’. Young Talent Time was adored by children, parents and grandparents alike, winning numerous Logies and, in 1982, a special Logie Award for Sustained Excellence. The program spawned numerous hit singles, 15 albums, outdoor concerts, swap cards, board games, toys and a documentary film. The renamed YTT, hosted by former Australian Idol contestant Rob Mills, was revived for a single season by Ten in 2012. REF: Information from John Young. MILTON HAMMON

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Z Z IN E S Zines are self-published texts made by an individual or a collective using a photocopier. They are generally produced in low print runs, with the creators undertaking all aspects of production and distribution. The size and length of a zine can vary from a single A4 page folded into six A7 sized pages to an A5 booklet of up to 50 or more pages. The production values found in zines are diverse, from orderly and professional typesetting and layout to handwritten text accompanied by poorly copied images. Black and white photocopying is still the most common technology used for zine production. Zines are found in a range of different communities, where they are used for communication, artistic experimentation, personal expression and information sharing. The science fiction fan community in Australia (as well as other countries) has used zines—also known in this context as fanzines or newsletters—since the 1950s to publish reviews, news, letters, interviews, original short stories, fan fiction and art. In this context, fanzines are often circulated through the mail to subscribers who may also be members of a fan club or association. One example is The Captain’s Log, the regular newsletter of AUSTREK, the Star Trek fan club based in Melbourne. There have also been numerous zines dedicated to the local music scenes in major cities since the 1970s, some of which (for example, Cyclic Defrost) have become professionally produced magazines. At the other end of the zines spectrum sits the project YOU, a free anonymous letter handwritten and photocopied on a single A4 sheet of paper that is left in public spaces around the world. Each week a new letter appears, sealed in a hand-decorated paper bag and stamped with the word ‘YOU’. This project has been running for 10 years; it is published in Melbourne and circulates through the international zine culture network. Here, the zine form is used for a kind of autobiographical art performance, with the zine’s creator, Luke You, documenting the birth of his two children, attendance at local gigs and everyday life. Between these two points of the spectrum are publications that cover topics such as history, radical politics, cycling, cooking, op-shop

reviews, popular culture, sexuality, working low-paid jobs and travel. Political commentary and social satire are common subjects, found in long-running zines such as Web: New Reality. Comic artists and poets also use the zine form to present and circulate their work. Since the mid-1990s, zines have circulated in established distribution sites that constitute ‘zine culture’ in Australia, and that exist outside fan communities. These include mail-order distributors, zine fairs and the Sticky Institute in Melbourne (est. 2001), an artist-run space that exhibits and sells zines in a small shop in a city subway. It is the first permanent physical space dedicated to the circulation of zines in Australia, and has been supported by arts funding. Mail-order distributors operate out of the houses of individual zine makers. Since 2000, zine fairs have gained popularity and are now held regularly by the Sticky Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), the National Young Writers’ Festival (Newcastle) and the Format Festival (Adelaide). One-off fairs are also organised by local councils, zine makers and writers’ festivals. Zines are also stocked in sympathetic independent bookstores, community spaces and artist-run galleries. Zines are increasingly collected by libraries as an important part of Australia’s media culture. The National Library of Australia holds zines as well as the Susan Smith-Clarke Fanzine Collection dedicated to science fiction fan publications. Murdoch University also holds a collection of fan publications in its Speculative Fiction Collections. The State Library of Victoria has been actively collecting zines since 1999. The Octapod organisation in Newcastle holds a large collection that began with the publication of the New Pollution zine anthology in 1998. Given the ephemeral nature of zines, their highly personal production and underground distribution, these collections cannot aim to be exhaustive, but they provide a useful insight into the diversity and energy of Australia’s zine culture. REFs: L.M. Ihlein, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About the “the Underground”’, Artlink 30(2) (2010); A. Poletti (ed.), ‘A People’s History of Australian Zines’, HEAT: Sheltered Lives, 11 (2006). ANNA POLETTI

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Index Bold numbers indicate a dedicated entry. A Big Country 321, 465 A Changing Race 465 ‘A Colonist of 1839’ see Spence, Catherine Helen A Country Practice 322, 467 A Current Affair (ACA) 1, 128, 150, 166, 187, 322, 490, 494 A General Order Fixing the Price of Pork and Other Comestibles 368 A I Register 25 A Nilai Ra Davot (PNG) 346 A Plea for Time 473 A Question of Balance 424 A River Somewhere 476 A Town Like Alice 467 A.H. Massina & Co.’s Weather Almanac 19 A.M. (magazine) 130, 336 A’Beckett, Sir William 241, 274 A’Beckett, Gilbert 274 Aarons, Mark 222 Abbott government 45, 106, 136, 154–5, 220 Abbott, Sir Joseph 345 Abbott, Tony 2, 151, 294 ABC Weekly 132, 287, 288, 386 ACCatalyst 415 Abeles, Sir Peter 108, 123 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) 214, 216, 233, 291, 293 Aboriginal Arts Board 216; see also Australia Council Aboriginal broadcasting see Indigenous broadcasting Aboriginal Chronicle see Flinders Island (Weekly) Chronicle Aboriginal Half Hour 89 Aboriginal Independent Newspaper 364 Aboriginal newspapers see Indigenous newspapers Aboriginal People’s Television Network (Canada) 292 Aboriginal Program Exchange, The 214 Aboriginal Publications Foundation 216 Aboriginal Tent Embassy 297 Aborigines Progressive Association 215 Above Rubies 415 AC/DC 17 Academy Awards 54, 314, 333, 338 Ackermann, R. 165 ACNielsen see Nielsen Account Planning Group 8 Ack Ack 25 Ackland, Richard 85, 271 ACP Magazines 50, 51; see also Australian Consolidated Press Acres Australia 16 Acropolis Now 463, 468 Action 230 Action Outdoor Australia 327 Ad Men’s Institute of New South Wales 8 Ad News 233 Ad Writer 8 Ada and Elsie 382 Adam 230 Adam-Smith, Patsy 476, 490 Adams, A.H. 77 Adams, David 76 Adams, George 17, 18 Adams, Phillip 1–2 Adcock, Rev. Neil 395, 413 Adelaide Church Guardian 414 Adelaide Express 3, 299; see also Saturday Express Adelaide Independent and Cabinet of Amusements 357 Adelaide Media Club see South Australian Press Club Adelaide Observer 356, 357, 432

Adelaide Punch 83 Adelaide Review 2, 260, 358 Adelaide Times 357, 414 Adelaide Voices 358 Adelie Blizzard (Antarctica) 348 Adlam, Nigel 317 Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) 108, 268 AdNews 9 Adorno, Theodor 31 Advanced Television Research (ATR) Australia 32 Adventure Island 44, 93 Adventure Life 274 Adventures in Music 148 Adventures of Barry McKenzie 2 Adventures of Bottle Top Bill 433 Adventures of Buck Rogers, The 98 Advertiser (Adelaide) 2–3, 63, 69, 85, 103, 143, 153, 204, 256, 267, 299, 301, 321, 330, 356, 357, 358, 373, 394, 423, 432, 433, 437, 448, 501; and radio stations and networks 103; see also Sunday Advertiser Advertiser Newspapers Ltd 3, 69, 70, 143–4, 448 Advertisers’ Monthly 8 advertising 1–2, 3–6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, 24, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 66, 67, 78, 79, 82, 86, 87, 90, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112, 116, 119, 120, 121, 124, 131, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 144, 149, 150, 155, 157, 158, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 176, 182, 183–4, 186, 191, 193, 194, 201, 202, 204, 205, 208, 209, 230, 231, 233, 235, 237, 238, 239, 240, 243, 244, 245, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 275, 277, 286, 293, 295, 296, 298, 299, 304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311, 320, 321, 322, 323, 324, 327–8, 330, 331, 332–3, 335, 336, 339, 341, 348, 350, 351, 352, 357, 360, 362, 363, 368, 370, 374, 375, 376, 380, 384, 385, 389, 390, 396, 397, 400, 403, 404, 405, 409, 418, 420, 421, 422, 424, 426, 427, 431, 434, 435, 438, 445, 446, 447, 448, 450, 451, 452, 453, 455, 457, 458, 459, 462, 471, 473, 474, 475, 477, 479, 480, 490, 491, 492, 493, 496, 499, 500, 501, 502 advertising agencies 1, 3, 4, 6–7, 8, 26, 31, 34, 35, 40, 41, 99–100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 120, 245, 258, 259, 270, 277, 311, 370, 384, 390, 426–7; see also Aegis Media; BBDO; Berry Price; Briggs and James; Campaign Palace; Campbell Ewald; CattsPatterson; George Patterson; Goldberg Advertising; Gotham Australia Pty Ltd; Hansen Rubensohn; J. Walter Thompson (JWT); John Clemenger; Lintas; Masius Wynne Williams; McCann Erickson; MDA; Mitchell & Partners; Mojo; Monahan Dayman Adams; Ogilvy & Mather; Paton Advertising Service; RAWARDs; Saatchi & Saatchi; Samson Clark; Smith & Julius; Smith and Miles; SPASM; Ted Bates; Thomas Miller; USP Needham; Young & Rubicam Advertising Agencies Council (Austac) 7, 8 advertising agency organisations 7–8 Advertising and Newspaper News 8, 270; see also Newspaper News Advertising Association of Australia 7, 259 Advertising Claims Board 9 Advertising Federation of Australia (AFA) 7, 8 Advertising in Australia 8, 270 Advertising Monthly 270 Advertising News 8, 9

506

advertising periodicals 8–9 Advertising Standards Board (ASB) 9, 41, 259, 328 Advertising Standards Bureau 33 Advertising Standards Council (ASC) 9, 41, 259 advice columns 9–10, 18, 60, 167, 189, 201, 249, 295, 402, 490, 498 Advocate (Burnie) 10–11, 201, 359, 410; see also Harris family Advocate (Catholic, Tas.) 358 Advocate (Catholic, Vic.) 203, 205, 361, 414 Aedy, Richard 423 Aegis Media 7, 277 Affairs of State 306 afternoon newspapers 3, 11–12, 22, 23–4, 29, 35, 49, 50, 54, 57, 59, 60, 118, 121, 129, 130, 163, 164, 203, 204, 205–6, 253, 297, 298, 299, 301, 316, 317, 320, 331, 342, 345, 349, 350, 351, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360, 361, 402, 432, 446–7, 449, 461–2, 490, 491 Afternoon Telegram (Sydney) 11, 163 Afternoons 395 Agar, Dan 381 AGB Italia 32 AGB McNair 31, 373; see also Nielsen Age (Melbourne) 2, 10, 11, 12–14, 24, 26, 27, 28, 39, 40, 55, 66, 70, 71, 77, 83, 85, 95, 127, 146, 152, 153, 162, 164, 169, 173, 176, 178, 185, 189, 192, 194, 196, 205, 213, 221, 222, 224, 240, 243, 257, 260, 263, 267, 272, 273, 279, 280, 287, 288, 293, 298, 300, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 321, 323, 337, 341, 360, 361, 363, 367, 370, 372, 402, 424, 437, 441, 449, 453, 454, 462, 471, 478, 484, 489, 495; Age Monthly Review 71; Good Weekend magazine 77, 308, 311; see also Sunday Age; Sunday Press; Weekly Age (The) Age Co. Ltd 454 Age (Qld, Catholic) 414 Agence France-Press (AFP) 40 Agenda 128, 151, 428 aggregation 14–15, 106, 108–9, 138, 248, 268, 407, 420 agricultural reporting 15–17, 44, 59, 68, 78, 126, 153, 164, 180, 189, 237, 238, 239, 257, 267, 269, 321, 345, 347, 351, 357, 358, 361, 409–10, 450, 453, 457, 474, 484, 488, 490 ‘Aiding and Abetting’ 181 AIF News 25 Aikenhead, James 160 Aikenhead, William 160 AIM: Aboriginal–Islander-message 216 Air Force News 25, 26 ‘Air Hawk and the Flying Doctor’ 98 Aircraft 204 Aisbett, Kate 33 Akron Tyre Co. 397 Al Anwar 157 Al Arabiya 158 Al Jazeera 158 Al-Barak 157 Alan Jones Live 128, 225 Alarm Clock, The 473 Albert Productions 17, 284 Alberts (family; NSW) 17, 104; Alexis 17; David 17; Frank 17; Jacques 17; Robert 17; Ted 17; Tony 17 Albury Banner (and Wodonga Express) 17–18, 91, 239 Albury Mill 312, 313 Albury, Kath 344 Alchuringa 216 Alcorn, Gay 13 Alderson, Maggie 227 Aldrin, Buzz 103 Alex Cowan and Sons 367

index Alexander, J.A. (Joe) 169 Alexander, Peter 314 Alice Springs News 353 Alice Springs Times 353 Alive 415 All About Books 71 All in the Mind 202 All That Is Solid 465 All the Best 384 All the President’s Men 227 All the Rivers Run 124 All Ways on Sunday 44; see also Australia All Over Allan, Colin (‘Col’) 130, 131, 374 Allan, Edwin 18 Allan, John 82 Allan, Stella May 18, 496 Allan, Walter 90, 353 Allen, Edward 212 Allen, George 356 Allen, Rev. James 414, 432 Allen, Peter 472 Allen, Steve 231, 480 Alliance Magazine 485; see also Walkley Magazine Allsop, Raymond 173, 174, 175, 390 almanacs 15, 18–19, 64, 121, 189, 354, 355, 462 Almost Bourdain 177 Alston, Dean 85 Alston, Richard 65, 220, 380 Alternate Farmer 16 alternative media 2, 19–21, 85, 94–5, 110, 111, 252, 259, 309, 357, 402; see also labour press; OZ; student newspapers Alternative News Service 20 Altman, Dennis 190 Altmann, Charles 309 Alyangula Newsletter 353 AM and PM 21–2, 43, 65, 127, 128, 151, 383, 405 Amalgamated Television Services Pty Ltd 17, 29, 164 Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd (AWA) 22–3, 99, 103, 173, 179, 266, 283, 389, 460, 469; and radio stations/ networks 103 Amalgamated Wireless Valve Company Ltd 22, 386 Amateur Radio 387 Amazing 98 Amazon 183, 405 Amcor Ltd 368 America’s Cup 69, 331 American Medical Association 201 American Mercury 251 American Radio Transcription Service of Australia 193 American Society of Newspaper Editors 153–4 Ammo Daily 25 Amnesia 275 Amnesty International Reporting Award 494 Amos’n’Andy (USA) 99 Ampol Petroleum Company 484 ‘An Old Sandalwood Cutter’ see Beresford, William An-Noujoum 157 Anderson Analysis of Broadcasting 31, 32 Anderson, Benedict 466 Anderson, Chris 295 Anderson, Fay 263 Anderson, George 31 Anderson, Jessica 385 Anderson, Jim 329 Anderson, Oswald 103, 390 Anderson, Robin 465 Anderson, Wil 341 Andra 93 ‘Andrea’ see Jenner, Dorothy Gordon Andrew Olle Media Lecture 255, 277, 320, 322, 440, 491; see also Olle, Andrew Andy Capp 90 Ang, Ien 263 Angel, Don 228 Anglican 127, 414 Anglican Guardian (online) 414 Anglican Messenger 364

Anglicans and media 127, 306, 358, 364, 412, 414; see also religious broadcasting; religious press Angry Boys 44, 464 Angry Penguins 27, 252 Angus & Robertson Ltd 27, 50, 331 aNiMaLS see National Media Liaison Service Ansett Airways/ Transport Industries 108, 123, 207, 268 Ansett, Sir Reginald 108 Antarctic News and Rumdoodle Exposés 348 Antarctic Waste, incorporating Drift Magazine 348 Anthony Hordern & Sons 165 anti-siphoning rules see sports broadcasting rights Antill, Peter 280, 382 Any Questions? 336 APN News and Media 17, 23, 33, 267, 308, 311, 356, 372, 378, 411, 449 Apple 220, 270, 278, 285, 405 Appleton, Gil 260 Apron Strings (Darwin) 170 Apter, Jeff 288 Arafura Times 353 Archibald Prize 23, 115, 229 Archibald, Jules François 23–4, 76, 77, 165, 209, 249, 309, 350, 440 Arena 443, 444 Arena, Tina 479, 503 Argonauts 44 Argonauts Club, The 92, 148 Argus (Cairns) 440 Argus (Melbourne) 10, 12, 18, 24–5, 26, 28, 36, 39, 66, 70, 72, 78, 81, 95, 96, 103, 117, 125, 135, 143, 152, 153, 178, 179, 189, 200, 204, 205, 213, 217, 224, 251, 298, 299, 300, 302, 306, 307, 310, 313, 321, 336, 337, 339, 360, 361, 363, 367, 368, 402, 423, 437, 441, 447, 459, 470, 478, 485, 490, 495, 496, 501; and radio stations/networks 103; see also Junior Argus Argus and Australasian Ltd 24, 36, 204 ARIA Awards see Australian Recording Industry Association Ariane Space (France) 421 Arkfeld, Bishop Leo 347 Armati family (NSW) 142–3, 409, 410; John Leo 142–3, 410; Leo Vincent 142; Patricia 142 armed forces media 25–6, 251, 346, 353, 391 Armidale Chronicle 481 Armidale Express 432 Armidale Newspapers Company Ltd 481 Arminian Magazine (UK) 415 Armstrong, David 82 Armstrong, Edwin H. 174, 398 Armstrong, Gillian 53, 171, 173 Armstrong, Professor Mark 45 Army Education Service 25 Army: The Soldiers’ Newspaper 26, 230 Army News (Darwin) 25, 353 Arnaz, Desi 194 Arnett, Kevin 30 Aroney, Eurydice 383–4 Arrau, Claudio 477 Arrival, The 99 Arse-About Countdown 142 Art & Australia 27, 96 Art & Text 27 Art and Architecture 26 Art in Australia 26, 27, 55, 96, 402 Art in Australia Ltd 208 art magazines and reviewing 26–7, 37, 134, 205, 251, 252, 289, 402, 474, 478, 498 Art Monthly 27 ‘Art of Shoplifting, The’ 444 ARTAND Australia 27 Arthur Norman Smith Memorial Lecture in Journalism 27–8, 133, 255 Arthur, Sir George 65 Arthur, Walter George 215 Artists’ Ball (Sydney) 47–8 Artlife.com 27 Artlink 27 ARTRANSA 100 Arts Today 254

507

Arty Wild Oat 329 Ashbolt, Allan Campbell 28–9, 71, 464 Ashby, Sylvia 245, 372 Ashmead-Bartlett, Ellis 486 Ashton, Julian 209 Asia Pacific 128 Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union 143, 280 Askin, Sir Robert 209, 254, 294, 456 Aspro Year Book 19 Assange, Julian Paul 493–4 Assemblies of God 415 Assembly of Confessing Congregations 415 Associated Broadcasting Services Ltd 161 Associated Communications Corporation (UK) 208 Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) 29–30, 39, 49, 50, 54, 130, 142, 163, 204, 267, 331, 351, 387, 429, 446, 487 Associated Press (AP) 39, 338, 339, 423 Associated Television Corporation (UK) 164, 203 Association for Cultural Freedom 209 Astor, Gavin 109 Astrogirl 30 Astrological Monthly Review 30 Astrological Research Society of Australia 30 astrology 15, 18, 19, 30–1, 388, 413 At Home with Julia 464 At Sea with the AIF 25 At the Movies 173 At Your Service 202 Ata, A. and Ryan, C. 156, 263 Atchison, Michael 85 Athena Starwoman 30 Athenian Mercury (UK) 10 Atherden, Geoffrey 463 Atherton Examiner 25–6 Atkinson, Frank 195 Atkinson, Louisa 495 Atkinson, Sallyanne 462 Atlantic Show, The 144 Atlas 251 Atoll (Cocos Islands) 348 ATOM Awards see Australian Teachers of Media ‘Atomic Plague, The’ 486 Attard, Monica 22, 180, 271, 324 Attitude 128 Atton, Chris 20 Attorney’s Clerks Guide 241 ATV Music 208 Auction-Mart Advertiser see Launceston Times audience research 6, 31–4, 35, 258, 261, 270, 320, 322, 323, 328, 341, 374; see also listeners; readers; viewers; public opinion and opinion polls audiences see listeners; online audiences; readers; viewers Audio-Visual Copyright Society 149, 466; see also Screenrights Audit Bureau of Circulations 9, 32, 34–5, 57, 276, 296 Audited Media Association of Australia 35; see also Audit Bureau of Circulations Audrey’s Kitchen 177 Aunty Jack Show, The 44, 463 ‘Aunty Judy’ see Robertson, Jess AUSINET 323 Auspac Media 98 AUSSAT 39, 89, 112, 335, 406, 416, 419, 420, 469, 481; see also satellite broadcasting Aussat Pty Ltd 420, 461 Aussie: The Soldiers’ Magazine 25, 251 Aussie Post 36; see also Australasian Post Austar 220, 421, 436, 481 AUSTEL see Australian Telecommunications Authority Austereo network 101, 104, 284, 285, 388, 389, 391, 400; see also radio stations and networks; Southern Cross Austereo network Austin, Daniel William 253 Austin, Ward (‘Pally’) 142, 390 AustLit database 263 Austral Culturist 189

a companion to the australian media Australasian 18, 24, 36, 70, 96, 189, 251, 274, 287, 361, 430, 470, 476, 490, 495; see also Australasian Post Australasian Art Review 26 Australasian Art Writers and Art Directors Association (AWARD) 8 Australasian Bakers and Confectioners Journal 474 Australasian Baptist Magazine 415 Australasian Builder and Contractors’ News 474 Australasian Chronicle 414 Australasian Electrical Times see Radio Times Australasian Engineer 474 Australasian Films 313 Australasian Gazette (newsreel) 25, 217, 313 Australasian Hairdressers’ Journal and Tobacco Trade Review 474 Australasian Hardware Retailer 475 Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society 119 Australasian Pastoralists’ Review 474 Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) 17, 36, 101, 119, 285, 286, 389 Australasian Pictorial Annual 96 Australasian Post (Melbourne) 24, 36, 71, 96, 214, 274, 276, 309, 338, 361, 476; see also Aussie Post Australasian Press Association 120 Australasian Promotional Marketing Association 8 Australasian Provincial Press Association 63; see also Australian Provincial Press Association Australasian Record 414 Australasian Research Strategies 373 Australasian Science 423 Australasian Shipping News 426 Australasian Signs of the Times 415 Australasian Sketcher 19, 96, 213, 308, 361 Australasian Trade Review and Manufacturers Journal 473–4 Australasian Typographical Journal 270, 363 Australia All Over 17, 44, 246, 405 Australia and New Zealand 476 Australia Council for the Arts 27, 34, 71, 209, 216, 290; Aboriginal Arts Board 216 Australia Post 461, 469 Australia Talks Back 246 Australia Television 380 Australia Today 314 Australia Unlimited (TV) 16 ‘Australia Unlimited’ (newspaper supplement) 311 Australia You’re Standing in It 463 Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Agreement 52 Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) 52 Australia’s Amateur Hour 100, 283, 479 Australia’s Got Talent 189, 283, 480 Australia’s Most Wanted 126 Australia’s Next Top Model 403 Australian (Sydney, 1824–48) 78, 87, 200, 242, 287, 345, 349, 441, 451 Australian (1964– ) 2, 28, 35, 36–8, 39, 54, 67, 78, 79, 82, 85, 115, 123, 133, 134, 138, 146, 157, 174, 185, 190, 195, 218, 221, 222, 231, 260–1, 263, 264, 280, 282, 288, 293, 297, 301, 303, 306, 307, 308, 309, 315, 321, 323, 337, 348, 349, 352, 360, 372, 373, 401, 423, 424, 426, 442, 453, 458, 471, 473, 487, 488; see also Weekend Australian Australian Abo Call 215–16 Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) 218–19, 323 Australian Academic and Research Network Pty Ltd 219 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) 147, 173, 248 Australian Advertising Standards Advisory Authority 9 Australian Agriculturalist 15, 189 Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA) 38–9, 264, 326

Australian and New Zealand Web Offset Newspaper Association see Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association Australian Army 25, 26 Australian Art 26 Australian Art Collector 27 Australian Associated Press (AAP) 29, 39–40, 56, 62, 81, 102, 132, 135, 144, 177, 178, 179, 203, 265, 293, 300, 301, 319, 337, 401, 478; AAP Telecommunications 39; AAP Newscentre 265 Australian Association for the Advancement of Science 422 Australian Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) 6, 7–8, 34 Australian Association of Australian Business and Specialist Publishers see Australian Business Publishers Australian Association of Food Professionals Inc. 40 Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) 34, 40–1, 57, 259 Australian Astrological Association 30 Australian Band News 286 Australian Baptist 415 Australian Book Review 71, 252 Australian Books in Print 270 Australian Boys’ Paper 92 Australian Bride 230 Australian Broadcasting (and Television) Acts (various years) 41, 51 Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) 15, 31, 34, 48, 85–6, 89, 101, 102, 113, 114, 154, 175, 182, 183, 184, 239, 271, 289, 421; see also Australian Communications and Media Authority Australian Broadcasting Commission 17, 43, 51, 99, 101, 333, 384, 390, 397, 399, 405, 435; see also Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Company 17, 43, 149, 279, 384, 389, 397, 399, 405; see also Australian Broadcasting Commission; Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Control Board (ABCB) 34, 41–2, 46, 51, 52, 93, 100, 102, 104, 105, 107, 135, 137, 147, 154, 155, 175, 184, 196, 246, 257, 267, 268, 398, 412, 455, 456, 466 Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) 1, 2, 16, 17, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 38, 41, 42–6, 51, 58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 75, 83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 110, 121, 127, 128, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 148–9, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180–1, 182, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 193, 196, 197, 202, 212, 214, 217, 221, 222–3, 224, 225, 228, 232, 234, 239, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 253, 254, 255, 256, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 267, 271, 276, 279–80, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 287, 288, 292, 298, 300, 302, 303, 314, 317, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 333, 334, 336, 339, 340–1, 342, 347, 348, 369, 379– 80, 381, 382, 382, 383–4, 385–6, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392–3, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 404, 405–6, 407, 411–12, 413, 419, 421, 423, 424, 427, 428, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 441, 442, 457, 458, 459, 461, 463–4, 465–6, 467, 468, 471–2, 473, 475, 476, 479, 484, 487, 488, 489, 491, 493, 494, 496, 497, 498; ABC Asia Pacific 45, 195; ABC Books 46, 225, 255, 256; ABC Dance Band 479; ABC Friends 46; ABC News 102, 128, 135, 140, 151, 195, 253, 263, 271, 280, 298, 300, 303, 321, 342, 343, 391, 397, 421, 496, 497; ABC Online 46, 94, 323, 471; ABC Shop 46; ABC Weekly 132, 287, 288, 386, 468; see also Australia Television; Radio Australia; radio stations and networks; television stations and networks Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) 5, 14, 42, 46–7, 69, 93, 102, 108, 147, 154,

508

166, 175, 199, 235, 258, 262, 268, 413, 416, 420, 466 Australian Bureau of Statistics 33, 73, 146, 159, 310, 458 Australian Business 79, 195 Australian Business Publishers (ABP) 377 Australian Capital Equity 440 Australian Captioning Centre see Media Access Australia Australian Cartoonists’ Association 47–8; Hall of Fame 48 Australian Catholic Truth Society 332 Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (UTS) 66, 260, 261, 281, 376 Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) 93–4, 147, 149 Australian Chinese Daily 158, 362 Australian Christian World 415 Australian Church Record 414 Australian Churches Media Association 412 Australian Colour Diary 314 Australian Communication Association see Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) 33, 34, 48–9, 75, 86, 88, 93, 110, 111, 112, 117, 154, 184, 187, 225, 258, 289, 344, 369, 413; see also Australian Broadcasting Authority; Australian Communications Authority Australian Communications Authority 48, 154; see also Australian Communications and Media Authority Australian Community Television Alliance 114 Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) 9, 51, 82, 258, 259, 268, 304–5, 372, 458, 469 Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) 32, 33, 49–51, 54, 58, 60, 76, 77, 80, 171, 179, 183, 210, 211, 230, 232–3, 250, 252, 267, 269, 274, 276, 297, 328, 331, 343, 410, 445, 468, 469, 476, 499; ACP Magazines 50, 51; Conpress Printing Ltd 50; Consolidated Broadcasting Corporation 104, 319; Consolidated Broadcasting Network 456; Consolidated Media Holdings 51, 283, 437; Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd 69, 253, 331, 410; Consolidated Press Ltd 29, 49–50, 58, 97, 130, 132, 210, 211, 236, 280, 310, 331, 336, 449, 488 Australian Constitutional Commission 209 Australian content 5, 36, 42, 47, 48, 51–3, 61, 75, 83, 84, 85, 87, 92, 93, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 112, 117, 123, 137, 138, 173, 184, 186, 251, 252, 269, 280, 283, 284, 285, 295, 424–5, 464, 465, 466, 494 Australian Content Industry Group 36 Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists 16 Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) 34 Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) 168, 218, 236 Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) 94 Australian Cricket 438 Australian Cricket Board 436, 437, 502 Australian Debonair 274 Australian Diary 314 Australian Digest 241 Australian Doctor 202 Australian Election Study 33 Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust 385, 470 Australian Evangel 415 Australian Farm Journal 16 Australian Fashion News 475 Australian Federal Capital League 348 Australian Federation of Broadcasting Stations 101; see also Commercial Radio Australia Australian Federation of University Women 245 Australian Feminist Law Journal 171 Australian Feminist Studies 171

index Australian Film Commission 2, 61, 89, 291, 465 Australian Film Critics Association 173 Australian Film Development Corporation (AFDC) 51 Australian Film Development Corporation Act 1970 51 Australian Film Institute (AFI) see Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) 53–4, 264, 290 Australian Film Producers Association see Screen Producers Association of Australia Australian Financial Press 79 Australian Financial Review (AFR) 35, 54–5, 78, 79, 83, 146, 164, 173, 184, 195, 196, 203, 212, 218, 222, 232, 267, 293, 294, 309, 315, 352, 360, 370, 427, 497 Australian Financial Times 194 Australian Fine Music Network 110; see also radio stations and networks Australian Food Media Awards 40 Australian Forces Radio Vietnam 26 Australian Friend (Tas.) 358, 415 Australian Garden Lover 189 Australian Gazette see Australasian Gazette Australian Geographic 327, 476 Australian Geographic Outdoor 327, 477 Australian Geographical Society 251, 327, 483 Australian Good Taste 170, 500 Australian Gourmet see Gourmet Traveller Australian Government Liaison Service 138 Australian Government Publishing Service 195, 196; see also government printing Australian Hi-Fi 458 Australian Historical Studies 263 Australian Home 96 Australian Home and Garden Annual 96 Australian Home Beautiful 55–6, 189, 204 Australian Home Builder see Australian Home Beautiful Australian Home Journal 251 Australian Homes and Gardens 55 Australian House and Garden 55, 190, 230 Australian Human Resources Institute 326 Australian Human Rights Commission 238 Australian Idol 285, 403, 480, 503 Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR) 286 Australian Indigenous Communications Association (AICA) 56, 291–2, 416 Australian Information Service see Australian News and Information Bureau Australian Institute of Journalists 226 Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs 33 Australian Institute of Public Administration 306 Australian International Documentary Conference 466 Australian Jewish News 172, 361, 415 Australian Jewish Times 415 Australian Journal 95, 251, 498 Australian Journal of Communication 39 Australian Journal of Political Science 264 Australian Journal of Screen Theory 173 Australian Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 16 Australian Journalists’ Association 18, 23, 27, 28, 58, 59, 64, 97, 117, 132, 143, 154, 226, 228, 259, 260, 262, 272, 273, 299, 303, 337, 363, 393, 441, 442, 484, 496, 497; see also Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance Australian Kinematographic Company see Limelight Department Australian Landcare 16 Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) 49, 93, 261, 262, 345, 369 Australian Law Journal 241 Australian Law Times 241 Australian League of Nations Union 387 Australian Letters 252 Australian Literary Studies 70, 252 Australian Literary Review 71 Australian Lithographer 270 Australian Londoners, The 465

Australian Lutheran 415 Australian Magazine (Methodist) 250, 413, 415 Australian Magistrate 241 Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union 366 Australian Media Traditions conferences 263 Australian Medical Association 202 Australian Medical Journal 202 Australian Men’s Fitness 275 Australian Mercury 252 Australian Middle East Media (AMEM) 157 Australian Minaret 415 Australian Models 274 Australian Motorcycle News 275 Australian Movie Magazine 314 Australian Music Industry Directory 286 Australian Musical News 286 Australian Music Show 284 Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions 348 Australian National Documentary Conference 466 Australian National Film Board 136, 137 Australian National Publicity Association 483 Australian National Science Week 424 Australian National Travel Association 483 Australian National University 27, 82, 219, 388, 424, 443 Australian Nationwide Opinion Polls 372 Australian New Express Daily 158 Australian News and Information Bureau (ANIB) 56–7, 136, 137, 138 Australian News for Home Readers see Illustrated Australian News Australian News-Review 306 Australian Newsagents Federation 305 Australian Newsletter Editor’s Reference Manual, The 306 Australian Newspaper Board 58 Australian Newspaper History Group (ANHG) 263, 264; see also media history Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association 57, 58, 203; see also Australian Newspapers Council Australian Newspapers Conference see Australian Newspapers Council Australian Newspapers Council 57–8, 203, 250, 270 Australian Newsprint Mills (ANM) Pty Ltd 29, 30, 144, 276, 312, 313 Australian Newsprint Mills Holdings Ltd 312 Australian Office of Information 138 Australian Outdoors 230, 327 Australian Paper Manufacturers see Amcor Ltd Australian Parliamentary and Legislative Review 306 Australian PC World 458 Australian Penthouse 274, 276, 476 Australian Personal Computer 219, 458 Australian Plastics Journal 474 Australian Playboy 274, 276, 343, 476 Australian Presbyterian (Life) 415 Australian Press Association (APA) 29, 39, 178, 300; see also Australian Associated Press Australian Press Council (APC) 28, 58–9, 66, 132, 133, 154, 159, 186, 203, 260, 273, 369, 373 Australian Press Uttings Agency 265; see also Media Monitors Australian Provincial Newspapers (Holdings) Ltd see APN News and Media Australian Provincial Press Association (APPA) 120, 160, 257, 425; see also Country Press Association Australian Psychics Association 31 Australian Public Opinion Polls (The Gallup Method) 372, 373 Australian Publishing Media 14 Australian Quarterly 252 Australian Quarterly Journal of Theology, Literature and Science 250 Australian Radio Advertising Bureau 102

509

Australian Radio Network (ARN) 17, 101, 104, 389, 395; see also radio stations and networks Australian Radio Transmitters League 386 Australian Railways Union 236 Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) 36, 284, 286; ARIA Awards 102 Australian Research Council (ARC) 263 Australian Sales Research Bureau see Irving Saulwick & Associates Australian Science Communicators 424 Australian Science Media Centre 424 Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIO) 443, 492 Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) 232, 325 Australian Serials in Print 270 Australian Short Stories 252 Australian Society 21, 174, 260 Australian Society of Black and White Artists see Black and White Artists’ Club Australian Society of Travel Writers 477 Australian Society for the Study of Labour History 306 Australian Star (Sydney) 350, 446 Australian Stationery see Bookseller and Publisher Australian Story 44, 128, 225 Australian Studies in Journalism 263 Australian Subscription Library (Sydney) 401 Australian Subscription Television and Radio Association 335; see also pay television Australian Suburban Newspaper Association 35, 445 Australian Talkies Newsreel 313 Australian Teachers of Media 148; ATOM Awards 148 Australian Telecommunications Authority (AUSTEL) 277, 461 Australian Telecommunications Commission 469; see also Telecom Australia Australian Television Facilities 108 Australian Theatre Record 471 Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney) 15, 18, 59–60, 91–2, 165, 251, 350, 430, 431, 437, 451, 490, 500 Australian Traffic Network 475 Australian Tropiculturalist and Stockbreeder 15 Australian Typographical Circular 363 Australian Union of Students 443, 444 Australian United Press (NSW) 135, 300 Australian Variety 172 Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee 219, 469 Australian Walkabout (Colin Simpson) 383, 476 Australian Walkabout (Charles Chauvel Productions) 476 Australian War Memorial 64, 440, 486 Australian Wild see Wild Australian Woman’s Magazine and Domestic Journal 498 Australian Woman’s Mirror 50, 97, 176, 201, 251, 498 Australian Woman’s Sphere 170, 496 Australian Women’s Book Review 171 Australian Women’s Broadcasting Cooperative 171, 272, 497; see also Media Women’s Action Group; women in media Australian Women’s Weekly 10, 29, 30, 32, 35, 49, 60–1, 70, 80, 97, 115, 116, 165, 172, 176, 179, 201, 232, 233, 236, 249, 251, 263, 288, 309, 331, 338, 402, 423, 431, 468, 475, 476, 481, 487–8, 496, 497, 498–9, 501; ‘Australian Women’s Weekly World Discovery Tours’ 476 Australian Worker 167, 217, 235, 236, 351, 402; see also Worker (NSW) Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) 217, 234, 235, 236 Australian Workman 235, 351 Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) 61 Australis 157 Australis Media 182, 183, 334, 335 Australischer Volks-Kalender (SA) 19 AUSTREK 504 Authors’ Playhouse 115

a companion to the australian media Auzins, Igor 209 awards and prizes see especially Academy Awards; ARIA Awards; ATOM Awards; Australian Film Institute Awards; Australian Food Media Awards; Bowater Award; Christopher Newell Prize; E.C. Sommerlad Memorial Awards for Journalism; Eliminating Violence Against Women Media Awards; Eureka Awards; George Munster Independent Journalism Award; Graham Perkin Award; Grand Pater (Australasia Broadcasting) Awards; Grant Noble Award; John Douglas Pringle Award; John Newfong Media Prize; Logie Awards; Media Peace Awards; Ossie Awards; PANPA Awards; Pascall Prize; Prix Futura; Prix Italia; Publishers Australia Excellence Awards; Quill Awards; RAWARDS; Raymond Longford Award; S.H. Prior Award; Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism; Stanley Awards; Sydney Peace Prize; Vogel Literary Award; Walkley Awards; World Food Media Awards Awaye 214 Ayers, Henry 2 Azer, Mary Ann 250 Aztecs 17 B&T Weekly 270 Backchat 260 Background Briefing 218, 222, 383 Backpack (magazine) 327 Backpacker (blog) 477 Backyard Blitz 244, 371 Backyard Science 424 Bacon, Wendy 222 Bagnall, Frank 314 Bail, Kathy 76 Bailey, B.E. 126 Bailey, David W. 56 Bailey, Julie James 264 Bailey, Noel 125 Bailey, W.H.L. 350 Baillieu, W.L. (William) 3, 203, 204 Bairnsdale Advertiser 281, 411 Baird, John Logie 248, 468; see also Logie Awards Baker, Arthur 447 Baker, E.G. 346 Baker, Glenn A. 288 Baker, Jill 13 Baker, Mark 83 Baker, Richard 222–3 Baker, Suzanne 497, 501 BAL Marketing see Rural Press Events Balding, Russell 46 Balibo 228 Balibo Five 62, 228, 487 Ball, Lucille 194 Ball, William Macmahon 62–3, 262, 289 Ballarat Courier 362 Ballarat Punch 83 Ballarat Times 194 Balnaves, Neil 433 Bananas in Pyjamas 44, 340 Bancks, Jimmy 29, 84, 97, 309, 447, 448 Bandstand 283 Banfield, Alfred 17 Banfield, Edmund 355 Bangkok Post 28 Banjo agency 427 Banks, Norman Tyrell 10, 63, 100, 336, 397, 437 Banks, Terry 314 Banksia Productions 206 Bankstown Observer 169 Bannon, John 444 Baptist Community Services 413 Baptist Union of Australia 415 Baptists and media 413, 414, 415; see also religious broadcasting; religious press Barber, Laurie 432 Barbour, George 443 Barclay, Edmund 384 Barkly Regional (Tennant Creek) 353 Barley Charlie 463 Barlin, George 388

Barnard, Chester 326 Barnard, Marjorie 115 Barnes, James 358 Barnet family (SA) 63–4; Craig Kenneth 63–4; Emily Margaret see Mercury, Emily Margaret; Frank Lindley 63; Hannah (née Burfield) 63; John Lindley 63–4; Kenneth Lindley 63; Paul William 63; Robert Henry 63; William 63; William (Jr) 63 Barnett, H. Walter 245 Barnhurst, Kevin 166 Barrell, Tony 382, 383 Barrett, Charles 189, 483 Barrier Daily Truth (Broken Hill) 441 Barrier Miner (Broken Hill) 255, 299 Barritt, Major Frank 244 Barrow, Rev. John Henry 2, 3, 357 Barry, Paul 181, 222, 263, 271 Bartholomew (newspaper group; London) 103 Bartholomew, H.G. 24 Bartlett, Liam 427 Barton family (Qld) 371 Barton, Sir Edmund 209, 342 Barton, Gordon 174, 290 Barwick, Sir Garfield 254, 293 ‘Basil’ 98 Batty, Philip 89 Bauer Media Group (Germany) 51, 61, 250, 252, 269, 286, 499, 500 Baume, Eric 10, 127, 387, 388 Baume, Michael 54, 79 Baverstock, Florence 501 Baxter, Chris 327 Baxter, George Silverton 238 Bay City Star 359 Bayly, Lorraine 340 Baynes, Roger 357, 358 Baynton, Barbara 440 ‘Baz and Pilko’ 394 Bazley, Nathan 64 BBDO (Omnicom Group) 6, 7 Beaconsfield mine disaster 428 Beale, Bob 424 Bean, Charles Edwin Woodrow 64, 117, 167, 179, 486 Beat Magazine 286 Beatbox 284 Beatles, The 183, 208, 418 Beattie, Peter 28, 457 Beauty and the Beast 10, 206 Beaverbrook, Lord 282 Beck, Ron 381 Beckett, Richard 176 Beckett’s Budget 402 Beckham, David 87 Bed of Roses 44 Bedford, Randolph 144 Bednall, Colin 355 Beecher, Eric 21, 124, 206, 323, 324 Beer, Maggie 176 Begg, Bruce 309 Beggar’s Opera, The 287 Behind the News 44, 64, 148 Belanglo backpacker murders 125 Bell Awards see Publishers Australia Excellence Awards Bell Group Ltd 69, 129, 207, 208, 428, 492 Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer 437, 500 Bell, David Johnson 377 Bell, Glenys 294 Bellamy, Edward 354 Bellbird 44, 467 Bellew, Peter 27 Belsham, Bruce 181, 255 Ben and Sam 388 Benalla City Ensign 257 Benalla Standard 239 Bendat, Jack 440 Bendigo Advertiser 247, 362, 410 Benjamin, L.R. (Lou) 312 Bennett, A.E. 193 Bennett, Alfred 60 Bennett, Arnold 144 Bennett, Samuel 59, 60, 350 Bennett, Tony 34 Bennetts, John 293

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Benson, Sir Irving 205 Benson family (Tas.) 415; William 415 Bent, Andrew 19, 64–5, 358, 359, 368 Bent’s News and New South Wales Advertiser 65 Beresford, Bruce 173 Beresford, William 363 Berger, Bruce 374 Berkeley, Hudson 296, 297 Berry Currie Agency 426 Bertalanffy, Ludwig von 326 Bertel, Maurice 313 Berthon, David 281 Bernstein, Carl 221 Bernsten, Carolyn 388 Berry Price 6 Berry, Sir Graham 192, 345 Bert’s Family Feud 315 Bertelsmann Group (Germany) 198 Besser, Linton 222 Bett, Harry Drysdale 386 Better Homes and Gardens 244, 499 Between Ourselves 10 Bewitched (USA) 93 Beynon, Richard 229 Beyond International 106; Beyond Television Productions 424 ‘Beyond the Black Stump’ (comic strip) 98 Beyond the Black Stump (search engine) 323 Beyond 2000 202, 424 Beyond Zero 424 bias 22, 65–6, 72, 74–5, 79, 94, 217, 221, 260, 261, 298, 301, 319, 325, 342, 353, 391, 400, 432, 442, 469, 484, 498 Bias of Communication, The (book) 472–3 Bib and Bub 448 Bible Echo see Australasian Signs of the Times Bible Union 415 Biblical Fundamentalist 415 Bickmore, Carrie 480 ‘Big Ad’ 5 Big Brother 5, 34, 48, 87, 403–4, 433 Big Country, A 16, 44 Big Gig, The 44, 463 Big Girl’s Blouse 464 Big Sky 433 Big Spit 353 Biggest Loser, The 244, 403 Biggs, Leonard Vivian 12, 28 Bill Peach’s Australia 465 Billboard 288 Billy and Percy 465 Birmingham, John 168 births, deaths and marriages column 66–7, 157, 298, 316 Biscoe, Patsy 166 Bishop, Anna 287 Bishop, Mervyn 339 Bishop, Rod 53 Bissell, Barry 142 BitTorrent 219, 220, 285, 325 Bjelke-Petersen government (Qld) 121, 185 Bjelke-Petersen, Sir Joh 37, 69, 121, 201, 224, 346, 456 Black Action 20 Black & White 166 Black and White Artists’ Club see Australian Cartoonists’ Association Black Out 214 Black Star network 394; see also radio stations and networks Black Women’s Action Committee (Sydney) 171, 216 Black, Conrad 163, 164, 232, 452 Black, Milton 30 Blackheath Bulletin 481 Blackmore, Samuel Fry 17 Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 401 Blaikie, George 351 Blainey, Geoffrey 444, 472 Blair, David 12 Blair, John 347 Blair, Tim 67 Blair, Tony 301 Blake, Robert 326 Blakeslee, Alton L. 423 Blakeslee, Howard W. 423 Blamey, Sir Thomas 26, 387, 486

index Blanch, Ken 125, 462 Bland, Sir Henry 45 Blankety Blanks 188, 231 Blasina, Peter 459 blasphemy 88, 443 Bligh, William 308, 349 Blind Date 188 Blind people and media 140, 141; see also Radio for the Print Handicapped (RPH) Bliss 192 Blizard, John 34 Block, The 244, 371, 403 blogging 9, 10, 21, 27, 67–8, 94–5, 124, 126, 141, 151, 172, 177, 187, 219–20, 287, 306, 320, 322, 323, 324, 325, 339, 341, 342, 375, 376, 402, 424, 429, 430, 477, 485, 494 Blondie 381 Bloodworth, James 320–1 Bloomberg 177 Blossom 250 Blue Heelers 433 Blue Hills 44, 68, 381, 384, 405 Blue Murder 44 Blue Water High 433 Bluey 467 ‘Bluey and Curley’ 84, 98 Blyton, Kevin 196 Bob Dyer’s Variety Show 144 Bobby Limb Show 479 Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music 283, 479 Bobis, Merlinda 386 Bocuse, Paul 176 Body & Soul 202 Body Programme, The 202 Bodyshow 202 Boldrewood, Rolf 59–60, 451, 490 Boling, (Elizabeth) Dulcie 10, 68–9, 232, 233, 296, 500 Bolkus, Nick 124, 156 Bolt, Andrew 67, 87, 206 Bolte government (Vic.) 265 Bolte, Sir Henry 398, 456, 478 Bond Corporation 50, 69 Bond Report 419–20 Bond, Alan 50, 69, 106, 129, 208, 222, 331, 365, 420, 472, 492 Bond, Grahame 463 Bondi Vet 403 Bonner, Frances 87, 404 Bonner, Neville 472 Bonney, Edmund Garnett 62, 136, 447 Bonwick, James 262 Bonyhady, Tim 152 Bonython family (SA) 3, 69–70, 431; Ada (née Bray) 70; Constance Jean (née Downer) 70; Eric Glenie 69; John 70; Sir John Langdon 3, 69; Sir John Lavington 70; Kym 288 Book Censorship Abolition League 87 Book Club, The 71 Book Parade 70 book reviewing 26, 27, 59, 70–1, 82, 167, 171, 174, 197, 205, 251, 252, 259, 365, 417, 434, 439, 440, 474, 478, 498; see also literary prose and poetry; ‘Red Page’ Book Show, The (Radio National) 71 Book Show, The (SBS) 71, 434 Bookfellow 251, 417, 440 Books and Ideas 71 Books Worth Reading 197 Bookseller and Publisher 270 Boomerang (Brisbane) 70, 238, 354, 440 Boomerang Songsters 17 Boote, Henry 217, 236, 484 Booth, Herbert 244 Booth, William 244 Boothroyd, Arthur 309 Border (Morning) Mail (Albury) 281, 362 Border Post (Albury) 281 Border Security 466 Border Times (Pinaroo) 458 Border Watch (Mt Gambier) 356 Borg, Sonia 123 Bosi, Pino 155 Bostock, Gerry 465 Boston Globe (USA) 27 Botanical Register (UK) 189

Bottom, Bob 222 Bourke, Sir Richard 210, 451, 470 Bowater Award 201 Bowden, Ros 383 Bowden, Tim 22, 260, 383 Bowditch, Jim 90, 316, 317, 353 Bowen, Lionel 106, 319 Bowes, Arthur 287 Bowman, Arthur 30 Bowman, David 82, 260, 501 Bowman, Margaret 197 Bowring, Walter A. 163 Bowyang 174 Box, The 124, 467 Boy Scouts Victoria 92 Boy’s Own Magazine (UK) 92 Boyan, Bill 462 Boyce, Rev. W.B. 415 Boyd, Robin 205 Boyd, William 15 Boyer Lectures 28–9, 72, 174, 440 Boyer Mill (Tas.) 312, 313 Boyer, Sir Richard James Fildes 45, 71–2 Boys, Florence Riddick 500 Boys’ Wireless News 386 Bracken, Warwick 82 Bradbury, David 465 Bradman, Sir Donald 438 Brady, Nicole 258 Brag 286 Brain, R.S. 195 Braithwaite, John 32 Brandeis, Louis D. 369 Brandmedia 170 Bray, Ada see Bonython, Ada Bray, Gordon 437 Bray, James S. 422 Bray, Sir Theodor Charles 72, 355 Breaking Bad 322 Brenchley, Fred 294 Brennan, Christopher 77, 88 Brennan, Frank 272 Brennan, Martin C. 172 Brennan, Roseanne 237 Brennan, W.A. 272 Brent, Peter 67 Bresciani, Andrea 423 Brett, Lily 286 Brett, Samantha 10 Brettle, Kyla 384 Brewer, Francis Campbell 287, 470 Brian Fitzpatrick’s Labor News Letter 306; see also Fitzpatrick, Brian Brice, Ethel 296 Brickhill, George 448 Brides of Christ 44, 467 Bridson, D.G. 382 Brierley Investments (NZ) 163 Briggs and James 1, 277 Bright, Annie 59 Bright, Charles 274 Brighton Southern Cross 445 Brisbane Bush Walker 327 Brisbane Bush Walkers 327 Brisbane Courier see Courier-Mail (Brisbane) Brisbane Indigenous Media Association 214, 393–4 Brisbane Times 121, 164 Brisbane, Katharine 134, 471 Brisbane, Thomas 349 Britannia and Trades Advocate (Tas.) 358 British Australian Telegraph Company 328 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 21, 30, 43, 62, 63, 72, 92, 93, 94, 105, 143, 180, 193, 245, 256, 267, 281, 335, 340, 379, 381–2, 382, 387, 391, 406, 435, 464, 465, 466, 472, 476; BBC World Service 379, 406, 435 British Post Office 76 British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) 69 British Vogue see Vogue Britton, Henry 153 Britton, Stephanie 27 broadband 44, 46, 49, 72–3, 112, 114, 136, 139, 149, 183, 220, 270, 333, 452, 461, 469; see also National Broadband Network Broadcast and Communications 334

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Broadcast Bulletin 102, 270 Broadcaster 386, 400, 491 Broadcasting & Television (B&T) 8, 9, 270 Broadcasting Business 102, 386 Broadcasting Company of Australia 204 Broadcasting Council 432 Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme (BRACS) 56, 73–4, 113, 392, 394, 395, 400, 406, 416; see also Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) broadcasting regulation 14, 41, 42, 43, 46–7, 48–9, 51, 52, 53, 71, 74–5, 76, 85–6, 88, 93, 94, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 127, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 147, 150, 154, 155, 166, 175, 180, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 199, 202, 214, 220, 245, 246, 258, 261, 266, 267, 268, 269–70, 271, 278, 283, 284, 289, 298, 299, 301, 331, 334, 335, 336, 356, 363, 380, 387, 388, 389, 390, 392, 393, 394, 395, 397, 398–9, 400, 405, 411–12, 413, 419, 420, 421, 424, 427, 428, 433, 435–6, 442, 455–6, 461, 464, 465, 466, 473, 492 Broadcom see Broadcast and Communications broadsheets 11, 12, 20, 21, 27, 37, 38, 54, 63, 71, 81, 85, 92, 97, 121, 130, 163, 171, 205, 212, 276, 280, 295, 297, 298, 307, 308, 337, 338, 349, 360, 367, 368, 370–1, 402, 428, 443, 446, 447, 453, 458, 462, 468, 491, 501; see also newspaper formats and design Broadside 290, 309 Brockie, Jenny 181 Brodzky, Maurice 153, 455 Brogden, John 130 Brooks, Harry A. 18 Broughton, Vicki 503 Brown Paper 20 Brown, Charlie 459 Brown, Sir Harry Percy 76, 460 Brown, Malcolm 125 Brown, Melanie 257 Brown, Noeline 463 Brown, Tara 427 Brown, Warren 85 Browne, Frank 169, 306, 336 Browne, Lindsay 470–1 Browne, Reginald Spencer 355 Browne, Thomas Alexander see Boldrewood, Rolf Brownhill, Walter Randolph 192 Bruce Gordon’s Magical Moments 194 Bruce government 13 Bruce, Mary Grant 92 Bruce, Stanley Melbourne 387, 389 Brune, Thomas 215 Bruns, Axel 67 BSkyB (UK) 282, 283, 428 Buchanan, Cheryl 216 Buckfield, Lin 181 Budd, Sir Harry Vincent 237 Buddhism Today 415 Buddhist News see Buddhism Today Budgeree Club 92 Buffy 322 BUGA-UP 327 Building and Building, Lighting and Engineering 474 Building and Decorating Materials 475 Building Publishing Co. Ltd 474 Bulletin (Melbourne) 274 Bulletin (Sydney) 2, 16, 22, 23, 24, 27, 47, 48, 50, 59, 70, 71, 76–7, 79, 83, 84, 85, 91, 115, 133, 144, 159, 167, 172, 173, 174, 195, 209, 232, 249, 251, 254, 294, 297, 307, 309, 320, 331, 350, 355, 364, 372, 373, 388, 402, 411, 417, 432, 439, 440, 441, 471, 472, 474, 476, 489, 492, 496, 497, 498, 501; ‘Red Page’ 70, 77, 439, 440, 474 Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) 218, 322, 323 Bulletin Newspaper/Publishing Company 77, 440 Bulli Times 212 Bullock, Chris 2

a companion to the australian media Bunbury, Bill 384 Bundaberg Broadcasters Pty Ltd 393; see also radio stations and networks Bundaberg Daily Times 201 Bundaberg Mail 483, 484 Bundaberg News-Mail see News-Mail (Bundaberg) Bunji 216 Bunyip (Gawler) 63, 356, 458 Burchett, Wilfred Graham 77–8, 95, 486 Burden, Peter 294 Burden, Frederick Britten 3 Burden, Peter 280 Burdett, Basil 205 Bureau of Meteorology 488, 489; website 489 Burgess, Guy 210 Burgin Electric Company 389, 390 Burgoyne, Philip 309 Burke and Wills expedition 321 Burke’s Backyard (TV) 243, 244; (magazine) 244 Burke, Brian 346, 456 Burke, Don 190, 243 Burke, Simon 340 Burning Down the House 171 Burne, Al 313 Burns, Creighton 13 Burns, Ronnie 503 Burns, Tommy 435 Burraga from Thirroul 314 Burrowes, Tim 9 Burson Marsteller 376 Burt, Archibald 364 Burton, Bob 376 Burton, Lee 2 Bury, Brian 488 Bush Church Aid Society 414 Bush Telegraph 16 Bushvision 114 business and finance reporting 35, 39, 54–5, 77, 78–80, 82, 83, 117, 124–5, 134–5, 146, 153, 166, 174, 177, 178, 194–5, 203, 205, 218, 222–3, 232, 251, 256, 260, 275, 278, 289, 294, 300, 302, 306, 315, 324, 328, 337, 355, 358, 397, 399, 418, 427, 428, 439, 453, 455, 459–60, 472, 473, 474, 475, 484, 497; see also economics reporting Business Daily 195 Business Review Weekly 79, 194, 195, 218, 294, 418, 495 Business Spectator 79, 195, 324 Business Sunday 79 Business, The 79 Butler, Denis 274 Butler, Harry see In the Wild with Harry Butler Butler, Dr Stuart 423 Butters, Sir John 29, 348, 446 Butterworths 241, 242 Buttner, Wayne 192 Button, Henry 160 Buttrose, Charles 80 Buttrose, Ita 60, 80, 172, 331, 472, 497, 499 Buzacott family (Qld) 355, 371; Charles Hardie 355 Buzz, The 423 Bygal Weahunir Holding Company 233 Byrne, Bob 395 Byrne, Debbie (Debra) 503 Byrne, J. Edgar 355 Byrne, Jennifer 71, 427 Byrne, John 140 Byrnes, Paul 173 C.Q. 386 ‘C’mon Aussie C’mon’ 502 Cable & Wireless (UK) 335 cable news 21, 22, 29, 39, 47, 51, 72–3, 81, 105, 109, 119, 120, 143, 178, 179, 205, 236, 242, 264, 279, 299, 303, 328, 351, 363, 364, 446, 487 cable television see pay television Cahill, W.F 212 Cain government (Vic.) 363 Cairns Post 355, 371 Cairnton Ltd 50

Call (WA) 364 Callaghan, Rory 433 Callaghan, Thomas 241 Calling the Stars 131, 381 Callus, Ursula 34 Calvert-Jones, Janet (née Murdoch) 204, 282; see also Murdoch family Calvert-Jones, Penny see Fowler, Penny; see also Murdoch family Calwell, Arthur 28, 62, 130, 137, 150, 203, 234, 411, 452 Cam, Scott 244 Camden, Debra 501 Cameron family 196; Alison O’Neil (née Cameron) 196; Dugald 196; Dugald (Jr) 196; Grant 196; Janet M. (née Grant) 196; see also Grant family Cameron, A.G. 387 Cameron, Eoin 400 Cameron, Rod 324 CAMP Ink 190 Campaign 191 Campaign Against Moral Persecution Inc. 190 Campaign Brief 9 Campaign Palace 7, 8 Campbell, Archibald 212 Campbell, Bob 335 Campbell, David 77 Campbell, Ewald 6 Campbell, H.A.M. 13 Campbell, Howard Edward Ostler 410 Campbell, Margaret 212 Campbell, Rosemary 372 Campbell, Thomas Irving 237 Campbell, W.J. 34 Camperdown Chronicle 217, 475 Can You Take It? 144, 381 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 72 Canary 192 Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 306 Canberra Comment 388 Canberra Community News 348 Canberra News 11, 349 Canberra Survey 492 Canberra Times 50, 55, 71, 81–3, 115, 163, 164, 185, 196, 218, 307, 308, 321, 348–9, 365, 373, 425–6, 440, 449, 492, 497, 501; see also Sunday Canberra Times Cannon, Michael 224, 290 Cantrill’s Filmnotes 173 Canwest (Canada) 266 Caper 274 Capital News 286 Capital Radio Network 196, 389, 400; see also radio stations and networks Capital Television 115 Capon, Edmund 134 Capote 227 Capricornian 354, 355 Captain Atom 98 Captain Goodvibes, The Pig of Steel 382 Captain’s Log, The 504 CarAdvice 281 Caralis, Bill 235 Cardus, Neville 288, 470 CareerOne 301 Carey, Chase 300 Carey, Peter 77 Carleton, Richard 21, 181, 221, 427, 471 Carleton, Susie 324 Carlton, Mike 255, 319, 382, 471 Carlyon, Les 13, 206 Carmichael, Alan 181 Carnegie, Dale 418 Carols by Candlelight 255 CarPoint Australia 281 Carr, Bob 235, 373, 457 Carriage, Owen 233, 293 Carrington, Tom 83 Carroll, Victor Joseph 54–5, 83, 162, 164, 294, 452, 497 CarSales 51, 281 CarsGuide 281, 301 Carson, Johnny 480 Carson, Kathleen 10 Carson’s Law 124

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Cartland, Barbara 296 cartoons and cartoonists/illustrators 4, 13, 28, 29, 34, 36, 47–8, 55, 77, 83–5, 89, 97, 98, 99, 129, 144–5, 148, 205, 208, 209, 217, 228, 230, 235, 236, 243, 245, 251, 253, 254, 274, 294, 307, 308, 309, 313, 329, 336, 337, 351, 357, 364, 382, 402, 423, 429, 442, 447, 455, 484, 489, 491, 495; see also comics; newspaper illustration Cartoons and Gags 274 Cartoons of the Moment 313 Carty, Bill 314 Carvosso, Rev. Benjamin 413 Cary, Clif 437 Cary, Tristram 288 Casey, Gavin 77, 129 Casey, (Lord) R.G. 57, 179 Casey, Ron 235 cash for comment 48, 85–6, 101, 102, 154, 224, 239, 243, 254, 261, 271, 336, 391, 421, 457 Cass, Dr Moss 138 Cassab, Judy 115, 163 Cassidy, Barrie 247 Castlemaine Mail 410 Casual 274 Catalyst (ABC TV) 44, 202, 424 Catalyst 444 Catholic Advocate (Qld) 414 Catholic Leader (Qld) 414 Catholic Press (NSW) 414 Catholic Weekly (NSW) 172, 288, 414, 441 Catholics and media 21, 121, 148, 172, 205, 288, 332, 347, 358, 361, 364, 387, 389, 390, 411, 412, 413, 414; see also religious broadcasting; religious press Catterns, Angela 341 Cattleman 16 Catts-Patterson 6 Cauldron 171 Cavalcade 230, 254 Cavanagh, George 203, 205, 367 Cavanagh, James 162 Cave, Peter 21, 484 Caxton, William 210 Cazneaux, Harold 165, 208 CBS network (USA) 103, 427, 441, 465, 490, 441, 490 CCH (USA) 241–2 CDs see compact discs Ce Soir (France) 78 Cecil, Lawrence H. 383 celebrity 30, 60, 68, 77, 86–7, 91, 95, 101, 103, 111, 115, 116, 125, 128, 131, 133, 134, 144, 153, 165, 167, 181, 188, 189, 206, 207, 208, 226, 231, 243, 244, 254, 255, 256, 271, 280, 285, 294, 296, 303, 315, 321, 325, 369–70, 376, 384, 386, 390, 397, 403, 404, 417, 418, 427, 428, 431, 437, 438, 455, 463, 468, 472, 477, 478, 480, 488, 499–500 Celebrity Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? 188 censorship 28, 41, 57, 58, 62, 72, 74, 75, 87–9, 98, 99, 101, 122, 130, 133, 136, 137, 156, 173, 200, 202, 203, 210, 220, 221, 234, 254, 258, 260, 261, 278, 284, 306, 308, 316, 331, 336, 338, 343, 346, 363–4, 379, 385, 387, 394, 412, 432, 443, 444, 450, 462, 467, 485, 486, 487 Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) 89–90, 128, 214, 225, 284, 392, 400, 406, 416; CAAMA Shops 89 Central Coast Herald 352, 409 Central Independent Television (UK) 208 Central Land Council 237–8 Central Methodist Mission 234 Central Queensland Herald 355 Centre for Aboriginal Independence and Enterprise 297 Centre for Media History (Macquarie University) 264 Centre for Policy Development 324 Centre for the Public Awareness of Science 424

index ‘Central Coast Extra’ see Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Centralian Advocate (Alice Springs) 90, 353 Certain Women 44 Chadwick, Paul 260 Challender, Stuart 254 Challenge 415 Challenge of a Better ABC, The 393; see also Mansfield Inquiry/ Report Chamberlain, Azaria 90, 122 Chamberlain, Frank 388 Chambers, Verity 339 Champion, Maurice 30 Chancellor, Jonathan 370 Chandler, Alfred 450 Chang, Dr Victor 125 Changi 44 Changing Rooms 243 Channel 4 TV (UK) 141, 434, 466 Channel Niners, The 206 Chapman, C.H. (‘Pop’) 90, 353 Chappell, Ian and Greg 502 Charles Chauvel Productions 476 Charles Darwin University 353 Charles Sturt University 291, 326 Charles, Prince 68 Charlton, Conrad 42–3, 390 Charlton, Michael 180, 181, 465 Chaser Decides, The 91 Chaser, The 44, 90–1, 151, 464, 471 Chaser’s War on Everything, The 91, 464 Chater, Gordon 462, 463 Chatterbox Corner 92, 397, 493 Chauvel, Charles 333, 476 Chauvel, Elsa 476 Cheadle, Barry 233 Checkout, The 91 Chemical Engineering and Mining Review 474 Cheney, Roz 384 chequebook journalism 1, 68, 91, 154, 233 Chequerboard 44, 465 Chequered Flag 281 Chesterton, C.K. 144 Chesterton, Ray 228 Chevalier, Nicholas 274 Chicago Sun-Times 138, 164, 339–40 Chifley government 43, 50, 71–2, 104, 135, 205, 316, 342 Chifley, Ben 71, 239, 411 Child Care: A Community Responsibility 272 Child, Eric 288 children and the media 27, 34, 41, 42, 44, 47, 48, 52, 59, 64, 89, 91–4, 98, 99, 102, 106, 147, 148–9, 166, 171, 184, 188, 198, 206, 232, 240, 245, 258, 261, 270, 272, 340, 343, 344, 387, 399, 400, 402, 416, 420, 421–2, 424, 433, 434, 435, 448, 459, 480, 493, 499; see also educational media ‘Children Overboard’ affair 435 Children’s Channel Seven 93 Children’s Friend (UK) 92 Children’s Hour (magazine, SA) 92, 421, 422 Children’s Hour (radio) 92 Children’s Newspaper 92 Children’s Newspaper of the Air 148 Children’s Session 400 Children’s Television Workshop (New York) 148 Children’s TV Club 93 Chilli, Sue 216 Chiltern Standard 281 Chinese Australian Herald 158 Chinese Times (Vic.) 362 Chipp, Don 88, 343 Chisholm, Sam 335 Christadelphian Shield 415 Christesen, Clem 70, 355 Christian Advocate and Wesleyan Recorder 415 Christian Broadcasting Association 412 Christian Media Association see Australian Churches Media Association; Christian Broadcasting Association; religious broadcasting Christian Standard 415 Christian Television Associations (CTAs) 412, 413

Christian, Bret and Bettye 365 Christians, Clifford 153 Christiansen, Arthur 279 Christie, Daniel 258 Christmas Island Newsletter 348 Christodoulou, Mario 247 Christopher Newell Prize 38 Chronicle (Adelaide) 3, 431 Chronicle (Sydney) see Sydney Chronicle Chronicle (Toowoomba) 12, 23, 197, 198, 371, 378, 440 Chuck Chunder of the Space Patrol 382 Chuensuksawadi, Pichai 28 Chung, Helene 180 Church Chronicle 414 Church Commonwealth 414 Church News (Tas.) see Tasmanian Anglican Church Scene 414 Church Standard 414 Churchward, E.H. 201 Churinga see Alchuringa Cilauro, Santo 187 cinema see film and television education; film and television industry; film reviewing Cinema Papers 173 Cinesound Productions 313, 314, 339, 418 Cinesound Review 217, 313, 314, 339 Circular Head Chronicle (Smithton) 359 circulation see audience research; Audit Bureau of Circulations; readers Circulations Audit Board (CAB) see Audit Bureau of Circulations citizen journalism 94–5, 110, 180, 182, 246, 324, 340, 445, 446, 471, 484, 485, 487; see also WikiLeaks Citizen Kane 227 Citizens’ Liberty League 201 City Newspaper Company 203 City Park Radio 171, 396; see also radio stations and networks City Weekly (Sydney) 170 Civil Liberties Australia 186 Clancy, Abigail 496 Clapp, Harold 375 Clare, William Edward 118 Claremont-Nedlands Post 365 Clarence and Richmond Examiner (Grafton) 315, 316, 481 Clarence and Richmond Independent (Grafton) 481 Clarion (mining magazine) 144 Clarion (Sydney strike newspaper) 273, 441–2 Clark, Andrew 294 Clark, Courtney 40 Clark, Gary 98 Clark, George 64, 358 Clark, Manning 13, 28–9, 121, 290 Clarke, Arthur C. 419 Clarke, John 382 Clarke, Julian 204, 300 Clarke, Justine 340 Clarke, Marcus Andrew Hislop 70, 95, 176, 177, 224, 470 Clarson, Shallard & Co.’s Weather Almanac 19 Classic Rock 286 classification for print, film and games 33, 74, 75, 93, 147, 166, 185, 258, 261, 262, 343–4, 345 Clausen, Charlie 341 Clear Channel (USA) 104 Cleary, William J. 45, 71 Cleo 80, 171–2, 252, 331, 402, 497, 499; see also Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo Clift, Charmian 95, 383, 402, 496 Clifton, Tony 221 Climax 274 Climpson, Roger 472 Clipper (Tas.) 358 Clitheroe, Paul 79 Clooney, George 227 Club Buggery 44 Club Marine 499 Club, The 231 Clune, Frank 178, 279, 476 CNN News (USA) 335 CNNNN 91

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Coast and Mountain Walkers 327 Cobby, Anita 125 Cobram Courier 239, 257 Cockburn-Campbell, Sir Thomas 491 Cockburn, H.M. 378 Cockburn, Sir John 69 Cockburn, Dr Sally 202 Cocos Islands Community Resource Centre 348 codes of conduct and ethics see ethics Coffs Coast Advocate 409 Cohuna Farmers’ Weekly 239 Cokley, John 94 Colac Herald 200 Colac Times 200 Cole, Beck 466 Cole, (Dame) Christine 179 Coleman, John 316 Coles £3000/$6000 Question 188 Coles, Sir Jenkin 345 Coleman, Peter 76 Colgate-Palmolive Radio Production Unit 6, 100, 131, 384, 479; see also George Patterson Pty Ltd Collective Shout 172 Collie & Co. 367 Collingridge, George 26 Collins, Bill 173 Collins, Dale 205 Collins, David 287, 358, 367, 368, 470 Colombo Plan 57 Colonial Monthly 95 Colonial Observer 414 Colonial Times and Tasmanian Advertiser 65, 87, 152, 221, 276, 358 Colonial Literary Journal and Weekly Miscellany of Useful Information 250 Colonist (1835–40) 413 Colonist (Launceston) 200 Colonist and the Van Diemen’s Land Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser 358 colour in print media 4, 11, 24–5, 26, 32, 55, 56, 61, 82, 85, 96–7, 144, 158, 165, 166, 170, 189, 190, 206, 212, 213, 276, 294, 295, 297, 307, 308, 309, 311, 316, 328, 333, 339, 348, 352, 361, 367, 368, 370, 402, 451, 452, 468, 475, 476, 483, 490 colour transmission 8, 23, 43–4, 85, 97, 99, 106, 115, 205, 208, 308, 314, 352, 402, 409, 419, 437, 461, 476; see also commercial television Columbia Pictures Screen Gems 485 Colvin, Mark 22 Comedy Company, The 463 comedy, radio see radio comedy comedy, television see television comedy Comic Australian 96 comics 8, 34, 84, 85, 90, 92, 96, 97–9, 228, 230, 264, 309, 343, 372, 381, 402, 423, 429, 448, 488, 504; see also cartoons and cartoonists/illustrators Coming Out Show, The 171, 497 Commercial Broadcasters Pty Ltd 396 Commercial Broadcasting 102 commercial radio 4, 6, 10, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32, 36, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 58, 61, 63, 66, 69, 70, 75, 76, 79, 80, 85–6, 87, 89, 99–101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 127–8, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141–2, 143, 144, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 160, 163, 172, 174, 175, 180, 183, 186, 188, 189, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204, 206–7, 208, 214, 224–5, 231, 232, 234, 235, 239, 245, 249, 256, 258, 261, 262, 263, 266, 267, 268, 269, 271, 276, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 288, 289, 298, 300, 309, 314–15, 319, 335, 336, 341, 347, 369, 371, 373, 374, 380, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 396, 397, 398–9, 405, 406–7, 411, 412, 413, 418, 419, 421, 426, 427, 433, 434, 435, 438, 440, 455, 456–7, 463, 473, 475, 479, 480, 484, 485, 488, 489, 493, 494, 496, 497, 498; see also radio stations and networks; talkback radio

a companion to the australian media Commercial Radio Australia 32, 52, 53, 75, 85, 99, 100, 101–3, 104, 115, 174, 183, 184, 196, 239, 258, 285, 319, 397, 432; Hall of Fame 103, 183, 239, 319; RAWARDS 103, 421 commercial radio networks 103–4, 341, 421, 497; see also radio stations and networks commercial television 8, 14–15, 22, 29, 30, 31–2, 36, 41, 42, 43–4, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 61, 63, 66, 69, 75, 79, 80, 86, 87, 89, 91, 93, 94, 97, 100, 104–7, 108, 109, 112, 113, 115–16, 118, 119, 127, 128, 131, 132, 138, 139, 140, 141, 144, 150, 151, 152, 156, 160, 164, 166, 172, 176, 179, 180, 183–4, 186, 188, 189, 191, 194, 196, 197, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208–9, 214, 218, 220, 222, 225, 227, 228, 231, 232, 243–4, 248, 254–5, 258, 263, 266, 267–8, 269, 271, 276, 280, 282, 283, 284, 285, 295, 297, 298, 300, 308, 309, 314, 315, 319, 320, 321, 322, 324, 331, 334, 348, 352, 357, 365, 369, 371, 372, 373, 374, 381, 396, 397, 403–4, 406, 407, 409, 411, 412–13, 418, 419, 420, 421, 423, 424, 425, 427, 428, 433, 434, 435–6, 437–8, 440, 441, 442, 461, 462–3, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 471, 475, 476, 477, 479–80, 481, 484, 485, 487, 488, 490–1, 492, 493, 494, 497, 498, 503; see also commercial television networks; television stations and networks commercial television networks 107–9, 140, 420, 471; see also Nine Network; Seven Network; Ten Network; television stations and networks Commercial Television Production Fund 467 Commercial Travellers’ Association of Victoria 477 Commins, Kathleen 496 Commission on the Freedom of the Press (USA) 65 Common Cause 236 Commonwealth Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) 143, 406 Commonwealth Broadcasting Network 103, 115, 390, 399; see also radio stations and networks Commonwealth Film Unit 464; see also Film Australia Commonwealth Government Printing Office see Australian Government Publishing Service Commonwealth Government Style Manual 195 Commonwealth Engineer 474 Commonwealth Jeweller and Watchmaker 474 Commonwealth Law Reports 241 Commonwealth Literary Fund 70, 71 Commonwealth Press Union 109, 131, 204, 299 Commonwealth School Paper 422 Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) 16, 218, 219, 324; CSIRAC 458 Communications Council 7, 8 Communications Law Centre 260 Communications Update 260, 306 Communist Party of Australia 2, 13, 72, 78, 87, 129, 137, 218, 234, 236, 247, 333, 353, 441 Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) 102, 109–10, 113–14 Community Broadcasting Foundation 112, 114 Community Broadcasting Online 406 Community Express (Hobart) 276 community newspapers see suburban newspapers Community Newspapers Group (WA) 410, 445, 492 Community Newspapers of Australia (CNA) 126, 445 community radio 20–1, 42, 46, 48, 56, 74, 75, 89, 95, 100, 102, 109, 110–12, 114, 128, 137, 140, 155, 156, 171, 172, 175, 191, 214, 215, 234, 246, 261, 263, 284, 289, 291, 292, 341, 347, 348, 384, 388,

390, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 398, 399, 400, 404, 406, 413, 416, 419, 424, 433; see also radio stations and networks Community Radio Network 406 community television 21, 22, 42, 56, 74, 75, 95, 110, 112–14, 139, 172, 206, 214, 215, 406, 416, 419, 421; see also television stations and networks COMPAC 21, 81 compact discs (CDs) 116, 284, 285, 405, 433 Compass 413 competitions 60, 77, 100, 114–16, 124, 148, 176, 189, 204, 206, 243, 244, 245, 248, 274–5, 283, 285, 315, 351, 385, 402, 403, 424, 499 ComRadSat 112, 406 Condé Nast 166, 170, 208 Conder, Walter 45 Condie, Tom 233 Congregationalist 415 Conlon, Keith 394 Connell, Laurie 163 Connell, R.W. 34 Connell, W.F. 34 Connexions 396 Connolly, Richard 383 Connolly, Robert 228, 465 Connors, Jane 384 Conpress Printing Ltd 50 Conroy, Stephen 52, 114, 136, 187, 220, 269, 293, 344 Consider Your Verdict 123, 208 Consolidated Broadcasting Corporation 104, 319 Consolidated Broadcasting Network 456 Consolidated Media Holdings 51, 283, 457; see also Australian Consolidated Press Consolidated Press Holdings Ltd 69, 253, 331, 410; see also Australian Consolidated Press Consolidated Press Ltd 29, 49–50, 58, 97, 130, 132, 210, 211, 236, 280, 310, 331, 336, 449, 488; see also Australian Consolidated Press Constitution (Beechworth) 281 Construction 474 contempt of court 183, 185, 186, 206, 218, 303, 352; see also court reporting contests see competitions Continuum 173 Contrarians, The 428 convergence 48, 49, 54, 114, 116–17, 187, 268, 270, 298, 322, 325, 341, 420 Convergence Review 49, 52, 53, 59, 75, 93, 114, 117, 187, 270, 369 Conversation, The 68, 169, 196, 261, 324 Coo-ee 25 Cook, Bertie Stuart Baxter 117, 272 Cook, John 424 Cook, Patrick 294, 309 Cook, Samuel 163 Cooke, Francis and Henry 12 Coolgardie Miner 118, 364 Coolgardie Pioneer 118 Coolidge, Calvin 234 Coombs, H.C. (‘Nugget’) 174, 385 Cooper, Foster A. 18 Cooper, Rosemary 166 Coopes, Jenny 85, 294 Cop Shop 124, 467 Cop the Lot 381 Copland, Douglas 205 copyright 36, 61, 101, 103, 110, 118–19, 149, 220, 253, 283, 284, 285, 322, 337, 381, 389, 390, 459, 466, 469; see also Australasian Performing Right Association; Screenrights Cordeaux, Jeremy 395, 457 Cordell Jigsaw Productions 270 Cordell, Marni 324 Corden, W.M. 262 Cornell, John 463, 502 Cornwall Chronicle (Launceston) 83, 160, 200 Cornwall Press and Commercial Advertiser 358 Corporate Communications 359 Correspondents Report 180

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Cosgrove, General Sir Peter 487 Cosme Monthly 238 Cosmopolitan 10, 163, 171, 172, 252, 402, 499 Cosmos 59, 423–4 Cosser, Steve 21, 334, 335 Costigan, Frank 331 Couchman, Peter 487 Coulter, Jack 120 Coulthart, Ross 222 Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia 38 Countdown 44, 284, 323 Country Call 16 Country Hour, The 16, 44, 68, 393, 405 Country Life and Stock & Station Journal 351 country music 140, 239, 284, 286, 394 Country Press (media monitoring) 266 country press associations 63, 82, 119–20, 154, 160, 198, 212, 257, 270, 311, 315, 362, 409, 425, 432, 457, 425, 432, 457 Country Press Australia 120, 432 Country Press Cooperative Company Ltd 119, 345, 432 Country Press Cuttings 120 Country Quiz 375 Country Update 286 Countryman (WA) 491; see also Western Mail Countrywide 16 Coupe, Bronwyn 34 Courier (Brisbane) see Courier-Mail (Brisbane) Courier (Hobart) 276, 312, 358, 414 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 38, 70, 72, 83, 85, 96, 97, 98, 120–2, 189, 202, 222, 256, 288, 299, 301, 307, 310, 354, 355, 356, 368, 378, 480, 490; QWeekend 121; see also Sunday Mail court reporting 59, 91, 122, 126, 183, 186, 260, 450, 452, 477, 496 Courtney, Michael Charles Palliser 160 Courtney, Victor 450 Cousens, Charles 148, 387 Covell, Roger 288 Cowan, Arthur S. 184 Cowans and Cowans 367 Cowen, Sir Frederick 287 Cowley, Sir Alfred Sandlings 345 Cowley, Kenneth Edward 37, 122–3, 348 Cowlishaw, George 462 Cowlishaw, James 462 Cox, Jim 161 Crabb, Annabel 28, 168 Cracknell, Richard 253 Crash Investigation Unit 126 Craven, Peter 71 Crawford family (Vic.) 105, 106, 123–4, 248; Dorothy 123, 124; Glenda (née Raymond) 123; Hector 105, 106, 123, 124, 248; Henry 123, 124; Ian 123, 124 Crawford Television Workshop/ Productions 123, 124, 125, 208, 425, 433, 466–7 Crawford, Robert 263 Cream, The 115 Crescent Times 365, 415 Creswell, Toby 288 Creyton, Barry 462 Cribb, Julian 16, 424 Crick, William (‘Paddy’) 336, 477 cricket 5, 44, 50, 99, 103, 178, 181, 194, 245, 256–7, 279, 331, 395, 397, 435, 436, 437–8, 480, 502; see also Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War; World Series Cricket Crikey 21, 68, 124–5, 151, 169, 172, 202, 222, 261, 323, 324, 373 crime reporting 90, 122, 125–6, 129, 133, 194, 204, 205, 221, 222–3, 247, 254, 255, 257, 258, 271, 294, 295, 298, 299, 302, 307, 314, 317, 320, 321, 324, 337, 357, 421, 446, 462, 467, 477, 497 Crisp, L.F. (Fin) 443 Crisp, Lyndall 76, 497 Critic 217 Croakey 202 Crocodile Dundee 467 Croggon, Alison 471 Croker, Len 357

index Cronau, Peter 181 Cronulla riots 89, 258, 435 Cross Walk Products 413 Cross, Bert 313, 314 Cross, Rosie 323 Cross, Stan 48, 84, 97, 98, 309, 429, 447 Crown Limited 51, 332 Cruiser 192 Cryle, Denis 263 CSIRAC 458; see also Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIRO see Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Culbert, Ced 125 Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate 126, 370 Cumberland Newspapers Pty Ltd 50, 126–7, 240, 350, 351–2, 445 Cumberland Times and Advertiser 126, 135, 493 Cunningham, Sir Edward 28 Cunningham, Gary 62 Cunningham, Stuart 34, 263, 264 Cupitt, Margaret 34 Curiosity Show, The 424 Curnow, Hugh 462 Curnow, Rev. William 413 Curr, John 212 Currency Lad 345 current affairs 1, 2, 11, 19, 21, 25, 43, 44, 52, 64, 65, 85–6, 101, 105, 106, 127–8, 143, 148, 150, 152, 177, 180, 181, 183, 186, 187, 202, 205, 206, 214, 225, 227, 231, 248, 254, 255, 258, 270, 271, 298, 300, 306, 314, 316, 322, 339, 340, 342, 343, 361, 365, 383, 387, 405, 406, 427, 429, 430, 434, 435, 441, 442, 443, 456, 464, 465, 471–2, 476, 484, 485, 490, 491, 494, 497; see also A Current Affair; 60 Minutes; This Day Tonight Current Affairs Bulletin 25 Curro, Tracey 427 Curthoys, Ann 263 Curtin government 71, 87, 135, 169 Curtin University 400 Curtin, John 13, 26, 71, 135, 174, 197, 280, 364, 411 Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (UK) 189 Cusack, Dymphna 30, 115, 383 Customs Department 87, 88, 343 Cuthbert, Betty 472 CyberShack TV 459 CVC Asia Pacific 51, 77, 269 Cyclic Defrost 504 Cyclone or Austral-Englishmen 25 Cyclone Tracy 12, 90, 316, 391, 489 D-Generation, The 187, 463 D.H. Thorpe Pty Ltd 270 D’Arcy, Dr John 202 D’Arcy, John 123, 204 D’Arcy, Michael 414 D24 123, 125, 208, 257 da Costa-Roque, Sylvia 501 da Silva, Wilson 424 Da’n’Dill 99 Daboussy, Lamia 263 Dad and Dave 99, 149, 380, 384, 388 Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga) 203 Daily Australasian Shipping News 426 Daily Commercial News (and Shipping List) 78, 315, 426 Daily Examiner (Grafton) 316 Daily Express (London) 28, 78, 278–9, 282, 423, 486 Daily Guardian (Sydney) 29, 115, 331, 351, 429, 487; see also Sunday Guardian Daily Herald (SA) 236, 357 Daily Herald (UK) 144, 145 Daily Interview, The 406 Daily Life 501–2 Daily Mail (Brisbane) 121, 355 Daily Mail (London) 104, 205, 223, 249, 447 Daily Mail (Sydney) 351, 487, 496; see also Labor Daily (Sydney) Daily Mail Group (London) 104, 175, 431; see also DMG Radio Australia

Daily Mercury (Mackay) 371 Daily Mirror (London) 24, 337, 368, 462, 478 Daily Mirror (Sydney) 11, 29, 35, 57, 90, 125, 127, 130, 164, 179, 203, 221, 229, 242, 280, 317, 320, 346, 351, 352, 441, 442, 446, 447, 501 Daily News (Bundaberg) 484 Daily News (Murwillumbah) 316 Daily News (Perth) 12, 91, 129, 299, 364, 364, 441, 491; see also Weekend News Daily News (Sydney) 351 Daily News (Tweed Heads) 409 Daily News and Evening Chronicle (Sydney) 11, 414 Daily Pictorial (Sydney) see Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Daily Record (Rockhampton) 355 Daily Review 125 Daily Standard (Brisbane) 355 Daily Sun (Brisbane) 121, 356, 462 Daily Telegraph (Adelaide) 2 Daily Telegraph (Launceston) 200 Daily Telegraph (London) 164, 476 Daily Telegraph (Melbourne) 203, 360, 361, 490, 495 Daily Telegraph (Sydney) 10, 12, 29, 35, 39, 49, 50, 77, 80, 85, 91, 95, 97, 98, 115, 125, 126, 129–31, 132, 137, 169, 179, 209, 210, 257, 258, 287, 301, 303, 307, 320, 331, 336, 350, 351, 352, 372, 374, 375, 376, 400, 402, 409, 411, 413, 423, 441, 442, 452, 471, 488, 492, 497; ‘Central Coast Extra’ 352, 409; University of Sydney association 423; see also Sunday Telegraph Daily Telegraph News Pictorial (Sydney) see Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Daily Telegraph Mirror (Sydney) 11–12 Daily Telegraph Pictorial (Sydney) 29; see also Sunday Pictorial Dakin, Professor William 30 Dalai Lama 274 Dale, David 76 Dalfram dispute 217 Dalley-Scarlett, Dr Robert 288 ‘Dame Durden’ see Turner, Ethel Dampier, William 476 Dance Academy 94 Dancing with the Stars 283, 480 Dangerous Women (USA) 198 Daniel, Zoe 180 Daniell, John 425 Darby and Joan 149 Dare 274 Darian-Smith, Kate 33 Dark Victory 222, 254 Darling Downs Broadcasting Society 393 Darling Downs Gazette (Toowoomba) 197, 354, 371, 378, 440 Darling Downs Star (Toowoomba) 12 Darling, Henry 368 Darling, Dr Sir James 45, 148, 471 Darling, Sir Ralph 87, 200, 210, 349, 369 Darville, Helen 222 Darwin Star 353 Darwin Sun 353 datacasting 113, 114, 139 Dateline 128, 180, 434, 491 Daughters of Bilitis 190 Davey, Jack 131, 144, 314, 381, 382, 390, 479, 485 David Syme and Co. Ltd 11, 164, 240, 267, 361, 362, 363, 449, 453; see also Syme family Davidson, Bruce 40 Davidson, Sir Charles 52 Davidson, Frank 450 Davidson, Gay 82, 497 Davidson, James Edward 3, 205, 299, 301 Davidson, Jim 332 Davidson, Kenneth 146 Davie, Michael 13 Davies Brothers Ltd 131, 132, 250, 276, 277, 359 Davies family (Tas.) 131–2, 276, 277, 359; Cecil Bertrand (‘Bert’) 131; Charles Ellis 131; Charles Ellis (Jr) 131–2; Charles

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Reginald 131; Sir George 131; George Francis (‘Bill’) 132; John 131, 276 Davies, Paul 424 Davies, Trevor 446 Davis, Alan 353 Davis, Arthur Hoey 440 Davis, Glyn 324 Davis, Jack 216 Davis, Judy 370 Davis, Neil Brian 132, 179, 333, 339, 465, 487 Davis, Pedr 280 Davis, Sharon 383–4 Davison, Graeme 473 Dawe, Rex (‘Wacka’) 381, 382 Dawkins, Richard 424 Dawn 170, 239–40, 251, 366, 496, 498 Dawn Chorus, The 172 Day, David (DJ) 142 Day, Mark 261, 478 Dayton, Leigh 424 de Blas, Alexandra 423 de Brito, Kate 10 de Groot, Captain Frank 34 de Libra, J.G. see Green, James De Little, Joseph 192 de Roche, Everette 209 Deacon, David 377 Dead Bird 307 Dead Heart? (Alice Springs) 90, 353 Deaf people and media 140, 383 Deakin, Alfred 12, 117, 178, 272, 459, 495 Deal or No Deal 433 Deal, Terrance 326 Deamer family 28, 37, 130, 132–3, 297, 355, 401, 447; Adrian 28, 37, 132–3, 297, 355, 401; Sydney Harold (‘Syd’) 130, 132, 133, 447 Deane family 287 Deane, P.E. 388 Dease, John 188 Death of a Wombat 383 Deaton & Spencer 8 Deering, Dorothy 389, 390 Deetz, Stanley 326 defamation 59, 65, 69, 87, 88, 89, 118, 119, 120, 124, 130, 133–5, 176, 185, 186, 192, 200, 220, 225, 260, 284, 290, 303, 317, 318, 320, 336, 354, 356, 363, 369, 370, 418, 425, 429, 477, 491 Degraves, Peter 152 Dehane, George 356 Deighton, Matt 277 Delahunty, Mary 181 Delicious 244, 500 Delirra 353 Deltion Pharoy 357 Deluxe 284 DeLys, Sherre 383–4 Demonstrations in Physics 423 Dempsey, Bob 294 Dempsey, Myra 280 Dempster, Quentin 222 Deng, Wendy 282; see also Murdoch family Denison Estates Ltd 388 Denison, Sir Hugh 22, 29, 103, 130, 143, 204, 205, 331, 363, 390, 446, 447 Denison, Leslie Arthur 29 Denison, Reginald Ernest 29 Denning, Warren Edwin 135, 342 Dennis, C.J. 77, 205, 490 Dennis, Felix 329 Denny, Therese 465 Denton, Andrew 44, 91, 141, 494 Denton, Kit 465 Department of Aboriginal Affairs 74, 392 Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) 49, 93, 136 Department of Communications 43, 47, 89, 108, 114, 135–6, 220, 263, 419, 420 Department of Customs see Customs Department Department of Education (Commonwealth) 25, 33 Department of Education (most states) 148 Department of Employment and Industrial Relations 89

a companion to the australian media Department of External Affairs 45 Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) 45 Department of Health (SA) 149 Department of Information (DOI) 56, 57, 62, 99, 136–7, 230, 234, 245, 304, 333, 338, 412 Department of the Interior 57 Department of the Media 42, 102, 111, 133, 136, 137–8 Department of Social Services 140 Department of Transport and Communications 136 Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer 64, 297, 358, 368 Derwent Valley Gazette 276 Derwent Valley Paper Co. 312 Desilu Productions 194 Desmond, Lorrae 479 Desmond, Therese 381 Destroy the Joint 172, 261 Deverell, W.T. 18 Deveson, Anne 53 Devine, Frank 138 Devine, Jacqueline see Magee, Jacqueline Devine, Miranda 138 Devon Herald 358 Diabetic Living 202 Dick, Astra 309 Dickie, John 462 Dickie, Phil 121, 222 Dickins, John 356 Dickinson, Jim 273 Die Deutsche Post 156, 356 Diffusion 424 Digest of Digests 230, 254 Digger (alternative media) 20, 309 Digger (armed forces media) 25 ‘Diggers’ Saturday Night’ 489 Digital Australians report 49 Digital Delivery Network 406 Digital Dreaming report 292 digital news see online news and magazines digital radio and television 44, 46, 49, 52, 53, 54, 75, 94, 101, 102, 106, 110, 112, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 125, 126, 136, 138–40, 141, 149, 154, 156, 157, 169, 175, 186, 187, 285, 292–3, 300, 301, 302, 334, 340–1, 343, 380, 384, 389, 391, 392, 396–7, 399, 400, 406, 407, 418, 420, 421, 435, 461, 466, 473, 481, 484, 485 digital video discs (DVDs) 34, 138, 343, 344, 405, 433 Dingle, Sarah 222 Dinkum Oil 25 Direct Action 351 dirtgirlworld 94 disability and the media 38–9, 140–1, 159, 326, 468; see also Blind people and media; Deaf people and media; Radio for the Print Handicapped disc jockeys (DJs) 141–2, 175, 180, 183, 239, 284, 288, 335–6, 388, 390, 394, 418, 485 Discordia 172 Dismissal, the (1975) 37, 290, 301, 442 Dismissal, The (mini-series) 467 Disney (USA) 94, 433 Disney, Professor Julian 59, 444 Dissent 252 distance, and Australian life see time and space Distinction 165 Division 4 124, 467 Dix Inquiry 136 Dix, Dorothy see Dorothy Dix Dixon, Frank 43, 135, 179, 253, 280 Dixon, John 98 Dixon, William Backhouse 142 DMG Radio Australia 101, 104, 175, 283, 393, 395, 406, 407, 498; see also Daily Mail Group (London); radio stations and networks Dobell, Sir William 115 Dobson, Kevin 208 Dobson, Rosemary 77 Doctor Blake Mysteries, The 467 Doctors and Nurses 382 documentary, radio see radio documentary

documentary, television see television documentary doingbird 166 Dollar Sweets 218 Dolly 10, 50, 96, 163, 166, 402, 499 Domain (website) 370 DOMSAT 461 Don Dorrigo Gazette 411 Don Lane Show, The 30, 283, 315, 480 Don, Charles Jardine 217 Don’s Party 2, 231 Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush 116 Donaher family 403 Donald, W.H. (William) 178, 279 Donna Hay 500 Donnelly, James J. 383 Donohue, Patricia Mary (Paddy) 336 Donovan, David 324 Donovan, Jason 295 Doogue, Geraldine 413 ‘Dorothy Dix’ 10 Dossier on Dumetrius 193 Double Bay Courier 170 Dougall, John 23 Douglass, Alfred 192 Dow Jones 78 Dowling, Henry 200 Downing, Sir Richard 45 Doyle Dane & Bernbach (USA) 426 Doyle, John (SA Chief Justice) 432 Doyle, John (comedian) 382 Doyle, Max 166 Doyle, Michael 153 Doyle, Stuart 17 ‘Dr Feelgood’ see Cockburn, Dr Sally ‘Dr Karl’ see Kruszelnicki, Dr Karl Dr Paul 193, 384 Dr Who (UK) 93 Drain, Dorothy 10, 60 Drake, James 460 drama, radio see radio drama drama, television see television drama Draper of Australasia 8, 474 Drew, John 364 Drive 281 Driver, Roy 314 Drum Media 286 Drum, The 67, 151, 324, 342 ‘Dryblower’ see Murphy, Edwin Greenslade Dryden, Stanley 160 Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate 142–3, 330 Dubbo Dispatch and Wellington Independent 142, 143 Duckmanton, Sir Talbot Sydney 45, 46, 143 Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan 274 Duffy, M.B. (3KY) 101 Duffy, Michael (Communications Minister) 108, 420 Dugan, Darcy 242 Dumas, Sir (Frederick) Lloyd 3, 143–4, 447 ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ 5 Duncan, W.A. 414 Duncan, Professor W.G.K. 443 Dunlap, Al (‘Chainsaw’) 50 Dunlop, Sir Edward (‘Weary’) 472 Dunlop, Tim 67 Dunn family (Qld) 197, 198, 355–6, 371, 409, 410; Andrew 198, 371; see also Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd Dunn, Associate Professor Anne 227 Dunn, K. 159 Dunne, Frank 429 Dunstan, Don 472 Dunstan, Keith 402, 447, 476, 478 Dunton, John 10 Dupain, Max 208, 253, 333, 338 Duplitek 433 Durack, Dame Mary 483 Durden, Dame see Turner, Ethel Duryea, Edwin (‘Teddy’) 206 Durie, Jamie 190, 244 Durkin, Kevin 33 DVDs see digital video discs Dyer, Dorothy (‘Dolly’) 144, 188 Dyer, Robert Neal (‘Bob’) 131, 144, 188, 381, 390 Dyson, Ambrose 77, 309

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Dyson, Edward 144 Dyson, Ruby (née Lindsay) 144, 145 Dyson, William Henry 77, 84, 144–5, 205, 309, 455 E. & D. Syme 453; see also Syme family E.C. Sommerlad Memorial Awards for Journalism 432 Eagle (Charters Towers) 354 Ear in a Wheatfield 252 Earthbeat 423 East Gippsland News 281 East Gippsland Newspaper Group 281 East Sydney Technical College 329 East West 101 467 East, Roger 62, 487 Eastern Districts Chronicle (York) 364 Eastern Shore Star 359 Eastern Shore Sun 359 Eastern Suburbs Newspapers 170, 351 Eastley, Tony 21 Eastside News (Hobart) 276 Easybeats 17 Eat Carpet 434 eatability.com.au 177 Echo (Geelong) 192 Echo (Sydney) 163, 307, 350 Echo: Polski Tygodnik Niezalezny 364 Eco Italiano 364 economics reporting 54, 55, 64, 79, 83, 146–7, 174, 177, 205, 231, 234, 289, 311, 315, 456; see also business and finance reporting Economist (London) 54, 79, 315 Ed Sullivan Show, The (USA) 479 Eddey, Paul 209 Edelman, Hill & Knowlton 376 Edgar Report 147 Edgar, Don 147 Edgar, Dr Patricia 34, 147 Edgerton & Moore publishers 455 Editorial Prensa Ibérica 2 Edmanson, Jane 190 Edmond, James 24, 76, 77 education see film and television education; journalism education; radio education educational media 21, 34, 64, 71, 92, 107, 110, 111, 113, 123, 136, 148–9, 156, 214, 215, 219, 232, 233, 245, 280, 340, 347, 390, 391, 392, 396, 398, 399, 405, 421–2, 423, 435, 497; see also children and the media Edwards, George 149–50, 380, 384; see also George Edwards Players Edwards, John 294 Edwards, Ralph 472 Edwards, Tony 382 Eggleton, Tony 293 Einstein a Go-Go 424 Eipper, Christopher 253 Eisenhuth, Susie 272 El Telegraph 157–8 Eldershaw, Flora 115 Eldershaw, M. Barnard 385 Election Chaser, The 91, 464 election reporting 41, 47, 67, 91, 99, 131, 150–2, 186, 246, 255, 256, 261, 266, 310, 311, 319, 329, 359, 373–4, 378, 428, 464 Electric and Musical Industries (EMI) 173, 174, 285; EMI Columbia 149–50 Electric Pictures 466 Electrical Engineer and Merchandiser 474 Electronics Australia 163, 387 11–10 Men (DJs) 142 Eliezer, Christie 288 Eliminating Violence Against Women Media Awards 258 Elizabeth II, Queen 143, 417 Elkin, A.P. 33 Elle 166 Ellem, Peter 316 Ellen family (Vic.) 239; Bruce 239; Dorothy 239; Tim 239; see also Lanyon family Ellery, Tracey 219 Elliott Newspaper Group 410 Elliott Provincial/ Rural Newspaper Group 18, 239, 257, 362, 409, 410; see also Elliott Newspaper Group

index Elliott, John 334 Elliott, Robert Charles Dunlop 238–9, 257, 410 Elliott, Sumner Locke 384, 385, 490 Elliott, Sydney 24 Ellis, Bob 259, 290, 329, 444 Ellis, Edward 364, 450 Ellis, Kate 444 Elmore Standard 257 Elz, Robert 219 email and email services 9, 10, 35, 116, 124, 141, 151, 172, 191, 215, 219, 237, 242, 243, 278, 310, 323 EMAP Australia 275 emergency broadcasting see weather and natural disasters reporting Emerson, Ken 98 EMI see Electric and Musical Industries emitch 277 Empire (Sydney) 200, 242, 350, 441, 500 Empire Games, Perth (1962) 492 Empire Press Union see Commonwealth Press Union Empire Times 443, 444 Emu Bay Times and North West and West Coast Advocate (Burnie) see Advocate (Burnie) Encel, Sol 290 Encounter 383, 413 Endemol (Netherlands) 403, 433; Endemol Worldwide 433 English and Chinese Advertiser (Ballarat) 158, 362 English for New Australians 148, 156 English, Have a Go 149 Enhanced Media Metrics Australia (EMMA) 33, 453 Enough Rope 44 Entertaining with Kerr 243 Entr’acte 470 environmental reporting 16, 64, 152–3, 218, 246, 302, 314, 326, 327, 332, 359, 370, 423, 424, 443, 483, 488, 495 Epicurean 176 Epilogue see Evening Meditation Epoch Times 158 equalisation see aggregation Eric White Associates (EWA) 353, 375, 376, 492 Ern Malley hoax 252 Eros Foundation 344 Esquire (USA) 230, 251, 253 Essential Market Research Services 373 Essential Media and Entertainment 466 Esson, Louis 77 Eternity 415 ethics 1, 8, 9, 10, 33, 41–2, 47, 48, 52, 58, 65–6, 75, 82, 85–6, 91, 93, 100, 101, 102, 106, 109, 110, 112, 120, 140, 153–5, 156, 159, 160, 181, 183, 184, 186, 187, 203, 220, 225, 226, 231, 239, 256, 258–9, 271, 273, 284, 301, 303, 321–2, 323, 328, 337, 370, 375, 377, 421, 432, 442, 491, 492 Ethnic Affairs Commission of New South Wales 159 ethnic broadcasting 33, 45, 62, 100, 110, 111, 112, 114, 137, 140, 155–6, 175, 199, 235, 246, 289, 388, 390, 392, 393, 395, 398, 400, 433–5 ethnic press 19, 20, 35, 156–8, 191, 263, 351, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 362, 364, 365, 415 ethnic reporting and representation 15, 34, 77, 84, 89, 157, 159–60, 176, 194, 199, 209, 238, 247, 258, 260, 270, 271, 298, 304, 354, 433, 434, 435, 463, 464, 467, 468, 477, 484, 486, 495 Ettingshausen, Andrew 370 Etymspheres: The Journal from the Paper Castle 252 Eureka 99 Eureka Awards 424 Eureka Report 79, 324 Eureka Street 21 Evans, Gareth 185 Evans, George Essex 355 Evans, Greg 142 Evans, Harold 221

Evans, Huw 22 Evans, Len 176 Evans, Matthew 176 Evatt, Dr H.V. 62, 150 Evening Echo (Ballarat) 12 Evening Journal (Adelaide) 357, 432 Evening Meditation 44 Evening News (Bendigo) 12 Evening News (Charters Towers) 12 Evening News (London) 247, 249 Evening News (Rockhampton) 371 Evening News (Sydney) 11, 23–4, 29, 59, 60, 130, 345, 350, 351, 355, 402, 446, 487, 490 evening newspapers see afternoon newspapers Evening Post (Ballarat) 12 Evening Standard (Melbourne) 203, 360 Evening Star (Melbourne) 11 Evening Sun (Melbourne) 204, 363, 446, 447 Evening Telegraph (Charters Towers) 12 Everingham, Paul 391 Every Saturday (Melbourne) 453, 454 Everybody 243 Everylady’s Journal 165, 295, 498; see also New Idea Everyone’s 172 Everywoman Press 171 Evo Media 191 Evolution Media see Evo Media Ewart, Heather 247 Ewence, Goodwin 160 Examiner and Northern Television (ENT) Ltd 160–1 Examiner (Launceston) 152, 160–1, 201, 276, 359, 396, 408, 414, 422; see also Rolph family; Sunday Examiner Express (Fremantle) 364 Express Advocate (NSW) 352, 409 Express and Telegraph (Adelaide) 357 Extreme Makeover 433 Express Media 444 Eye 21 Eyewitness News 490 Eylandt Echo 353 F.T. Wimble & Co. 367, 368 Face the Press 434 Facebook 2, 5, 68, 126, 191, 206, 220, 258, 270, 278, 287, 322, 325, 373, 376, 429, 430, 438, 489; see also social media Factiva 311 Fadden, Arthur 50 Fagan, David 121 Faine, Jon 28 Fairfax Community Newspapers 240, 351; see also Fairfax Media Fairfax family (NSW) 30, 50, 55, 82, 83, 104–5, 109, 121, 126, 162–3, 164, 170, 203, 267, 295, 312, 328, 331, 349, 350, 351, 352, 365, 395, 431, 445, 452; Charles 162; Edward Ross 162; Sir James Oswald 162, 163, 452; Sir James Reading 162, 163; John 162, 328, 350, 452; John B. 83, 162, 163, 164, 352; John F. 162; Sir Vincent 109, 162; Sir Warwick 30, 162, 163, 164, 203, 295, 312, 351, 352, 365, 452; Warwick (Jr) 50, 55, 82, 83, 162, 163, 164, 295, 349, 352, 395, 452 Fairfax Magazines Pty Ltd 163, 233; see also Fairfax Media Fairfax Media 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 21, 23, 27, 29–30, 33, 35, 38, 39, 40, 49, 50, 54, 55, 58, 59, 67, 71, 79, 82, 83, 86, 96, 104–5, 107, 108, 125, 127, 132, 133, 134, 143, 161, 162, 163, 163–4, 169, 170, 171, 172, 177, 179, 181, 186, 196, 197, 201, 203, 208, 212, 222–3, 226, 231, 232, 233, 237, 240, 243, 249, 253, 254, 260, 262, 263, 267, 269, 271, 273, 281, 293, 294, 295, 297, 303, 304, 308, 310, 311, 312, 318, 324, 331, 340, 341, 343, 348, 349, 351, 352, 358, 359, 360, 361–2, 363, 365, 370, 373, 393, 395, 400, 410, 411, 442, 445, 449, 453, 477, 492, 494, 501–2; Fairfax Community Newspapers 240, 351; Fairfax Magazines Pty Ltd 163, 233; John Fairfax & Sons 11, 13, 27, 29–30, 35, 39, 49, 50, 54, 58, 59, 82, 83, 96, 107, 108–9, 132,

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133, 143, 162, 163–4, 171, 179, 181, 203, 208, 212, 222, 231, 232, 237, 249, 254, 260, 262, 271, 273, 293, 294, 295, 297, 308, 310, 312, 318, 348, 351, 352, 362, 363, 365, 373, 410, 418, 425, 440, 441, 445, 446, 451, 454, 478, 499; John Fairfax (Group Pty) Ltd 11, 21, 30, 50, 55, 59, 79, 82, 163, 271, 349, 352, 425–6, 447; John Fairfax Holdings 50, 163, 164, 197, 232, 267, 269, 281, 331, 352, 370, 409, 427, 433; see also Sydney Morning Herald Faithfull, Janeen 433 Falconio, Peter 31 Falk, Lee 97 Fall of the City 385 Fallick, R.J.S. 425 Falls, Alexander 253 Falls, Margaret 253 Fame Games 404 families in media see especially Alberts; Barnet family; Bonython family; Crawford family; Davies family; Deamer family; Fairfax family; Grant family; Groom family; Harris family; Hocking family; Howe family; Lanyon family; Lockwood family; Manning family; McPherson family; Mott family; Murdoch family; Norton family; Packer family; Shakespeare family; Sommerlad family; Syme family; Taylor family; Vincent family; Weston family Family Circle 468, 488 Family Circle Publications 468 Family, The (UK) 403; SBS version 466 Famous 500 Fanning, Ellen 21, 427 Fanning, L.B. 41 Far Country, The 124 Far Eastern Economic Review 211 Farm and Garden 189 Farmer 312 Farmer and Dairyman (Perth) 16 Farmer and Settler 237, 351 Farmer and Settler Publishing Company 237 Farmer Wants a Wife, The 403 Farmers’ Journal 453, 489 Farmers’ Weekly Messenger 91 Farnham, Johnny 503 Farquhar, George 470 Farquhar, Murray 255, 321 Farquharson, John 30 Farrago 21, 309, 336, 443, 444 Farrelly, Lynette 253 Farrow, Nick 222 Fashion and Society 165, 208, 251 fashion magazines and pages 60, 164–6, 208, 240, 272, 275, 276, 417, 431, 455, 475, 488, 497, 498, 499, 500, 501 Fast Forward 463 FasterLouder 287, 324 Fat Cat and Friends 166 ‘Fatty Finn’ 84, 228, 309 Fatty Finn’s Weekly 92, 98 Fawcett, Jamie 370 Fawkner, John Pascoe 131, 192, 359, 360, 367, 368 Fayol, Henri 326 Fcollective 172 feature writing 15, 26, 37, 119, 129, 132, 133, 166–8, 173, 179, 195, 205, 206, 208, 274, 298, 311, 321, 323, 324, 336, 337, 361, 365, 402, 447, 488 Federal Capital Commission 348 Federal Capital Pioneer 348 Federal Capital Press of Australia Ltd 82, 164, 425–6 Federal Communications Commission (USA) 73 Federal Government Printing Office see Australian Government Publishing Service Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery (FPPG) 22, 58, 82, 135, 143, 146, 147, 151, 168–9, 177, 196, 210, 227, 231, 260, 263, 282, 293, 302, 303, 310, 315, 320, 334, 337, 341, 342–3, 346, 401, 411, 453, 456, 492, 497 Federal Publishing Company (FPC) 98, 127, 169–70, 250, 327, 468

a companion to the australian media Federal Radio Network 103, 390, 399; see also Commonwealth Broadcasting Network Federated Ironworkers’ Association 236 Federated Photo Engravers, PhotoLithographers & Photogravure Employees Association of Australia 366 Federation of Australian Commercial Broadcasters 102; see also Commercial Radio Australia Federation of Australian Commercial Television Stations see Free TV Australia Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (FARB) 32, 99, 100, 102, 103, 115, 196, 389, 390, 432; see also Commercial Radio Australia Federation Press, The 242 Fegan, John 208 Feldman, Jules 280 Fell, Liz 272 Female Spectator (UK) 10 Feminaust 172 feminist media 60, 170–2, 179, 191, 197, 216, 219, 221, 239–40, 251, 261, 323, 339, 431, 443, 465, 488, 495, 496, 497, 501 Fennell, Willie 381 Fenston, Esmé 60 Ferber, Mary see Giles, Bonnie Ferguson, Sarah 153, 484 Ferguson, Tony 271 Ferres, John 195 Festival and Festival-Mushroom 284, 503 FHM (UK) 275; FHM Australia 10, 274, 275, 276, 477 Fibreculture Journal 263 Fiddess, Buster 462, 479 ‘Fidelio’ see Kornweibel, Albert film and television education 53–4, 56, 74, 89, 113, 115, 132, 291, 339 film and television industry 1–2, 4, 6, 15, 16, 17, 25, 33, 34, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 61, 62, 85, 87, 89, 92, 95, 97, 98, 104, 105–6, 108, 112–13, 115, 124, 132, 136–7, 140, 147, 149, 150, 171, 172, 173, 176, 179, 180, 181, 187, 194, 208–9, 214, 217, 220, 227, 228, 231, 239, 244–5, 248, 251, 254, 255, 270, 290–1, 300, 313–14, 333, 337, 339, 340, 343, 344, 375, 382, 383, 385, 389, 390, 418, 424–5, 433, 435, 436, 437, 465–6, 467, 470, 476, 480, 485, 486, 487; see also especially Crawford Television; Department of Information; film and television education; Film Finance Corporation; film reviewing; Grace Gibson Productions; Limelight Department; newsreels; Southern Star Entertainment; Special Broadcasting Service Independent 434, 466, 467 Film Australia 149, 464; see also Screen Australia Film Finance Corporation 466 film reviewing 71, 167, 172–3, 259, 322, 434, 470–1 FilmInk 173 Filmnews 173 Filmviews 173 Film Critics Circle of Australia 173 Film Index 173 Film Weekly 172 finance reporting see business and finance reporting Finance Week 79 Financial Mail (South Africa) 79 Financial Times (London) 54, 78, 79, 315, 335 Finch, Peter 28, 228, 382 Findlay family (Tas.) 396 Findlay Tasmanian Network 103; see also radio stations and networks Findlays Pty Ltd 396; see also Commercial Broadcasters Pty Ltd fine music 21, 110, 112, 137, 175, 390, 393, 398, 399, 400 Fine Music Society 175 Finey, George 309, 429 Fink, Margaret 425 Fink, Theodore 109, 132, 203, 204, 205

Fink, Thorold 204 Finkelstein Inquiry 49, 59, 66, 87–8, 154, 155, 187, 270, 301 Finkelstein, Ray 88, 154, 155, 187, 270 Fire on the Snow, The 385 ‘Firefly’ 431 First Australians, The 466 First Contact 465 First in Line 214, 434 Firth, Charles 91 Fischer, Sara Jenny 470 Fisher, Andrew 236, 345, 440, 484 Fisher, Humphrey 465 Fisher government 236 Fisk, Sir Ernest Thomas 22, 76, 173–4, 389 Fitchett, Ian 293 Fitchett family (Vic.) 295, 296, 498; John Campbell 295; Thomas King 295; Thomas Shaw 295; William Henry 295 Fitton, Doris 470 Fitzgerald Inquiry (Qld corruption) 121, 185, 222 Fitzgerald Report (company tax) 174 Fitzgerald, Professor C.P. 72 Fitzgerald, John 205 Fitzgerald, Ross 121 Fitzgerald, Thomas Michael 20, 54, 146, 174, 203, 289, 290 Fitzjames, Michael 294, 309 Fitzpatrick, Brian 169, 306, 443 Fitzpatrick, James (Jim) 57 FitzRoy, Sir Charles 253 Flair 165, 166 Flannery, Tim 424 Fleay, David 483 Fleming, Ian 210 Flemming, Sir Stamford 473 Fletcher Challenge (NZ) 313 Fletcher, James 296 Fletcher, Roger 98 Flight, The 385 Flight Deck 476 Flinders Island (Weekly) Chronicle 20, 215 Flinders University 443 Flint, David 86, 254 Flood, John 440 Floyd on Oz 176 Floyd, Keith 176, 243 Flying Doctors, The 124, 467 Flynn, Julie 184 FM radio 17, 21, 42, 71, 73, 89, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103–4, 110, 137, 139, 140, 142, 151, 155, 174–5, 214, 246, 284, 341, 380, 382, 388, 389, 390, 391, 393, 394, 395, 396, 398–9, 400, 406–7, 413, 456, 457 Foley, Gary 216, 233, 297 Foll, H.S. 56 Follow Me 166 Follow Me Gentlemen 166, 275 Following the Equator 476 food journalism and reviewing 40, 55, 60, 68, 170, 176–7, 243, 275, 295, 296, 311, 315, 434, 488, 498, 499, 500, 504 Food Media Club Australia see Australian Association of Food Professionals Inc. football (various codes) 63, 96, 117, 123, 192, 205, 275, 301, 334, 335, 359, 364, 427, 428, 434, 436, 437, 438, 439, 447, 448; see also Super League and Super 12 Rugby Football Record 438 Footscray Advertiser 445 Foott, Mary Hannay 501 For Love or Money 466 Forbes 79 Forbes and Parkes Gazette 425 Forbes, Cameron 487 Forbes, Francis 369 Forbes, Rev. James 414 Force, The 126 Forces Programme 26 Ford Superquiz 315 Ford, Andrew 288 Foreign Correspondent 43, 44, 128, 180 Foreign Correspondents’ Association 177, 210, 211 Foreign Investment Review Board 23, 75, 266 foreign ownership see media ownership

518

foreign reporting 22, 28, 37, 39–40, 43, 44, 55, 62, 63, 64, 72, 77–8, 124, 130, 132, 133, 135, 138, 142, 148, 156, 157, 158, 177, 178–80, 205, 210–11, 224, 228, 231, 247, 249, 254, 263, 278–9, 297, 298, 299, 302, 303, 319, 324, 337, 365, 383, 387, 401, 417, 427, 441, 447, 460, 478, 485–7, 493, 494, 495, 498 Forell, Claude 176 Forensic Investigators 126 ‘Forgotten People, The’ 387 Format Festival (Adelaide) 504 Forrest, Sir John 265, 364, 491 Forrest, Peter 392 Forster, W.M. 92 Fortune (USA) 418 40° South 359 Forum 331 Foster, Des 102 Foster, Dorothy 382 Foster, Edward 352 Foster, George 382 Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research 216 Four Corners 28, 43, 44, 128, 134, 150, 153, 180–1, 186, 218, 221, 222, 225, 254, 255, 319, 321, 322, 339, 423, 465, 487, 494 fourth estate 159, 168, 169, 181–2, 227, 246, 298, 341, 408 Fourth Estate 261 Fowler, Beatrice 266 Fowler, Jessie Allen 307 Fowler, Penny (née Calvert Jones) 204, 282; see also Murdoch family Fox Comics 99 Fox Movietone News 131, 132, 217 Fox Network (USA) 182, 282, 403, 441 Fox, Frank 24, 77 Fox, Samantha 275 Fox Movietone News (Australian Edition) 313 Fox News (newsreel) 313 Fox Sports 51, 301, 436, 437, 438; see also Foxtel Foxtel 51, 113, 116, 139, 177, 182–3, 220, 244, 248, 269, 271, 301, 335, 421, 435, 436, 437, 469–70, 481, 488; see also pay television; television stations and networks Foxylady 274 Frances, Cornelia 188 Francis, Bob 142, 180, 183, 394, 457 Francis, Maurice 149, 150 Franco, General Francisco 383 Frank Johnson Publications 98 Frankie 166, 286 Franklin Dam campaign 153, 359 Franklin, Miles 70, 77, 440, 490 Franklin, Nick 384 Franklin, Tim 142 Fraser Coast Chronicle 354, 371 Fraser government 5, 37, 42, 46, 110, 136, 138, 184, 199, 265, 268, 290, 334, 376, 433 Fraser, Malcolm 224, 239, 273, 294, 376, 419, 420, 456 Fraser, Ron 463 Fray, Peter 83 Frazer, Phillip 286 Frearson, Samuel and Septimus 357 Fred and Maggie 381 Fred Dagg see Clarke, John Free Press (Brisbane) 354 Free TV Australia 102, 105, 154, 183–4, 258–9, 277 Free, Colin 383 Freed, Alan 141 Freedman, Mia 324 Freedman, Phillip 123 freedom of information 13, 42, 59, 126, 184–5 freedom of speech 41, 58, 59, 65, 72, 87, 89, 109, 132, 133, 134, 138, 154, 174, 181, 185–7, 200, 201, 203, 210, 220, 221, 254, 260, 273, 282, 301, 320, 345, 349, 359, 369, 401, 408, 471 Freeman’s Journal 414 Fremantle Journal and General Advertiser 363

index Fremantle Observer 363, 368 FremantleMedia 198; see also Grundy Organisation ‘French Connections’ 181 ‘Fresh is Best’ 40 Fresh Start 149 Freudenberg, Graham 324 Frew Publications 99 Friday News Review 382 Friedman, Phil 209 Friend, Donald 309 Friends 248 Friends of the ABC 46 Front Page, The 227 ‘Frontiers of Science’ 423 Frontline (ABC comedy) 1, 44, 187, 228, 464 Frontline (ABC film) 465 Frontline (NZTV) 186 Frost, Andrew 27 Fuller, Benjamin 17 Fullers 470 Fulton, Margaret 40, 176, 296 Furphy, Joseph 440 Fury, The 172 Fusion Media 413 Future Fund 469 G’Day World 340 ‘Gadget Guy, The’ see Blasina, Peter Galbally Report 155–6 Gale, John 348 Gall, David 357 Gallacher, Lyn 384 Gallup Poll see Australian Public Opinion Polls Gallup, George 372 Galmahra 443 Gals and Gags 230 Gamble, Ray 334 Game of Thrones 322 game shows 44, 100, 114, 118, 131, 144, 148, 188–9, 198, 231, 245, 285, 315, 336, 381, 397, 403, 433, 479, 480 Game, Peter 205, 221 games, computer, video and online 33, 94, 99, 116, 167, 220, 258, 263, 278, 323, 325, 343, 344, 458 Games, The 44 Gandhi, Indira 294 Garden 189 Garden and Field 189 Garden, Harcourt 30 Garden, Jock 30 Gardener’s Magazine (UK) 189 Gardener’s Magazine and Journal of Rural Economy 189 Gardeners’ Chronicle (UK) 189 gardening 55, 56, 96, 189–90, 208, 230, 243, 244, 295, 296, 402, 457 Gardening Australia 243 Gardiner, Frank 307 Gareth Powell Publications 171 Garforth, Andrew 125 Garner, Helen 168 Garrett, John 212 Garrett, Thomas 212, 408 Garrett, Thomas (Jr) 212 Garriga, Peter 323 Gates, Bill 294 Gattenby, Ted 190 Gauld, Natalie 378 Gavin Anderson 376 Gawenda, Michael 13 Gawler Humbug Society 63 Gawler, George 356, 432 gay and lesbian media 20, 111, 190–2, 341, 364, 398, 430, 439, 443 gay and lesbian representation 190–2, 467, 468, 477 Gay Changes 192 Gay Community News 192 Gay Information 192 Gay Rays 192 Gay Times 190 Gay Waves 191 Geekgirl 219, 323 Geelong Advertiser 192, 360, 362, 408, 410, 489

Geelong Advertiser Group 192 Geelong News 192, 363 Geelong Register 192 Geller, Uri 30 Gellert, Leon 27, 208 General and Garrison Orders 367 Genie from Down Under 94, 147 Gentleman’s Magazine 401 Gentlemen’s Choice 274 George Edwards Players 149, 380, 384, 385 George Munster Independent Journalism Award 290; see also Munster, George George Patterson Pty Ltd 6, 7, 100, 103, 131, 384, 390 George Wallace Road Show 381 George, Henry 354 George, Melanie 166 George, Murray 166 Geraldton Express see Geraldton Guardian Geraldton Guardian 364, 444 Get Lost 477 Getaway 476 Getting of Wisdom, The 231 Getty Images 339, 340 Gfk (Germany) 32 Giagu, Bruno 275 Gibbs, May 448 Gibbs, Shallard & Co. 213 Gibson Committee 62 Gibson, Brian 313 Gibson, Grace Isabel 30, 193; see also Grace Gibson Productions Gibson, Sarah 465 Giddons, J. Harcourt 19 Giddy, Harold 299 Gilbert, Kevin 216 Gilbert, Max 312 Gilchrist, Enid 296 Gilchrist, Gavin 202 Giles, Bonnie 129 Gill, Raymond 125 Gill, S.T. (Samuel) 83, 242–3 Gillard government 52, 154, 187, 231, 268, 369 Gillard, Julia 38, 151, 172, 378, 421, 428, 457, 464, 494 Gillies Report, The 44, 463 Gillies, Kitty 399 Gillies, Max 463 Gillies, Tony 40 Gillison, Douglas 28 Gillray, James 308 Gilmore, (Dame) Mary 77, 167, 235–6, 496 Gilson, G. and Zubrzycki, J. 156, 263 ‘Ginger Meggs’ 29, 84, 92, 97, 448 Giorza, Paolo 287 Gipps, Sir George 195 Gippsland Farmer 16 Gippsland Times 410 Girl’s Own Paper (UK) 92, 295 Girlfriend 499 Girls High School Gazette 249 Girls Own (feminist journal) 171 Gittins, Ross 146–7 Giving Tree Walk (Hobart) 396 Glad Tidings 415 Gladstone Observer 372 Glamor: The Magazine for Young Women 165 Glascott, Joe 370 Gleaner 415 Gleisner, Tom 187, 476 Glen Innes Examiner 431, 432, 481, 482 Glen Innes Guardian 482 Glennon, Michael 206 Glenny, George 189 Glenorchy Gazette 359 Glenorchy Independent News 276 Glenorchy Star 359 Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management 377 Global Intertrade 2 Global Mail, The 324 Globe (London) 356 Globe (Sydney) 350 Glynn, Freda 89, 392 Glynn, Michael 439 Gnowangerup Star 365

519

Go Back to Where You Came From 270 Go-Set 286, 288 GO! Show 283 Goddard, George (Smith’s Weekly editor) 429 Goddard, Dr W.G. (news commentator) 148, 387, 388 Goggin, Gerard 263, 264 Gold, Geoffrey 290 Goldberg Advertising 6 Golden Age see Queanbeyan Age Golden West Network 406, 440; see also television stations and networks goldfields newspapers 193–4, 207, 362, 364, 401, 408, 440, 450 Goldie, David 465 Golding, Peter 377 Goldman, Eric 377 Goldstein, Vida 170, 496 Gomer Pyle USMC (USA) 93 Gonzales, Sef 125 Good Advertising 8 Good Film and Radio Vigilance League of New South Wales 172 Good Film League of New South Wales 172 ‘Good Food’ 177 Good Food Guides 176 ‘Good Guys, The’ (DJs) 142, 390, 418, 485 Good Health 202 Good Medicine (magazine) see Good Health Good Medicine (TV) 202 Good Morning Australia 315 Good Night, and Good Luck 227 Good Weekend see Age; Sydney Morning Herald Goodey, Ray and Fran 347 Goodman, David 264 Google 5, 219, 220, 270, 278, 285, 325, 370, 494; Google Maps 219 Goolagong Cawley, Evonne 472 Goolari Media Enterprises 114 Goon Show, The (UK) 382 Goossens, Sir Eugene 45, 280, 477 Goot, Murray 264 Gordon & Gotch 367, 368 Gordon-Smith, Michael 86 Gordon family (NSW) 194, 268; Andrew 194; Bruce 194, 268; Genevieve 194; Judith 194 Gordon, Harry 40, 121, 206, 273, 447 Gorton government 88, 130, 343, 411 Gorton, Sir John 84, 306, 401, 411, 456 gossip columns see celebrity; social pages Gotham Australia Pty Ltd 120 Gottliebsen, Robert 194–5 Gotye 17 Gough, Irene 92 Gough, Paul 2 Goulburn Evening Penny Post 342 Goulburn Valley Stock & Property Journal 257 Gould, C.S. 97 Gould, Liz 263 Gould, Nathaniel (‘Nat’) 462 Gould, Philip 503 ‘Gouli Gouli’ see Mack, Marie Louise Hamilton Gourlay, John 453; see also Syme family Gourmet Traveller 176 government printing 195–6, 210, 230, 241, 332, 346, 347, 349, 358, 367, 368, 372, 432, 450, 451 Goyder, George 352 GP 44 GQ Australia 275, 276 Grab Your Fork 177 Grace Gibson Productions 30, 125, 193, 384 Grace, Ian 115 Grade, Lord (Lew) 203 Grafton Argus 82, 425 Graham Kennedy Show, The 231; see also Kennedy, Graham Graham Kennedy’s Coast to Coast 231; see also Kennedy, Graham Graham Perkin Award 194, 197, 231, 273–4, 320, 337; see also Perkin, Graham Graham, Chris 293 Graham, Dona 233 Graham, Dorothy 399

a companion to the australian media Graham, Lorrie 294 Graham, Margaret 232 Grand Pater (Australasia Broadcasting) Awards 193 Granger, Bill 176 Granites, Kurt (Leonard) Japanangka 73, 113 Grant Broadcasters Pty Ltd 196, 393, 396 Grant family (NSW) 103, 196, 392; Alison O’Neil (née Cameron) 196; Christine 196; Dugald Cameron 196; Dugald Cameron (Jr) 196; Grant Cameron 196; Janet M. Cameron (née Grant) 103, 196; Walter J. 196 Grant Noble Award 38 Grant, Bruce 471 Grasby, William 15 Grass Roots 44 Grassby, Al 155 Grattan, Michelle 13, 28, 82, 151, 169, 196–7, 497 Gray, Robin 161, 313 Gray, Walter 378 Grayden, William 464 Grazia 166, 499 Great Gatsby, The (comic) 99 Great Outdoors, The 476 Great White Fleet 351 Greater Union cinemas 418 Greater Publications 8 Greaves, Doris 30 Greaves, Ron 312 Greek Herald 157 Greek Tribune see Paroikiako Vema 358 Greek Variety Show, The 156 Green Armour 493 ‘Green Bans’ 218, 246 Green Left Weekly 21 Green Park Observer 192 Green Report 46, 47 Green Room 470 Green, Cliff 123, 209 Green, Professor David 219 Green, Evan 280 Green, F.J. (Fred) 46 Green, Herbert 195 Green, H.M. 332 Green, James 26, 474 Green, Lelia 33, 262 Greenberg, Nicki 99 Greenop, Frank S. 263, 498 Greenpeace 255 Greenway, Francis 210 Greenwood Challoner 241 Greenwood, Irene Adelaide 197, 399 Greer, Germaine 171, 228, 295, 403, 485 Gregory, Edmund 378 Gregory, Jen see Lenthen, Greg; Tabakoff, Jenny Greig, Tony 502 Grey, George 287 Gribble, Diana 124, 323 Gribble, J.B. 491 Griffen Foley, James 287 Griffen-Foley, Bridget 263, 449, 479 Griffen-Foley, John (‘Griff’) 471 Griffin Press 3, 144 Griffith Review 168 Griffith University 72, 264 Griffith, Sturt 280 Griffiths, Rachel 69 ‘Grim Reaper’ 5 Grimshaw, Tracy 1 ‘Grog’s Gamut’ see Jericho, Greg Groom family (Qld) 197–8, 371, 483, 484; Fred 197; Henry Littleton 197, 198; Littleton Ernest 197–8; Marion Flora 198; Spencer David 198; William Henry 197, 198; William (Jr) 197, 198; William Henry George (George) 198, 483, 484 Grose, Simon 424 Ground Force 244 Groundwater, Ben 477 Grover, Montague MacGregor (‘Monty’) 446, 447 Gruen, Fred 197 Grundy Organisation 188, 198–9 Grundy, Reginald Roy 105, 106, 188, 232 Grunig, Jim 374, 377

GTK 44, 284 Guardian (Bundaberg) 483–4 Guardian (Communist) 2 Guardian (London) 494 Guardian Australia 223, 254, 299, 324 Gudinski, Michael 284 Guide to Good Eating in Melbourne 176 Guide to Good Eating in Sydney 176 Guinea Gold 25, 346 Guinness, Harry 314 Guldberg, Hans 34 Gullett, Sir Henry Somer 136, 205, 245 ‘Gumps, The’ 97 (USA) 97 Gun Alley murder 205 Gurak, Laura 67 Gurley Brown, Helen 171 Gurney, Alex 84, 98 Guthrie, Bruce 13, 206, 324 Guthrie, Rex 73, 113 Guy 274 Gware, Muttu 347 Gwydir Examiner (Moree) 481 Gyger, David 286 Gympie Miner 440 Gympie Times 23 Gyngell, Bruce 46, 188, 194, 199, 423, 434, 481 Gyngell, David 199 Hack 340 Hackett, Dr Earle 45, 202 Hackett, Sir John Winthrop 491 Haddon, George 309 Hadid, Albert 335 Hadzic, Ralph 166 Hagan, Jim 262 Hagon, Will 281 Hainsworth, Frank 243 Haire, Dr Norman 201, 101 Hale, Clive 221 Hales, A.G. (‘Smiler’) 485 Halfey, John 203, 205 Hall, Alan 181 Hall, Arsenio 480 Hall, Edward Smith 200, 349, 401 Hall, James 76 Hall, Ken G. 199, 314, 333, 338 Hall, Sandra 173, 272 Hallam, Jack 40 Hamblin, John 340 Hamer government (Vic.) 363 Hamilton Spectator 281 Hamilton, Paula 226 Hamish and Andy 101, 341, 457 Hammond, Rev. T.C. 412 Hamster Wheel, The 91 Hancock, Lang 315, 365, 492 Handbury, Helen (née Murdoch) 282, 283, 357; see also Murdoch family Handbury, Matt 250, 283; see also Murdoch family Handcock, Peter 485 Haneef, Dr Muhamed 222 Hanford, Bruce 294 Hanna-Barbera Studio 433 Hannan family (NSW) 169, 170, 351; Francis 170; Michael 170; Norman 169 Hannanprint 143, 170 Hanrahan, Bryan 280 Hansard 195, 302, 310, 345, 495 Hansen Rubensohn 6 Hansen, Andrew 91 Hanson, Pauline 284, 294 Hanusch, Folker 159 Harbour City Times 192 Harcus, William 3 Hard Copy 128 Hard Hat 236–7 Hardships (Antarctica) 348 Hardy, Frank 36 Harlow, Rex 374 Harmer, Wendy 324, 341 Harmsworth, Alfred see Northcliffe, Lord Harper, Charles 491 Harper’s Bazaar & Mode 166, 322 HarperCollins 46 Harradine, Brian 344 Harris and Company Ltd 10, 161, 201

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Harris family (Tas.) 10–11, 200–1, 359; Charles James 10, 200; Charles Ian 201; Geoffrey Philip 11, 201; Ian 11; Jim 11; Leonard Burnie (Len) 10, 11, 201; Lloyd John 11, 201; Nigel 11; Paul Geoffrey 11, 201; Robert 10, 200; Robert (Jr) 10; Russell Charles 10, 201; Selby Upton 10, 11, 201; Warren James 201 Harris, Max 27, 290, 443 Harris, Rolf 479 Harris, Steve 13 Harrison, James 12, 192 Hart, Joseph 212 Hartland & Hyde 26 Hartley, Inspector-General John 422 Hartley, Professor John (media researcher) 403–4 Hartt, Cecil 47, 429 Harty, Frank Sturge 10 Harvard Law Review 369 Harvey, Geoff 283 Harvey, Peter 427 Harvey, Ronald Stuart 201 Harvey, William James 201 Hasluck, Paul 470 Hastings, Peter 76, 179 Haswell Pty Ltd 23 Haupt, Robert 197, 295 Havas (France) 300 Hayden, Bill 401 Havel, Vaclav 294 Hawke government 37, 47, 101, 102, 106, 108, 136, 138, 175, 185, 186, 218, 226, 231, 265, 268, 334, 376, 420, 434 Hawke, Bob 28, 150, 168, 456, 463 Hawker, G.C. 2 Hawkesbury Gazette 432 Hawkesbury Herald 425 Hawkins, Gay 263 Hay, James 245 Hayden Group of Companies 485; Hayden Attractions 485; Hayden Scott Productions 485 Haydon, Tom 465, 466 Hayes, Catherine 287 Hayes, Joy 296 Hayes, Liz 427 Haylen, Leslie 58 Haynes, John 23, 24, 76, 350 Hayward, Andrée 450 Hazlehurst, Noni 340 Heading, Rex 206 Heads of the People 250 Healey, Liam Padraig 23 Health and Hygiene 148 health and medical reporting 1, 10, 44, 60, 138, 141, 148, 149, 152, 201–3, 214, 216, 222, 233, 238, 239, 245, 257–8, 275, 276, 278, 296, 302, 317, 319, 332, 337, 365, 383, 391, 430, 433, 439, 457, 496, 497, 500 Health Check 202 Health Dimensions 202 Health Matters 202 Health Report, The 44, 202, 222 Healthy Living 202 Healthy, Wealthy and Wise 202 Hearst, William Randolph 227 Heart Healthy Living 202 HeartHealthyOnline.com 202 Heat 252 Hebrew Standard see Australian Jewish Times Hecate 171 Heckle Hour, The 234 Hector Crawford Productions 123; see also Crawford family; Crawford Television Workshop/ Productions Hegart, Patrick 330 Hegarty, Tom 123 Heinze, Sir Bernard 45, 148 Heinze, Kevin 190 Hellenic Australian News 355 Hellenic Echo 364 Hemingway, Ernest 247 Hemphill, Ian (‘Herbie’) 40 Henderson, Brian 283 Henderson, Gerard 260 Henderson, Rev. Kenneth T. 412

index Henderson, Kerrie 86 Henderson, Rupert Albert Geary 29, 30, 57, 163, 164, 203, 212, 351, 365, 410, 425 Heney, Thomas William 350, 462 Henningham, Professor John 226, 262 Henry Jones (IXL) 334 Henry Mayer Lecture 199; see also Mayer, Henry Henry, Alice 179, 495 Hepworth, John 290 Herald (ALP newspaper) 69 Herald (Fremantle) 363, 364, 365 Herald (Melbourne) 11, 12, 29, 56, 62, 68, 71, 95, 96, 97, 98, 117, 130, 132, 133, 138, 144, 162, 169, 179–80, 194, 195, 201, 203–4, 205–6, 213, 221, 247, 272, 273, 278, 282, 288, 298, 299, 300, 301, 307, 313, 336, 360–1, 367, 372, 373, 386, 402, 414, 423, 444, 447, 449, 453, 455, 478, 490, 496, 501; see also Sunday Herald; Sunday Press Herald and Standard Company Ltd see Herald and Weekly Times Herald and Weekly Times (HWT) 3, 12, 23, 25, 36, 37, 39, 49, 50, 58, 103, 104, 107, 121, 123, 127, 132, 133, 143, 144, 164, 203–5, 206, 207, 208, 239, 240, 247, 249, 250, 256, 264, 266, 267, 268, 269, 273, 277, 281, 282, 299, 310, 312, 346, 352, 355, 356, 360, 361, 363, 365, 372, 373, 386, 397, 410, 432, 445, 446, 447, 448, 449, 454, 462, 468, 488, 490, 491, 492, 493; and radio stations and networks 103; and television stations and networks 104, 107 Herald Cinesound News Review 313 Herald of the South (Adelaide) 415 Herald Newsreel 204, 313, 314 Herald on Sunday (NZ) 23 Herald Sun (Melbourne) 11, 85, 87, 125, 126, 204, 205–6, 258, 271, 274, 301, 320, 321, 360, 361, 447; see also Sunday Herald Sun Herald Sun Television 447; see also television stations and networks: HSV7 Herd, Nick 263 Here Are the Facts 382 Here’s Humphrey 61, 206 Hergenhan, Laurie 70 Hermes 442–3 Herschells Pty Ltd 313 Hetaera (Brisbane) 170 Hetherington, John 28, 205, 336, 478 Hetherington, Norman 92 Hewitson, Ian (‘Huey’) 176 Hewitt, Thomas George 316 Hewson, John 1, 151, 294, 494–5 Hey Dad …! 463, 464 Hey Hey It’s Saturday 115, 151, 480 Heybob 327 Heyes, Ken 330 Heylen, Syd 462 Hi-5 433 Hibernian Australasian Catholic Benefit Society 414 Hickie, David 254 Hicks, Reg 98 Higgins, Justice H.B. 217 High Times 20 Highfield, John 22 Higgins, Paul 64 Higinbotham, George 81 Hiker: and Hiking 326–7 Hilder, J.J. 26, 96 Hill & Knowlton (USA) 376, 492 Hill, David 45, 46, 271, 380, 395 Hill, Ernestine 385, 476, 483 Hill, Lionel 3 Hill, Merv 395 Hillier, Rob 165 Hills, Adam 141 Hills, Ben 221, 370 Him 274 Hince, Kenneth 288 Hinch 128, 206 Hinch, Derryn Nigel 128, 206–7 Hinde, John 173 Hindmarsh Island bridge 134

Hindmarsh, Sir John 368, 432 Hindsight 383 Hingston, James 178 Hinkley, Adam 219 Historical Records of Australia 369 History Australia 263 HKTVB (Hong Kong) 69 HMAS Melbourne 122 HMAS Voyager 122 Hobart Christmas Pageant 396 Hobart Observer 359 Hobart Punch 83 Hobart Showmen 142 Hobart Town Courier see Courier (Hobart) Hobart Town Daily Mercury see Mercury (Hobart) Hobart Town Gazette, and Southern Reporter 64–5, 152, 241, 368, 401 Hobart Town Monthly Magazine 250 Hobart Walking Club 327 Hobarton Guardian 131, 358 Hobarton Mercury see Mercury (Hobart) Hobbs, Bernie 424 Hocking family (WA) 194, 207, 342, 364; Jack Kyle 207; Martin Charles 207; Percy Stuart 207; Sidney Edwin 207 Hodge, Bob 34 Hogan, Allan 21, 221 Hogan, Christine 501 Hogan, Edmond (Ned) 13 Hogan, Michael 332 Hogan, Paul 5, 463, 467, 479 Hogarth, William 308 Hogg, Lionel 323 Holden, Andrew 13 Holden, W. Sprague 28, 262, 299, 302 Holiday 243, 476 Hollings, Les 37 Hollway, Thomas 273 Holman, W.A. 345 Holmes, Charles 483 Holmes, Jonathan 181, 271, 465 Holmes, Pat 339, 496 Holmes à Court, Janet 208, 432 Holmes à Court, (Michael) Robert Hamilton 55, 69, 106, 207–8, 249, 295, 365, 428, 492 Holt government 471 Holt, Harold 150 Home 27, 55, 77, 96, 165, 208, 251, 402 Home and Away 140, 433, 467, 469 Home and Garden Beautiful 189 ‘Home Life in England, by a London Lady’ 500–1 Home Show, The 243 Homicide 123–4, 125, 208–9, 466–7 Honk 25 Honi Soit 21, 209, 320, 329, 443, 444 Hooke, James 212 Hooke, John 23 Hooke, Sir Lionel 22, 23 Hooper, Chloe 168 Hooper, Duncan 39 Hoopla, The 324 Hoover, Herbert 383 Hopkins, Livingston York Yourtee (‘Hop’) 77, 84, 209, 309 Hordern, Anthony and Samuel 22 Hordern, Mary 165 Horin, Adele 168, 222, 294 Horne, Donald Richmond 76, 77, 84, 209, 443 Horne, R.H. 274 horoscopes see astrology horse racing 96, 121, 149, 194, 235, 275, 307, 311, 357, 361, 364, 369, 388, 390, 394, 396, 397, 400, 402, 407, 420, 435, 437, 438, 448, 462, 475; see also Melbourne Cup; Radio TAB Horseman, Mollie 429 Horsfall, J.C. (Jack) 54, 146 Horsham Times 247 Horticultural Magazine 189 Horticulture Media Association Australia Inc. see gardening Horton, Mervyn 27 Horwitz Publications 275 Hospital (Half) Hour, The 202, 388

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Hot Auctions 244 Hot Property 244 Hot Rodding Review 230 Hotham, Sir Charles 205 House Gang 140 House News (HWT) 204 How Green Was My Cactus 382 Howard government 65, 102, 136, 139, 159, 177, 216, 222, 231, 265, 269, 278, 284, 291, 292, 344, 380, 435, 444 Howard, John 38, 83, 260, 265, 269, 378, 428, 456 Howard, Ken 437 Howard, Peter 40 Howard, Sean 219 Howard, W.S. 70, 227 Howe family (NSW) 19, 166, 195, 210, 349, 367, 450–1; Ann (née Bird) 210, 451; George 19, 166, 195, 210, 349, 367, 450; Robert 210, 349, 451; Robert Charles 210 Howell, Edward 381 Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War 228, 433 Hoyt, Shaun 255 Hoyts Media 104, 172, 394 Hughes Aircraft Company (USA) 420 Hughes, C.A. 33 Hughes, Gary 222 Hughes, George 241, 349, 367 Hughes, John 465 Hughes, Richard Joseph 58, 169, 179, 210–11 Hughes, Robert 290, 329 Hughes, Robin 272, 465 Hughes, William (‘Billy’) 22, 84, 87, 143, 174, 236, 282, 465 Hull, Crispin 82 Hull, Jean 30 Hullick, William 491 Hulme, Sir Alan 456 Hulu (Plus) 183, 220 Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC) 140, 141, 421 Human Rights Medal 2 Humbug 251 Hume, Ernest James 394 Hume, Stella 394 Hummer 235, 351 Humphreys, Dany 271 Hunt, Hugh 385, 470 Hunt, Simon 284 Hunter 124 Hunter River Gazette 253, 408 Hunter, John 195, 349 Hunter, Louise 10 Hurley, Frank 314, 338, 486 Husbands and Wives 10 Husseini, Haya 386 Hussey, Bert 357 Huston, Geoff 218, 219 Hutcheon, Jane 180 Hutchins, Peter 427 Hutchison Telecommunications 278, 469; see also Vodafone Hutchison, Neil 385 Hutton, Geoffrey 263, 273, 471 Hutton, Nan 273 Hywood, Greg 13, 453 I Will Survive 480 IBIS Business Information 323 Icy News 348 Ideas Australia 209 Ideas for Stationers see Bookseller and Publisher Identity 20, 216, 297, 364 Idiot Weekly 381, 382 Idriess, Ion 476, 483 iiNet 219, 220, 285 Il Canguro 364 Il Corriere d’Australia 355 Il Globo 157, 362 Illawarra Mercury 83, 164, 203, 212, 247, 481 Illawarra Newspaper Co. Ltd 212 Illustrated Australian Magazine 307 Illustrated Australian News 213, 361, 453, 489

a companion to the australian media Illustrated Journal of Australasia 305 Illustrated London News 213, 401 illustrated newspapers 36, 59, 70, 76, 130, 165, 213–14, 251, 276, 305, 307, 308, 350, 357, 361, 401, 430–1, 451, 453, 489, 500; see also newspaper illustration Illustrated Melbourne Post 213, 308, 361 Illustrated Sydney News 59, 213, 251, 307, 308, 430–1, 451, 500–1 Illustrated Tasmanian Mail 70, 276 illustration in magazines 24, 59, 76, 77, 83, 84, 85, 95, 98, 165, 208, 214, 251, 253, 274, 307, 308, 337, 338, 351, 483; see also newspaper illustration illustrators see cartoons and cartoonists/ illustrators Illyria 282–3 Imagination Entertainment 206 Impact: Exciting Adventure Stories for Men 274 Imparja Television 89, 113, 184, 214, 215, 292, 293, 406, 416, 420, 421; see also Indigenous broadcasting; Remote Commercial Television Service; television stations and networks Imperial Press Conferences see Commonwealth Press Union Imprint 27 In a Sunburnt Country 156 In Melbourne Tonight 231, 315, 462, 468, 480 In the Wild with Harry Butler 44, 476 In Touch 306 Inauguration of the Commonwealth, The 245 Incentive 306, 315 InDaily 358 Independent Australia 324 Independent Cable Association 236 Independent Digital Media 170 Independent Feature Film Producers Association 425 Independent Monthly 21, 260 Independent Media Inquiry see Finkelstein Inquiry Independent Newspapers Ltd (NZ) 164 Independent Newspapers Plc (Ireland) 23 Independent Print Media Group (IPMG) 170 Independent Radio Services 30 Independent Sun (Perth) 492 Independent Weekly (Adelaide) 358 Indigenous art magazines and reviewing 27 Indigenous broadcasting 33, 34, 53, 56, 73–4, 89–90, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 128, 139, 214–15, 263, 291–3, 392, 393–4, 395, 398, 400, 406, 416, 419, 420, 434, 435, 465, 466; see also Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association; radio stations and networks (Noongar Radio; Radio Larrakia; South Eastern Indigenous Media Association; Umewarra Radio; Yolngu Radio); National Indigenous News Service; National Indigenous Radio Service; Remote Commercial Television Service; Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services; Remote Indigenous Media Organisations (CAAMA; NG Media; PAKAM; PAW Media; PY Media; QRAM; TEABBRA); television stations and networks (Bushvision; ICTV; Imparja TV; Larrakia TV; Mulka TV; Ngarda TV; NITV); Indigenous Remote Communication Association Indigenous Community Television (ICTV) 56, 74, 113, 114, 215, 292, 293, 416; see also Indigenous broadcasting Indigenous newspapers and magazines 20, 21, 35, 171, 215–17, 233, 237–8, 263, 293, 362, 364 Indigenous Remote Communication Association (IRCA) 56, 292, 416 Indigenous reporting and representation 33, 34, 37–8, 84, 90, 122, 141, 153, 168, 181, 183, 214, 215, 216, 218, 221, 242, 254, 255, 258, 270, 287, 297, 299, 314, 316, 317, 327, 338, 339, 353, 383, 421, 443, 450, 464, 465, 466, 467, 472, 484, 491 Indigitube 292 Indonesia Post 365

Industrial Australian and Mining Standard 474 Industrial Printing and Publicity Co. Ltd 234 industrial reporting 13, 16, 22, 27, 121, 205, 217–18, 221, 228, 234, 238, 246, 260, 273, 299, 302, 355, 387, 441–2 Indy-Media 94 Inglis, Professor K.S. (Ken) 28, 259, 262, 263, 289, 376 Inkspot 48 Innes, Graeme 141 Innis, Harold 472–3 Inpress 286 Inprint Ltd 170 Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth) 129, 363–4, 491 Inquiry into Violence on Television 258 Inside Canberra 169, 492 Inside Sport 438 Inside Story 128 Insider (magazine) 230, 254 Insiders 151, 254 Insight (SBS) 128 Insights (NSW, Uniting Church) 415 Inspiring Australia: A National Strategy for Engagement with the Sciences 424 Institute of Architects of New South Wales 26 Institute of Foresters (Australia) 312 Institute of Public Affairs 260, 306 Instructions for the Constables in Country Districts 241, 367 Intelligencer (Ballarat) 192 INTELSAT 180, 419, 421, 461 Inter Continental Features 98 International College of Astrology (Sydney Lodge) 30 international news see foreign reporting International Association for Media and Communication Research 38 International Association of Business Communicators 326 International Association of Press Clubs 177 International Communications Association 38, 326 International Consortium of Investigative Journalists 222 International Federation of Journalists 273 International Media Centre (Sydney) 177 International Newspaper Marketing Association 257 International Publishing Corporation Limited 30 International Telecommunications Union 73 internet 3, 5, 6, 21, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 40, 44, 48, 49, 51, 53, 55, 73, 75, 77, 81, 83, 88, 94, 107, 116, 117, 118, 121, 131, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 149, 150, 158, 164, 177, 180, 182, 184, 185, 190, 191, 206, 214, 215, 218–20, 223, 232, 237, 246, 247, 250, 258, 261, 263, 268, 269, 270, 277, 278, 281, 282, 285, 286, 292, 298–9, 301, 302, 306, 308, 322–5, 333, 340, 342, 344, 346, 359, 368, 369, 370, 380, 383, 389, 391, 399, 402, 403, 404, 405, 406, 411, 416, 420, 429, 437, 438, 439, 444, 450, 452, 459, 461, 469, 471, 472, 473, 475, 489, 494; see also blogging; broadband; email and email services; mobile and portable media; online news and magazines; social media Internet Australasia 323 Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers 219 Internet Industry Association of Australia 220 Internet of Things 220 Interpreter 498 Interpretaris, The 93 Interpublic Group 376 Intertel 72 inthemix 287, 324 Into the Blue 327 Inverell Argus 431 Inverell Times 431, 432 investigative journalism 13, 16, 22, 37, 79, 121, 124, 125, 128, 134, 153, 164, 167, 180, 181, 182, 184, 185, 201, 202, 220–3, 227, 247, 254, 255, 259, 261, 279, 289, 294, 295, 297, 298, 306, 317, 318, 324,

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337, 354, 361, 364, 369, 370, 401, 404, 427, 450, 453, 471, 477, 484, 492, 494, 497 Investigative Reporters and Editors (USA) 221 Investigators, The 44, 188 Invisible Circus 384 Ion, Barry 394 Ipp, David 346 Ipswich Herald see Queensland Times Ipswich on Sunday 449 Ipswich Punch 83 Ipswich Sound Guys 142 Irish Exile and Freedom’s Advocate (Tas.) 358 Irish National Books series 422 Irvine family (NSW) 142; Abraham 142; Ken 142; Mirna 142 Irving Saulwick & Associates 372 Irwin family (Qld) 356, 371; see also Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd Irwin, Bill 129 Isaacs, Benjamin 126 Isaacs, Justice 272 Isaacs, Victor 263 iSentia see Media Monitors Australia Island (magazine) 359 Island Business (Tas.) 359 Islander (Christmas Island) 347–8 IT Conversations Network 340 It Pays to Be Funny 144, 381 ‘It’s Time’ 4, 150 Ita! 80; see also Buttrose, Ita Italian Gazette 249 iTunes 220, 285, 322, 325, 340, 341 iView 44, 46, 94, 322, 325 Ivy League 284 J. Albert & Son 17; see also Alberts J. Walter Thompson (JWT) 6, 31, 100, 103, 245, 384, 390, 426 J.C. Williamson 470 J.L. Bonython & Co. 69 J’Aime: Private School Girl 44, 464 Jabiru Rag 353 Jack and Jill: A Postscript 1–2 Jacka, Elizabeth (Liz) 264 Jacket Magazine 252 Jackson, Alice 60 Jackson, Bill 312 Jackson, Liz 171, 181, 271 Jackson, Michael 208 Jacobs, Joanne 67 Jacobs, Tom 383 Jadasa 30 Jaeng Ngajam (PNG) 346 Jago, Walter 77 Jaivin, Linda 279 Jakubowicz, Andrew 159 James Cook University 297 James Hardie 367 James Yeates & Sons Pty Ltd 281 James, Barbara 353 James, Clive 103, 319, 444 James, E.A. 346 James, Florence 115 James, Francis 290 James, John Stanley (‘The Vagabond’) 178, 224 James, William G. 45 Jamieson, Mark 2 Jamison, Dr Thomas 201 Japanese Perth Times 365 Jarrett, Pat 398, 447 Jaspan, Andrew 13, 324 Jay, Christopher 370 Jefferis, Dr James 3 Jeffery, Walter James 60 Jeffries, Mac 316 Jehovah’s Witnesses and media 137, 234, 394, 412; see also religious broadcasting Jenkings, Bill 125 Jenner, Dorothy Gordon (‘Andrea’) 179, 388, 497 Jennings, Keith 45 Jericho, Greg 94 Jerilderie and Urana Gazette 243 Jerusalem Post 164

index Jesuit Publications 21 Jevons, William 167 Jewish people and media 156, 172, 351, 361, 415, 455; see also religious press Jimmy Rodney on Secret Service 98 Jindyworobak Club 252 Joel, Asher 375 ‘Joh for Canberra’ 37, 224; see also BjelkePetersen, Sir Joh John Clemenger 6, 7 John Douglas Pringle Award 366; see also Pringle, John Martin Douglas John Fairfax & Sons 11, 13, 27, 29–30, 35, 39, 49, 50, 54, 58, 59, 82, 83, 96, 107, 108–9, 132, 133, 143, 162, 163–4, 171, 179, 181, 203, 208, 212, 222, 231, 232, 237, 249, 254, 260, 262, 271, 273, 293, 294, 295, 297, 308, 310, 312, 318, 348, 351, 352, 362, 363, 365, 373, 410, 418, 425, 440, 441, 445, 446, 451, 454, 478, 499; see also Fairfax family; Fairfax Media John Fairfax (Group Pty) Ltd 11, 21, 30, 50, 55, 59, 79, 82, 163, 271, 349, 352, 425–6, 447; see also Fairfax Media John Fairfax Holdings 50, 163, 164, 197, 232, 267, 269, 281, 331, 352, 370, 409, 427, 433; see also Fairfax Media John Henry Austral 375 John Luke’s Shopping Basket 400 John Newfong Media Prize 297 John Safran vs God 464 John Safran’s Race Relations 464 John Singleton Advertising 426; see also Singleton, John Desmond Johns, Brian 46, 271 Johnson-Woods, Toni 34, 404 Johnson, David 490 Johnson, Jack 435 Johnson, Judy 431 Johnson, Lyndon B. 78, 319, 375, 377 Johnson, Dr Samuel 89 Johnsonian Club, Brisbane 355 Johnston, George 36, 95, 227, 383, 385, 478, 486 Johnston, L.F. 195 Johnstone, Brian 293 Johnstone, Carol 212 Jonah from Tonga 464 Jones, Alan Belford 48, 86, 89, 127–8, 160, 224–5, 255, 258, 271, 391, 398, 407, 421, 456, 457 Jones, Auber George 131, 276 Jones, Barry 148, 188, 398, 456 Jones, Caroline Mary Newman 181, 221, 225, 413, 471, 484, 497, 498 Jones, Sir Charles Lloyd 27, 45, 390 Jones, David 47 Jones, Gillian 385 Jones, Ian 123, 124, 208 Jones, Margaret 70, 180, 365, 497 Jones, P.K. and Pusey, M. 261 Jones, Richard 210, 253, 451 Jones, Tony 181 Jones, William Orlando 88 Jonsson, Joe 429 Jorgensen, Michael 401 Joseph, Abraham Edgar 120 Josh Thomas and Friends 341 Jost, John 294 Journal (Adelaide) 299 Journal of Commerce 473, 474 Journal of Horticulture of Australasia 189 Journal of the Market Research Society of Victoria 270 journalism education 28, 38, 59, 95, 122, 225–7, 260, 263, 303, 363, 378, 495, 497, 498 Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) 38, 159, 226, 227, 493; see also Ossie Awards Journalist 260, 273, 337, 496, 497 journalists in fiction and on film 227–8 Journalists’ Club (Sydney) 48, 228–9, 259, 272, 273 Journey 415 Joy Melbourne 191, 341, 398; see also radio stations and networks Juddery, Bruce 82, 321

Juice 286 Julius, Harry 313 Jumbunna see Koorier Junior Argus 402 Jupp, Eric 479 Just, Thomas Cook 200 K-Zone 99 K.G. Murray Publishing Pty Ltd 50, 98, 230–1, 253, 274, 280, 327, 402 Kable, Mike 280 Kalgoorlie Miner 194, 207, 342, 364, 410; see also Hocking family Kantor, Anne 282, 283; see also Murdoch family Kantor, Eve 283; see also Murdoch family Kapp, Jack 141 Kapunda Evening News 357 Katabatic (Antarctica) 348 Kath and Kim 44, 464 Katherine Times 353 Kathner, Rupert 314 Katz, Danny 10 Kay, John 28 Kaye, Doug 340 Kazaa 220, 284 Kazzi, Tony 157 Keane, Bernard 124 Keane, John 182 Kearn, J. Hannah 2 Keating government 37, 136, 177, 182–3, 231, 467 Keating, Chris 263 Keating, Paul 108, 239, 268, 294, 319, 434, 456 Keen, Harry 293 Kelett, Frank 330 Kelleway, Cyril 316 Kelleway, William 315, 316 Kelly, Francis Jupurrurla 113 Kelly, Archbishop Michael 389 Kelly, Ned 125, 242–3, 298, 309, 490 Kelly, Paul 37, 38, 169, 231, 294 Kelly, Thomas 258 Kelynack, Tom (‘Kickeroo’) 205 Kemp, Charles 162, 452 Kemp, Kevon 294 Kendall, Henry 274, 470 Keneally, Thomas 77 Kenmure Press Pty Ltd 96, 230 Kennard, Bill 44 Kennedy, Allan 326 Kennedy, Buzz 127 Kennedy, Eric 29, 58 Kennedy, Graham 42, 188, 231–2, 248, 315, 381, 397, 462, 468, 480, 493 Kennedy, Jane 187 Kennedy, Les 125 Kennedy, Trevor 76, 77, 219, 232, 294 Kennett, Jeff 13, 124, 346, 442, 457 Kerr, Graham (‘Galloping Gourmet’) 176, 243 Kerr, Sir John 329 Kerrang 286 Kessell, S.L. 312 Kestecher, Natalie 383–4 Kevin Jacobsen Enterprises 235 Keynes, John Maynard 174 Keyte, Jennifer 480 Khemlani loans affair 205, 337 Kia Ora Coo-ee 25 Kiama Independent 63, 170 Kidman, Antonia 244 Kidman, Nicole 369–70 Kidner, Francis 378 Kindergarten of the Air 148, 232, 399 Kindergarten Playtime 92, 148 Kinetoscopes 404 King Features Syndicate (USA) 97 King George’s Sound Observer 364, 408 King, Alec 232 King, Bernard 40, 176 King, Catherine Helen (née Murdoch) 148, 197, 232, 399 King, John 321 King, Nene 10, 60, 68, 232–3, 500 King, Philip Gidley 89, 210, 349, 413 King, Thomas 3

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Kingborough Star 359 Kingston, Charles Cameron 69 Kingston, Margo 67, 95, 169, 323 Kingswood Country 463 Kipling, Rudyard 303 Kippax, H.G. 417, 471 Kippen family (Qld) 371, 378; see also Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd Kirby, Sir Richard 289 Kirkby, Rev. Sydney James 414 Kirkham, Rod 503 Kirkland, Charles 352 Kirkpatrick, Rod 12, 181, 263, 353 Kirkwood, Patrick 412 Kitbags 25 Kitchener, Dan 312 Kitto, Sir Frank 28 Knight 274 Knight, Charles 19 Knight, David 2 Knight, Dominic 91 Knight, Dr John 202 Knight, John James 121 Knight, Mark 85 Knightley, Phillip 221 Know Your Own Country 314 Knox, Sir Errol 24 Koch, David 79 Koch, Philip 21 Koch, Tony 247 Kochie’s Business Builders 79 Koestler, Arthur 247 Kohler, Alan 13, 79, 195, 324 Kokoda Front Line! 25, 314, 333 Kommotion 283 Kookaburra, The 98 Koori Bina 171, 216 Koori Mail 21, 216, 233, 293 Koorie Information Centre 362 Koorier 20, 216, 362 Kornweibel, Albert 288 Kostakidis, Mary 434 Koval, Ramona 71 Kramer, Dame Leonie 45 Kravis Kohlberg Roberts 269 Kruszelnicki, Dr Karl 424 Krygsman, Sturt 309 Kuner, Jean-Claude 384 Kurts, Alwyn 208 Kwong, Kylie 176 Kyabram Free Press 257 Kyle and Jackie O 101, 116, 341, 457 Kyneton Guardian 239 Kyogle Examiner 316, 481 L.J. Hooker 370 L’Eco d’Italia 355 L’Italiano 355 L’Italo-Australiano 351, 355 La Fiamma 157 La Ricossa 355 La Stampa Italiana 364 La Trobe University 147, 443 La Trobe, Charles 195 Labor Call 236 Labor Council of New South Wales 441 Labor Daily (Sydney) 10, 35, 135, 234, 236, 342, 351, 370, 441 Labor News 236 Labor Papers Ltd 236 labour broadcasting 234–5, 389, 393, 397, 400 Labour Hour 234, 235 labour press 10, 20, 35, 135, 167, 179, 217, 221, 235–7, 221, 238, 247, 273, 296, 316, 320, 342, 351, 352–3, 354, 355, 357, 364, 370, 441–2, 483–4 Labrys 192 Lachlander (Condobolin) 82, 425 Lack, Clem 355 Lacy, Norman 147 ‘Lady Kitty’ 431 Laga’aia, Jay 340 Lake Pedder campaign 152 Lake Times 170 Lake, Barry 281 Lake, Dawn 462, 479 Lakes Post (Gippsland) 281

a companion to the australian media Lamb, Sir Albert (‘Larry’) 28, 129 Lambert, George 77 Lambert, Susan 465 Lambie, William 485 Lamond, Hector 235 Lancefield Mercury 247 Land 16, 35, 96, 164, 237, 351, 410, 501 Land Rights News (LRN) 216, 237–8 Land Rights Queensland 216 Landline 16 Landslides 465 Lane, Anne (née Macquire) 238 Lane, Don 30, 315, 480 Lane, William 167, 235, 238, 354, 457 Lang and Dawes 370 Lang government (NSW) 411 Lang, George Dunmore 193 Lang, Rev. John Dunmore 413–14, 481 Lang, J.T. (Jack) 29, 236, 370 Langdon, Allison 427 Lange, David 186 Langler, Sir Alfred 491 Langley, Eve 77 Langton, Marcia 216, 233 Lansbury, Coral 385 Lants, Gerry 98 Lanyon family (Vic.) 238–9, 410; Bruce and Tim Ellen 23; Charles Dudley 238, 239; Donald James 239; Dorothy Ellen (née Lanyon) 239; James 238; Jamie 239; Ross 239; William Russell (Bill) 239 Larkin, John 462 Larrakia TV 114 Lashwood, Hal 382 Laski, Ron 309 Last of the Hillbillies 144 Last Leg, The 141 Last Tasmanian, The 466 Last.fm 285 Late Night Live 2, 44 Late Show, The 187, 315 Lateline 28, 43, 44, 128, 151, 258, 319, 343 Lateline Business see Business, The Latham, Mark 124, 457 Latrobe Valley Express 239, 410 Launceston Advertiser 200, 358, 359, 368 Launceston Examiner and Commercial and Agricultural Advertiser see Examiner (Launceston) Launceston Times 200, 274 Launceston Walking Club 327 Laurie family (SA) 356 Laurie Oakes Report, The 320 Laurie, Robin 465 Law Book Company of Australasia Pty Ltd 241, 242 Law, Michael 110 Lawler, Ray 471 Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure 91 Lawrence, Charles 314 Lawry, Walter 413 Laws, (Richard) John Sinclair 48, 85, 86, 89, 100, 104, 141, 163, 224, 228, 239, 246, 271, 336, 390, 391, 398, 407, 456, 457, 472 Lawson, Henry 77, 238, 239, 472 Lawson, Len 98 Lawson, Louisa 92, 170, 239–40, 251, 366, 496, 498 Lawson, Nigella 176, 243 Lawson, Sylvia 76, 172, 289 Lawson, Valerie 295 Lawsons, The 68 Le Carré, John 210 Le Gallienne, Dorian 288 Le Guay, Laurence 253, 338 Leader (Melbourne) 92, 189, 251, 361, 453, 454, 489, 490 Leader Community Newspapers (Melbourne) 239, 240–1, 281, 301, 330, 361, 442, 445 Leader: The Truth. The Whole Truth. And Nothing But the Truth (Tas.) 358 Leading Company 324 Leahy, Sean 85, 98 Leahy, Patrick James 410 Leak, Bill 85, 309 Leane, Elizabeth 348

Learning English 156 Leatherwood see 40° South Leaving of Liverpool,The 44 Lebovic, Sol 373 Leckie, David 335 Lee Kuan Yew 293 Lee, David 123 Legally Brown 464 Leichhardt, Ludwig 242 legal publishing 241–2 Legg, Frank 383 Leisure Hour: A Family Journal (UK) 92 Leisure, Boating, and Speedway Magazines 483 Lenfest Communications 335 Lenthen, Greg 228 Lesbian News 192 Lesbiana 192 Lesbians on the Loose 191 Leslie, Ian 427, 441 Lesnie, Andrew 54 ‘Let’s Celebrate’ 392 Letch, Simon 309 Letcher, Dean 329 Letcher, William 272 Letter from Canberra 306 Letter from Melbourne 306 Letterman, David 480 Letters and Numbers 188 letters to the editor 197, 216, 242–3, 337, 359, 372, 373, 375, 475 Letts, Dr Richard 287 Leunig, Michael 13, 83, 85, 290, 309, 444 Lever Brothers 100, 384; see also Lux Radio Theatre Leveson Inquiry (UK) 369; see also phone hacking scandal (UK) Lewis Young Productions 503 Lewis, Essington 478 Lewis, John 297 Lewis, Kevin 503 Lewis, Lionel 400 Lewis, Terry 255 Lexis 311 Leyland, Mike and Mal 476 Lhotsky, John 287 libel see defamation Liberaction (Hobart) 170 Liberation (Adelaide) 170 Liberator (Melbourne) 88 Libertine 192 Licciardello, Chas 91 Liddy, Jeanne 28 Liebmann, Steve 383 Life (biodiversity website) 219 Life (pictorial magazine) 338 Life Line 413 Life Matters 44 Life With Dexter 381 ‘Life. Be in it’ 4 lifestyle television 243–4, 476 Lift Off 147 Light see VoxNews Lights of Jericho 386 Likert, Rensis 326 Lilies of the Field 394 Lilith 171 Lillee, Dennis 502 Lilley, Chris 44, 464 Lilley, Norman 235 Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopaedia 288 Lilly, W.S. 153–4 Limb, Bobby 479; see also Bobby Limb Show; Bobby Limb’s Sound of Music; Mobil-Limb Show, The Limelight 286 Limelight Department 244–5, 375 Lindgren, Kathleen 397, 493 Lindley, John 189 Lindsay, Sir Daryl 205 Lindsay, Ian D. 243 Lindsay, Jack 443 Lindsay, Lionel 77 Lindsay, Norman 4, 25, 77, 84, 209, 251, 309 Lindsay, Ruby see Dyson, Ruby Lingard, William Edward 296 Linnell, Garry 76 Lintas (UK) 6, 384

524

Lip 171 Lismore Chronicle 315 Lisner, Panda 468 Listener In 204, 386, 397 Listener In-TV 386, 468; see also TV Scene listeners 2, 16, 21, 22, 31, 32, 33, 34, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 51, 53, 63, 74, 92, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 119, 123, 127, 138, 140, 141, 142, 144, 148, 156, 175, 182, 183, 188, 190, 191, 197, 202, 206, 214, 224–5, 234, 239, 245–6, 257, 259, 271, 283, 284, 285, 286, 319, 322, 379, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385–6, 387, 388, 389, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 407, 412, 418, 434, 435, 438, 456, 457, 473, 476, 485, 488, 491, 493, 496 Listening Room, The 383 Lister, Julia G. 165 Litchfield, Jessie 352 literary criticism and reviewing see book reviewing literary prose and poetry 18, 59–60, 77, 84, 115, 118, 27, 167, 171, 208, 235, 245, 249, 251, 252, 259, 263, 274, 290, 295, 329, 336, 350, 354–5, 359, 385, 417, 422, 429, 439–40, 443, 450, 455, 474, 484, 490, 504; see also book reviewing; ‘Red Page’ Literary News 251 ‘Little Boy from Manly’ 84, 209 Little Desert campaign 153 Littlejohn, Linda 488 Littlemore, Stuart 221, 271, 471 Live at the Wireless 284 LiveJournal 322, 429 Liverpool Mercury (UK) 476 Liversidge, Archibald 422 Living Black 214, 435 Living Daylights see Nation and Nation Review Living on the Fringe 466 Living with a Giant 72 Livingstone, K.T. 472 Lleonart, John 138 Lloyd, Clem 226, 262, 263, 343 Lloyd, Tom and Tim 347 Lo Piccolo, Johnny see St Peeters, John Loaded (UK) 275 Lobbecke, Eric 309 local content see Australian content; regional broadcasting local government reporting 246–7; see also suburban newspapers Location, Location, Location (UK) 244 Lockwood family (Vic.) 218, 234, 247, 347, 353; Alfred Wright 247; Alice Ellen (née Francis) 247; Allan Wright 247; David John 247; Douglas Wright 218, 247, 347, 353; Frank Wright 247; Ida Dorothea (née Klowss) 247; Keith Andrew 247; Kim Douglas 247; Raymond Alfred 247; Rupert Ernest 234, 247 Lockyer, Paul 484 Loewenstein, Antony 67 Logie Awards 93, 124, 144, 206, 225, 232, 244, 248, 255, 315, 320, 340, 463, 468, 469, 471, 479, 480, 485, 490, 491, 494, 503; Hall of Fame 124, 248, 320, 340, 494 Lomax, Penny 171 London Review of Books 71 Lone Avenger 98 Lone Hand 24, 77, 144, 165, 251, 498 Lonely Planet publications 427 Long Story Short 383 Long, Malcolm 54 longform.org 168 Longstaff, John 163 Lonsdale, David 212 Loose Licks 20 Lord Howe Island Signal 347 Lord of the Rings, The 322 Lorgnette: A Journal of Amusements 470 Lorrae Desmond Show 479 Lost in Science 424 Lot’s Wife 21, 309, 443, 444 Loudon, John Claudius 189

index Lousy Little Sixpence 465 Louw, Eric 377 Love My Way 433, 467 Love, David 54 Lovegrove, Vince 286 Lovekin, Arthur 129 Lovell, Patricia 92 Lovelock, Bill 472 Low, David 77, 84, 309 Lowenthal, David 501 Lower, Lenny 336 Lowery, Barbara 40 Loxton News 458 Lucas, Dione 176 Luce, Henry 418 Luciano, Giuseppe A. 355 Luck, Peter 221, 465 Lucky Country, The 209 Luhrmann, Baz 17 Luke Nguyen’s Vietnam 176 Lumby, Catharine 344 Lumière Brothers 245 Lumsdaine, Jack 314 Lutherans and media 155, 346, 412, 415; see also religious broadcasting; religious press Lux Radio Theatre 100, 115; see also J. Walter Thompson; Lever Brothers Lynch, J.M. 350 Lynch Pidler 266 Lyneham, Paul 181 Lyon, Arthur Sidney 120–1, 354, 368, 378 Lyons government 22, 41, 88, 103, 234, 314, 387, 390 Lyons, Dame Enid 387 Lyons, Joseph 43, 76, 135, 143, 150, 314, 342, 387, 396 Lyons, Martyn and Taksa, Lucy 33 Lyttleton Times (NZ) 18 Mabel: Australian Feminist Newspaper 171 Macalister, Arthur 378 MacArthur, General Douglas 72, 375, 460, 486 MacArthur, Tony 142 Macartie, J.C. 474 MacCallum, Diana 383 MacCallum, Mungo 259, 290, 329, 383 MacCallum Smith, James 207, 450 Macartney, James 129, 491 Macdonald, Donald 178 Macdonald, Ian 222 Macdonald, Ranald 13, 164, 337, 454; see also Syme family Macdonell House (Sydney) 236 MacDougall, Dudley 218 Mace, Dr David 10 Macfarlan family (Qld) 372 MacFarlane, Bill 383 Macfaull, Charles 368, 491 Macfaull, Elizabeth 491 MacGregor, Tony 384 Mack, Amy 249 Mack, Dorothy (‘Dolly’) see Dyer, Dorothy (‘Dolly’) Mack, Marie Louise Hamilton 77, 249, 440, 486, 496 Mackay, Angus 15 MacKay, Bill 477 Mackay, Donald 125 Mackay, George 192 MacKendrick, Alexander 227 Mackenzie, Kenneth 227 MacLaine, Shirley 294 Maclean, Donald 210 Maclean, Frances 271 MacLeish, Archibald 385 MacLeod, Alasdair 282; see also Murdoch family MacLeod, Prudence (née Murdoch) 282; see also Murdoch family Macleod, William 22, 24 MacLurcan, Charles 389 Macnamara, Ian 246 MacPherson, Duncan 249 MacPherson, Sir Keith Duncan 249–50 Macquarie Bank 334 Macquarie Broadcasting Holdings Ltd 164, 203; see also Fairfax Media

Macquarie Media Group 269, 433 Macquarie Network 70, 79, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 127, 131, 148, 188, 387, 388, 390, 395, 396, 399–400, 427, 497; see also radio stations and networks Macquarie Publications Pty Ltd 142, 143, 352, 410 Macquarie Regional RadioWorks 104, 391, 393, 396, 406–7; see also radio stations and networks; Southern Cross Austereo ‘Macquarie Street Observer’ 346 Macquarie University 54, 83, 264, 443 Macquarie, Lachlan 349 MACSAT 100, 104 Macumba, John 89–90 Mad Mel (DJ) 142 ‘Made in Australia’ promotion 375 Madgwick, Sir Robert 45 Madison 499 Madsen, Virginia 264, 384 Maeve O’Meara’s Food Safari 176 Magazine Publishers of Australia 250, 377; Hall of Fame 377 magazines and periodicals 2, 8, 9, 15, 16, 23, 24, 25, 26–7, 29, 30, 32–3, 34, 35, 36, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55–6, 58, 59, 60–1, 68, 70, 71, 76–7, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 95, 96, 98, 115, 130, 136, 138, 143, 144, 154, 157, 163, 164–6, 168, 170, 171–2, 173, 176, 189–90, 191, 192, 201, 202, 203, 204, 208, 209, 214, 216, 218, 226, 230, 232–3, 239–40, 244, 249, 250–2, 253–4, 259–60, 262, 263, 268, 270, 274–6, 280–1, 286–7, 288, 289–90, 294, 295–6, 297, 304, 305, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 320, 323, 325, 326, 329, 331, 336, 337, 338, 339, 343–4, 351, 353, 355, 359, 361, 362, 367, 368, 369–70, 377, 386–7, 388, 394, 401, 402, 411, 413, 415, 417, 418, 421–2, 423–4, 430–1, 437, 438, 442, 443, 447, 451, 454, 458, 459, 468–9, 470, 471, 473–5, 476, 477, 483, 487–8, 490, 491, 495, 496, 497, 498–500, 501, 504; see also advertising periodicals; art magazines and reviewing; children and the media; fashion magazines; men’s magazines; music magazines; online magazines; outdoor magazines; radio magazines; television magazines; women’s magazines Magee, Jacqueline 138 Magic Circle Club 93 Magic of Music, The 479 Magic Sam 252 Magistrate’s Guide 241 Maguire, Bruce 140 Mahony, Frank 77 Mail (Adelaide) 92; see also Sunday Mail Mail Newspapers Ltd 448 Mail Online (UK) 325 mail service and delivery see postal service and delivery Maitland Mercury 253, 408, 410, 432 Maitland Mercury Newspaper and Printing Co Ltd 253 Major Network 103, 390, 399, 400; see also radio stations and networks Malaysian Women’s Weekly 61 Malezer, Les 216 Maliphant, George and Stan 142 Mallaby, George 208 Malone, Michael 219 Mamamia 324 Man 71, 96, 230, 251, 253–4, 274, 402, 476 Man Alive (UK) 465 ‘Man Friday’ 501 Man From Snowy River, The 467 Man Junior 96, 230, 254 ‘Man Up’ 258 Man’s World 274 Management Newsletter 306 Manara, Gian Carlo 466 Manchester Guardian (UK) 351, 365 Mandarin, The 125 Mandela, Nelson 274 ‘Mandrake the Magician’ 97 Manefield, Tom 465 Manly Daily 127 Mann, E.A. 342, 387

525

Manne, Professor Robert 231 Manning family (Qld) 356, 371; see also Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd Manning, Bradley (Chelsea) 494 Manning, Henry John 120 Manning, Paddy 125 Manning, Peter 181, 221, 255 Mannix, Archbishop Daniel 412 Mansfield Inquiry/ Report 380, 393 Mansfield, Bob 380 Mansfield, Bruce 457 Mansfield, Rev. Ralph 413, 451 Manslaughter 464 Manton, G. Jervis 474 Manufacturing and Management 474 Maori Television (NZ) 292 Maralinga bomb tests 464 March of Time, The 382 Marconi (UK) 22, 173, 174 Marconi, Guglielmo 173 Marcos, Ferdinand 427 Margaret Fulton Cookbook 176 Maria massacre 432 marie claire 499 Marien, Frank 429 Marinya Media 170 Maritime Worker 247 Marjoribanks, Timothy 302 market research see audience research Market Research Society of Australia 373 Market-Place (Anglican) 414 Marks, Hugh 433 Markson, Max 376 Marlborough Express (NZ) 138 Marlowe, Mary 496 Marque 280 Marquet, Claude 235, 236 Marr, David Ewan 168, 222, 254, 271, 294 Marriage Game, The 188 Marsden, June 30 Marsh, Rod 502 Marsh, Stephen 287 Marshall, Alan 36 Marshall, Gary 227 Marshall, P.D. (David) 87, 404 Martin, Adrian 173 Martin, Catherine 202, 222, 496 Martin, Lauren 324 Martin, Ray 1, 128, 181, 254–5, 427, 441 Martin, Tony 457 Maryborough Advertiser 239 Maryborough Chronicle see Fraser Coast Chronicle Masius Wynne-Williams 6, 277 Mason, Colin 179 Mason, Edmund 126 Mason Stewart Publishing New South Wales 327 Mass for You at Home 413 Masses 252 Massina, Alfred 203; see also A.H. Massina & Co.’s Weather Almanac MasterChef Australia 176, 243, 403; MasterChef Magazine 244 Mastermind 188 Masters family 255; Christopher Wayne 121, 128, 134, 168, 181, 222, 225, 255; Deb 255; Ian 255; Olga 255; Quentin 255; Roy 255; Sue 255 Matchett, Stephen 260 Mather, Arthur 98 Mathews, Ian 82 Mathieson, Craig 288 Mathieson, Tim 464 Matlock Police 124, 467 Matthews, Jill 251 Mavis Bramston Show, The 283, 329, 462–3 Max 275 Maxwell, Charles F. 241, 242 Maxwell, May 205 May, Brian 283 May, Sir Kenneth Spencer 123, 255–6 May, Brian 479 May, Phil 77, 84, 209, 309 Mayer, Professor Henry 33, 259, 262, 264, 350; see also Henry Mayer Lecture; Media International Australia Mayhew, George 352

a companion to the australian media Maynard, Ken 36 Mayne, Robert 432 Mayne, Stephen 95, 124, 125, 323 Mayo, George Elton 4, 326 Maza, Bob 216 McAdam, Anthony 260 McAuley, James 70 McBride, Dr William 202, 222 McCabe, Helen 60 McCallum, Fiona 10 McCann Erickson 6 McCann, Edward and Bernard 396 McCarthy, Joanne 297, 484 McCay, Delamore 109 McClelland, James 42, 137 McClelland, Robert 345 McClymont, Kate 125, 222 McCrae, Hugh 440 McCrann, Terry 274 McCrossin, Julie 171 McCullough, Colleen 467 McCutcheon, Rev. A.D. 411 McCutcheon, Sandy 246, 396 McDermott, Terry 208 McDonald, Donald 45, 271 McDonald, Garry 463 McDonald, Keith Henry 256 McDonald, Samuel 320 McDonnell, Mark 14 McElroy, Hal and Jim 425 McEnroe, Archdeacon John 414 McEwen, John 294, 315 McEwen, Rev. W.R. 415 McFadyen, Don 432 McFarlane, Jill 501 McGarvie, William 349, 451 McGillick, Paul 27 McGilvray, Alan David 256–7, 437 McGowan, Keith 142 McGowan, Samuel 450 McGregor, Craig 167 McGuinness, Bruce 216 McGuinness, P.P. 146, 294 McGuire, Eddie 188, 227, 472 McHale’s Navy (USA) 93 McHugh, Siobhán 384 McIntosh, Hugh Donald 435 McIntyre, A.J. and J.J. 33 McKay, Claude 331, 351, 428, 429 McKay, David 280 McKean, Joy and Heather 283 McKee, Alan 33, 34, 262, 344 McKenzie (Florence) Violet 386 McKenzie, Jordi 173 McKenzie, Nick 222–3 McKinley, Alexander 274 McKinnon, Don 353 McKinnon, Professor Ken 59 McKnight, David 221, 302 McLachlan, Angus 163 McLaren, Father Jim 413 McLean Inquiry 155 McLean, Sir Francis 137 McLennan, Andrew 383, 384 McLeod, James 272 McLeod, William 76 mcm entertainment 101, 142 McMahon government 297 McMahon, Gregan 470 McMahon, Sir William 84, 130, 150, 401, 411, 456, 472 McManus, Frank 234 McManus, Rove 480 McMullen, Jeff 181, 427 McMurchy, Megan 466 McNair Anderson 31, 32, 246, 373 McNair Survey Pty Ltd 31, 32 McNair, Brian 227 McNair, Ian 373 McNair, W.A. 6, 31, 245, 262 McNulty, C.S. 130 McPhee, Hilary 147 McPherson family (Vic.) 257, 362–3, 409, 410; Christopher Roy 257; Colin 257; Donald Roy 257; Francis Douglas 257; Graeme Ross 257; Jean 257; Malcolm 257; Robert Paul 257; Stanley Roy (Roy) 257

McPherson Media Group 257 McQueen, Humphrey 444 MDA 7 Mead, Sister Janet 358 Meade, Amanda 261 Meadows, Michael 34, 263 Meagher, Jill 258 Meale, Richard 288 Meanjin 70, 172, 252, 262, 355 Media Access Australia 140 Media and Communications Council 260, 306 media and violence 34, 47, 94, 125, 172, 184, 257–8, 261, 262 Media Council of Australia (MCA) 8, 9, 41, 58, 250, 258–9 media criticism 259–61, 263, 264, 271, 302, 372, 374, 376–7, 498 media effects 33, 257, 261–2, 344 media history 116, 119, 262–4 Media History 263 Media International Australia (MIA) 39, 259, 263, 264–5; see also Mayer, Henry media law see broadcasting regulation; copyright; defamation; freedom of information; freedom of speech media monitoring 265, 266, 300, 373, 456 Media Monitors Australia 40, 265–6; see also Australian Press Cuttings Agency media ownership 3, 23, 49, 50–1, 52, 69, 74, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 117, 121, 129, 197, 204, 235, 259, 260, 262, 266–70, 298, 301, 331, 346, 356, 360, 361, 363, 371, 391, 396, 400, 407, 419, 420, 427, 428, 445, 449, 450, 452, 468, 492 Media Peace Awards 2, 197, 238, 270 Media Press group 157 Media Report, The 260, 261 Media Research Group 40 media trade press 270–1 Media Watch (ABC TV) 44, 85, 86, 154, 183, 212, 224, 254, 260, 271, 324, 336, 457, 458, 471, 498 Media Watch (IPA journal) 260; Media Watch Dog (online) 260 Media Women’s Action Group (MWAG) 228, 260, 271–2; see also Australian Women’s Broadcasting Co-operative; women in media Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance 18, 23, 27, 58, 59, 65–6, 91, 117, 132, 154, 159, 225, 226, 228, 260, 262, 272–3, 299, 320, 337, 363, 378, 425, 442, 484, 496, 497, 498 media, sports see sports media and reporting MEDIAtlas 39 MediaCom 306 MediaNet 39, 40 medical reporting see health and medical reporting Medical Journal of Australia 202 Medical Observer 202 Meeking, Charles 348 Meet the Press 151 Meillon, John 463 Mejane 170 Melba Story, The 123 the(melbourne)magazine 311 Melbourne Advertiser 192, 360, 367 Melbourne Amateur Walking and Touring Club 327 Melbourne Church of England Messenger 414 Melbourne Club 401 Melbourne Cup 96, 149, 307, 357, 388, 397, 437 Melbourne Daily News see Port Phillip Patriot Melbourne FM Radio Pty Ltd 175 Melbourne (Morning) Herald see Herald (Melbourne) Melbourne IT 219 Melbourne Leader 489; see also Leader (Melbourne) Melbourne Observer 315 Melbourne Press Club 68, 197, 273–4 Melbourne Public Library see State Library of Victoria

526

Melbourne Punch 83, 204, 251, 274, 287, 308, 361, 431, 455, 489 Melbourne Star Observer 192 Melbourne Trades Hall Council 234 Melbourne Typographical Society 363 Melbourne University Magazine 443 Melbourne Walker 327 Melbourne Weekly Age 489 Meldrum, Ian (‘Molly’) 284, 286 Mellor, Olive 189 Melody Maker (UK) 286 Melville, Henry 65, 221, 358 Men’s Fitness Australia 276 Men’s Health 202, 275, 276, 500 men’s magazines 71, 96, 170, 202, 230, 251, 253–4, 274–6, 344, 476, 477, 500 Men’s Stuff 275 men’s style Australia 275, 276 Menadue, John 324 Mencken, H.L. 251 Mendelssohn, Joanna 27 Menzies government 22, 28, 41, 42, 57, 72, 78, 84, 87, 102, 104, 108, 267, 387, 388, 411, 435, 452 Menzies, Glen 288 Menzies, Sir Robert 13, 28, 43, 76, 78, 82, 85, 150, 174, 217, 228, 266, 293, 342, 375, 387, 411, 475 Merchant, Dennis 7 Mercury (Hobart) 131, 276–7, 301, 306, 307, 312, 359, 368, 373; see also Davies family; Saturday Evening Mercury; Sunday Mercury Mercury Suburban 276 Mercury Theatre (Sydney) 28 Mercury, Emily Margaret (née Barnet) 63 ‘Mere Male’ 296 Meredith, Charles 152 Meredith, Gwen 44, 68, 381, 384 Merrick and Rosso 101, 382, 457 Meskenas, Vladas 134 Mess+Noise 287, 324 Message 415 Messagestick 216 Messel, Professor Harry 423 Messenger 357–8 Messenger Newspapers 357–8, 445 Messer, John 153 Metal Worker 236 Methodist 415 Methodist Holiness Association 415 Methodists and media 234, 295, 346–7, 394, 413, 415; see also religious broadcasting; religious press Metior 444 Metro 173 Metro Television and Metro Screen 113 Metropolitan Style 275 Metta see Buddhism Today Michaels, Eric 73, 113 Michie, Sir Archibald 205, 274 Mickey Mouse Club (USA) 93 microwave MDS technology 328, 334, 335, 419, 460, 461, 473 Mid North Broadcaster (Burra district) 458 Midday 206, 254–5, 283 Middleton, Kate 91 Middy Malone 99 Midland Times 257 Midnight Sun (Antarctica) 348 Migrant Workers’ Conference 155 Mihalik, Father Frank 347 Mike Walsh Fellowship 485; see also Walsh, Mike Hayden Mike Walsh Show, The 30, 485; see also Walsh, Mike Hayden Milady 491 Milan, Lindey 40, 176 Mildura Cultivator 457 Miller, Bennett 227 Miller, E. Morris 262 Miller, George 173, 208 Miller, Harry M. 376 Miller, Henry 343 Miller, Professor Julius Sumner 423 Miller, Syd 429 Milligan, Spike 382 Millikan, Rev. Dr David 412

index Mills, Beryl 310 Mills, Rob 479, 503 Mindframe National Media Initiative 203, 258 Miner (Ballarat) 489 Minerals Week 306 Miners’ Advocate and Northumberland Recorder 296 Mingay, Oswald 270, 386, 389 mini-series see television drama Mi9 325 Mining and Engineering Review 474 Miniwatt Digest 386 Minogue, Dannii 479, 503 Minogue, Kylie 295 Mirror (WA) 364 Mirror Newspapers (London) 24, 164 Miss Australia quest 115, 310, 331, 351 Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries 467 ‘Miss Pat’ see Lovell, Patricia Mitchell & Partners 7, 277 Mitchell College of Advanced Education 376 Mitchell Communications Group 277 Mitchell, Alex 221 Mitchell, Bill 243 Mitchell, Chris 38, 121 Mitchell, David 472 Mitchell, Harold Charles 7, 277 Mitchell, Lex 208 Mitchell, Natasha 202 Mitchell, Neil 127, 398, 421, 456 Mitchell, William 8 ‘Mo’ see Rene, Roy Moar, Brendan 244 Mobil Quest 123 Mobil-Limb Show, The 479 mobile and portable media 32, 33, 36, 44, 46, 53, 54, 73, 94, 101, 107, 114, 116, 119, 131, 139, 141, 150, 151, 180, 184, 220, 226, 247, 252, 258, 277–8, 285, 308, 322, 323, 325, 339–40, 344, 360, 404, 428, 429, 430, 436–7, 438, 453, 458, 461, 475–6, 487, 489 Mode see Harper’s Bazaar & Mode Modern Art News 27 Modern Boating 170, 230 Modern Motor 280 Modern Times see Australian Society Mogul Media 275 Moir, Alan 48, 85, 309 Mojo 1, 7, 8, 502 Mokbel, Tony 222 Molineux, Albert 15 Moll, Javier 2 Mollison, Bill 312 Molloy, Mick 457 Molnar, George 84 Monahan Dayman Adams 1 Monash University 309, 398, 443 Monday Conference 44, 156 Money 79 Money Matters 492 Money or the Gun 44, 140 Money Talk 79 Monitor (Sydney) 87, 200, 242, 287, 345, 349, 401, 451 Monitor (Tas.) 358 Monks, Noel 205, 486 Monson, Ronald 486 Montagu, Helen 485 Montclair Investments 395 Monte Bello Island atomic tests 492 Monte Carlo Television Festival 194 Month: A Literary and Critical Journal 250 Monthly 21, 27, 168 Monthly Church News 306 Moody, Clarence 448 ‘Moonlight State, The’ 134, 180, 222, 255 Moonlite, Captain 125 Moonta Herald 352 Moor, Keith 125 Moore-Robinson, J. 358 Moore, David 338 Moore, Neil 294 Moore, Robert 156 Moore, William 26 Moore’s Almanac and Hand Book (Sydney) 19

Moorehead, Alan McCrae 167, 205, 278–9, 336, 423, 443, 478, 486 Moorhouse, Frank 77 Mora, Tiriel 187 Moran, Albert 263 Morant, Harry (‘Breaker’) 77, 485 More Music More Often 142 Morecroft, Richard 64 Moresby Army News Sheet 25 Moreton Bay Courier see Courier-Mail Moreton Bay Free Press 354, 378 Morgan Poll and Morgan Research see Roy Morgan Research Morgan family (Qld) 371 Morgan, Alec 465 Morgan, Edward John 257 Morgan, Gary 372 Morgan, John 359 Morgan, Roy 121, 204, 372 Morley, J.K. 387 Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) 354, 371 Morning Chronicle see Sydney Chronicle Morning Herald (WA) 364 Morris, Meaghan 173 Morris, Russell 503 Morrison, Elizabeth 263 Morrison, (Philip) Crosbie 189 Morrison, George Ernest (‘Chinese’) 167, 178, 279, 336 Morrison, Guy 308 Morrison, Ian 279 Morrison, Jennie (née Robin) 279 Morrison, Joan 429 Morrow, Julian 91 Morse, Professor Samuel 459 Mortimer, John 273 Mortley, Kaye 383, 385 Morton, Tom 384 Moses, Sir Charles Joseph Alfred 43, 45, 46, 71, 256, 279–80 Mossop, Rex 437 Most Happy Fellas (DJs) 142 Mother and Son 44, 463, 464 Motor 280, 281 Motor Manual 275 Motor Report, The 281 motoring journalism 35, 167, 230, 275, 280–1, 311, 332–3, 447, 450, 457, 475, 477 Mott family 239, 240, 281, 361; Decimus Horace 240, 281; George Henry 281; George Horace 240; Hamilton Charnock 281; Sydney Arthur 281; Walter (Jr) 240, 281 Mottram, Linda 21 Moulton, Alf J. 313 Moulton, Jane 326 Mount, Tony 312 Movie Life 172 Movie News 173 Movie Show, The 173, 434 Movietone 313, 314, 339 Movietone News 313 Moyle, Alice 287 Mr (magazine) 274 Mr Squiggle 44, 92 Mr and Mrs Everybody 381 Mrs ’Obbs 381 Mt Isa Mail 400–1, 492 ‘muckraking’ see investigative journalism Mud and Blood 25 Mudginberri abattoir 218 Mulga Mail 364 Mulka TV 114; see also Indigenous broadcasting; television stations and networks Mullard Outlook 386 Mumbrella 9, 261 Munro, Rev. Dr John 412 Munro, Mike 1, 427, 472 Munster, George 174, 259, 263, 289–90, 302; see also George Munster Independent Journalism Award Murchison Miner 364 Murdoch Books 283 Murdoch family 3, 12, 23, 28, 36, 37, 38, 39, 47, 49, 50, 54, 56, 57, 58, 64, 68, 80, 82, 85, 105, 107, 108, 109, 117, 121,

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122, 123, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 134, 136, 138, 143, 144, 157, 164, 166, 170, 174, 179, 182, 183, 194, 197, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207–8, 228, 231, 240, 249, 250, 255, 256, 259, 260, 263, 267, 268, 280, 281–3, 296, 297, 299, 300, 301–2, 312, 315, 318, 336, 337, 348, 349, 350–2, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360, 363, 365, 371–2, 373, 397, 401, 403, 410, 426, 428, 429, 432, 436, 437, 438, 440, 442, 445, 446, 447, 448, 450, 453, 455, 462, 478, 486, 493, 493; Alasdair MacLeod 282; Anna Maria (née Torv) 282; Anne Kantor (née Murdoch) 282, 283; (Dame) Elisabeth (née Greene) 282, 283, 299; Elisabeth 282; Eve Kantor 283; Grace Helen 282; Helen Handbury (née Murdoch) 282, 283, 357; Hope 282; James Rupert 282, 283, 300; Janet Calvert-Jones (née Murdoch) 204, 282; Sir Keith 3, 12, 39, 49, 56, 57, 64, 109, 117, 121, 132, 136, 143, 144, 166, 179, 204, 205, 249, 256, 263, 267, 281, 282, 283, 299, 301, 312, 337, 355, 357, 360, 363, 372, 373, 397, 429, 432, 447, 448, 455, 478, 486, 493; Lachlan Keith 123, 282–3, 300; Matt Handbury 250, 283; Patricia (née Booker) 282; Rev. Patrick John 281–2; Penny Fowler (née Calvert Jones) 204, 282; Prudence 282; Rupert 11, 12, 23, 28, 36, 37, 38, 50, 54, 58, 68, 80, 82, 85, 105, 107, 108, 121, 122, 123, 126–7, 129, 130, 133, 138, 157, 164, 174, 182, 183, 194, 197, 203, 204, 206, 207–8, 228, 231, 240, 249, 250, 255, 256, 259, 260, 263, 267, 268, 280, 282, 296, 297, 299, 300, 301–2, 315, 318, 336, 337, 348, 349, 350–2, 356, 357, 363, 365, 371–2, 373, 401, 403, 410, 426, 428, 436, 437, 438, 440, 442, 445, 446, 447, 448, 450, 462, 478, 494; Wendy Deng 282; see also BSkyB; Murdoch Magazines; News Corp; News Corp Australia; News Corporation; News Limited; Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism Murdoch Magazines 275 Murdoch University 444, 504 Murdoch, Catherine see King, Catherine Murdoch, Lindsay 222 Murdoch, Nina 92 Murdoch, Sir Walter 70, 232, 282, 399 Murphy, Edwin Greenslade 118, 450 Murphy, Vicar-General Francis 414 Murphy, Paul 21, 22, 321 Murray and Hume Times (Wodonga) 17–18 Murray Pioneer (Renmark) 64, 357, 358, 410, 457, 458 Murray Pioneer Pty Ltd, The 457 Murray Valley Standard 458 Murray-Smith, Stephen 70 Murray, Mr D. 345 Murray, Alexander K. 348 Murray, Douglas Clifford (Cliff) 316 Murray, Kenneth Gordon 230, 253, 254, 274 Murray, Robert Lathrop 65, 358 Murri Hour 393 Murrow, Ed 465 Murrumbidgee Television 334; see also pay television; television stations and networks Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney 504 Musgrave, Standish R. 212 Musgrave, Wilfrid S. 212 Musgroves Ltd 399, 400 Mushroom and Mushroom Music 284 music and music industry 17, 21, 22, 36, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 51, 52, 71, 73, 75, 87, 89, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100–1, 104, 110–11, 112, 116, 123, 137, 140, 141, 142, 148, 149, 155, 166, 171, 174, 175, 183, 199, 215, 220, 232, 235, 239, 246, 258, 278, 280, 283–5, 292, 315, 322, 324, 334, 335–6, 341, 347, 383, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 418, 434, 442, 456, 457, 479, 480, 493, 503, 504; see also country music; fine music; orchestras; popular music; Top 40 music

a companion to the australian media music broadcasting societies see community radio; fine music; music Music Council of Australia 287 Music for the People 123 Music Forum 287 Music Magazine 288 music magazines 286–7, 288 Music Maker 286 Music Network, The 286 music reviewing 287–8, 470 Music Show 288 Music, The 286 musing tiger, the 172 Mussen, Gerald 312 Muzzle Blast 25 mX (Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney) 204, 301, 352, 360 My Kitchen Rules 176, 403 My Name’s McGooley, What’s Yours? 463 Myer, Kenneth B. 45 Naked Vicar Show, The 382, 463 Nakhoul, Ghassan 484 Namanula Times see Rabaul Record Namatjira, Albert 90 Nambour Chronicle 371, 372 Name that Tune 188 Nan’ao Shi Bao 358 Nancarrow, Rev. Dr Tony 306 ‘Nancy Lee’ see Lindgren, Kathleen narrowcasting 113, 114, 140, 164, 174, 196, 246, 289, 335, 394, 407, 413, 421 Nash, Margot 465, 466 Nathalia Herald 257 Nathan, Isaac 287 Nation and Nation Review 2, 20, 71, 172, 174, 176, 203, 252, 259, 272, 288, 289–90, 309, 329, 336, 361, 401, 470, 471 Nation, The (TV) 428 National Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting Association see Australian Indigenous Communications Association National Archives of Australia 57, 64, 310 National Association of Broadcasters (USA) 102 National Baptist 415 National Broadband Network (NBN) 46, 49, 73, 136, 141, 220, 278, 421, 469 National Catholic Radio and Television Centre 412 National Civic Council 288, 412 National Classification Scheme Review 49 National Commercial Broadcast Service (NZ) 334 National Committee on Violence 258 National Country Life 351 National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) 141 National Editors Workshop and Skillshare 444 National Emergency Services 230 National Ethnic and Multicultural Broadcasters’ Council 110 National Farmer 16 National Film and Sound Archive of Australia 172, 290–1 National Gallery of Australia (Canberra) 440 National Guardian (New York) 78 National Indigenous Media Association of Australia see Australian Indigenous Communications Association National Indigenous News Service 112, 214, 291–2, 406 National Indigenous Radio Service 214, 291, 292, 394, 406 National Indigenous Television (NITV) 56, 74, 139, 215, 292–3, 416, 435 National Indigenous Times 216, 293 National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) 485 National Koorier see Koorier National Library of Australia 28, 264, 290–1, 306, 311, 332, 504; Trove database 25, 264, 306, 311 National Media Liaison Service 265 National News Agency (Lebanon) 157 National Post (Toronto) 164 National Press Club 177, 293–4, 366, 432

National Radio News 112 National Roads and Motoring Association (NRMA) 35 National Times (on Sunday) 67, 71, 83, 164, 168, 174, 195, 221, 222, 231, 232, 254, 260, 267, 294–5, 309, 324, 352, 373, 401, 449, 497 National Union of Journalists (UK) 272 National Union of Students 444 National Young Writers’ Festival (Newcastle) 504 Nationwide 321 Natural Disasters Organisation 488 Nature and Health 202 Navy News 26 Naylor, Dillon 99 NBC network (USA) 103, 335, 436, 472, 480 NBN Co. 469; see also National Broadband Network Nea Estia 357 Neale, Robert 445 Neales, Sue 16 ‘Ned and his Neddy’ 36 ‘Ned Kelly’ (comic) 98 Ned Kelly (verse play) 385 Negus, George 128, 221, 427, 441, 471 Nehru, Pandit 383 Neighbour, Sally 181 Neighbours 115, 198, 295, 322, 467 Neild, Dr James Edward 287, 470 Neill, E.H.B. 454; see also Syme family Neilson, John Shaw 440 Nelson, Hank 383 Nelson, Robert 27 Neos Kosmos 157, 362 Nerone, John 166 Ness, Richard M. 227 Netflix 183, 220 ‘Networking the Nation’ 136 networks, commercial radio see commercial radio networks; radio stations and networks networks, commercial television see commercial television networks; television stations and networks Neville Jeffress and Neville Jeffress Pidler 266 Neville, Richard 20, 329 New Australia 238 New Daily, The 324–5 New Day 415 New Express Daily (Guangzhou) 158 New Faces 315, 479 New Guinea (Times-) Courier 347 New Guinea News Service 347 New Idea 10, 30, 55, 68, 96, 98, 165, 232, 233, 251, 295–6, 498, 499, 500; see also Paper Giants: Magazine Wars New Internationalist 174 New Investigators, The see Investigators, The New Journalist 259–60, 272 New Life 415 New Matilda 21, 68, 222, 261, 324 New Monthly Magazine (London) 369 New Musical Express (UK) 286 New Poetry 252 New Pollution 504 New Scientist 423 New South Wales Bookstall Co. 98 New South Wales Congregational Union 415 New South Wales Contemporary Art Society Broadsheet 27 New South Wales Council of Churches and media 390, 411 New South Wales Country Life 237 New South Wales Country Press Association 119–20, 212, 425, 432 New South Wales Government Printing Office 195, 372 New South Wales Institute of Technology 376 New South Wales Magazine 251 New South Wales Parliamentary Press Gallery 302, 318, 336, 345, 346, 452, 496 New South Wales Pocket Almanack 19 New South Wales Presbyterian 415 New South Wales Railway and Tramway Review 235 New South Wales Standing Orders 367 New South Wales TAB see TAB (NSW)

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New Sunraysia Daily Pty Ltd 238–9 New Weekly 233; see also NW New York Festivals International Radio Awards 421 New York Post 138, 315 New York Review of Books 71 New York Times 298, 441 New Zealand Gazette 481 New Zealand Herald 23, 238 New Zealand News 200 New Zealand Press Association (NZPA) 40 New Zealand Television (NZTV) 186, 436 Newcastle Chronicle and Hunter River District News 296 Newcastle Herald 29, 83, 164, 274, 296–7, 352, 409 Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate Pty Ltd 296 Newcastle Newspapers Pty Ltd 164, 296, 297 Newcastle Sun 12, 29, 142, 164, 297 Newell, Patrice 2 Newell, Peter 212 Newell, Ray 21 Newfong, John Archibald 216, 297; see also John Newfong Media Prize Newman, Maurice 45 news 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 52, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 71, 72, 76, 77, 78, 81, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111, 112, 114, 119, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130, 132, 135, 136, 142, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166–7, 168, 177, 178, 179, 180–1, 182, 185, 186, 190, 192, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 201, 202–3, 204, 205, 210, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217–18, 219, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 229, 230, 234, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 245, 246, 251, 253, 257, 258, 261, 262, 263, 264, 270, 272, 274, 278, 280, 288, 289, 291–2, 294, 296, 297–9, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308, 311, 313, 314, 316, 317, 319, 321, 322, 323, 328, 331, 334, 335, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 342, 343, 345, 346, 347, 349, 350, 352, 353, 354, 357, 359, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 368, 369, 370, 373, 375, 376, 383, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 392, 395, 396, 397, 400, 404, 406, 407, 409, 413, 416, 420, 421, 429, 430, 432, 434, 435, 437, 439, 440, 442, 445, 446, 447, 450, 451, 452, 458, 460, 462, 463, 474, 475, 478, 480, 484, 488, 489, 490, 492, 497, 498, 501, 504; see also newsreels; online news and magazines; radio news commentators; news reporting; shipping news; Sky News Australia; social media; social pages News (Adelaide) 3, 11, 12, 123, 129, 204, 218, 255, 256, 282, 299, 301, 307, 312, 357, 358, 450 News (Shepparton) 12, 257, 362, 363, 410, 411 News (Sydney strike newspaper) 273, 441 news agencies 39–40, 81, 82, 102, 112, 120, 135, 143, 144, 177, 178, 179, 280, 291–2, 299–300, 301, 303, 328, 339, 342, 423; see also ABC News; Australian Associated Press; National Indigenous News Service; Reuters News Awards 484; see also News Limited News Behind the News, The 387 News Chronicle (London) 50 News Commentary 21 News Corp 12, 182, 187, 204, 267, 445, 469; see also News Corp Australia; News Corporation; News Limited; Murdoch family News Corp Australia 40, 51, 90, 127, 172, 203, 226, 240, 267, 281, 410, 445, 484, 490; see also News Corp; News Corporation; News Limited; Murdoch family News Corporation 37, 78, 182, 183, 197, 220, 256, 267, 269, 282, 283, 284, 436;

index see also News Corp; News Corp Australia; News Limited; Murdoch family News Letter of Australasia 305, 308 News Limited 3, 11–12, 23, 32, 33, 36, 38, 40, 47, 50, 59, 67, 68, 79, 80, 90, 108, 117, 121, 122, 123, 127, 130, 131, 132, 169, 170, 192, 197, 202, 204, 206, 207, 211, 223, 240, 247, 250, 252, 255, 256, 258, 267, 268, 277, 281, 282, 283, 294, 296, 297, 299, 300–2, 303, 304, 305, 308, 309, 316, 324, 331, 341, 346, 352, 353, 356, 358, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 371–2, 373, 409, 410, 437, 438, 440, 442, 447, 448, 449, 462, 468, 484, 492, 500; News Awards 484; News Digital Media 267; news.com.au 10, 323; News Corp 12, 182, 187, 204, 267, 445, 469; News Corp Australia 40, 51, 90, 127, 172, 203, 226, 240, 267, 281, 410, 445, 484, 490; News Corporation 37, 78, 182, 183, 197, 220, 256, 267, 269, 282, 283, 284, 436; NewsLifeMedia 250, 252, 500; NewsLocal 127, 351, 445; see also Murdoch family News Media Council 88, 154, 301 News of the Week (Geelong) 489 News of the World (UK) 187, 256, 301 news reporting 24, 100, 122, 126, 127, 133, 134, 135, 141, 147, 150–2, 153, 158, 159–60, 166, 167–9, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 185, 190, 197, 202, 217–18, 225–8, 227, 246, 248, 257, 258, 263, 270, 271, 279, 289, 290, 291, 294, 298, 302–4, 310, 321, 323, 337, 352, 354, 357, 363, 364, 376, 388, 437, 439, 447, 451, 460, 462, 471, 474, 485–6, 487, 490, 494, 495, 496, 497; see also scoops News Review 21, 387 News-Mail (Bundaberg) 201, 371, 372; see also NewsMail (Bundaberg) News-Weekly 288 newsagencies 304–5, 367, 418 Newsagency Council 304 Newsagents Direct Distribution 170 Newscentre 40 Newsday (Melbourne) 11, 205, 309, 361, 449, 501 Newsfront 228 Newsletter of Australasia 213 newsletters 9, 25, 40, 79, 124, 151, 169, 170, 172, 190, 202, 213, 260, 263, 305–6, 315, 323, 324, 326, 329, 330, 336, 346, 347, 348, 361, 365, 374, 375, 402, 415, 451, 457, 474, 492, 504 Newslib (USA) 311 NewsLifeMedia 250, 252, 500; see also News Limited NewsLocal 127, 351, 445; see also News Limited NewsMail (Bundaberg) 484 newspaper (and magazine) formats and design 3, 11, 12, 14, 24, 37, 54, 58, 60–1, 63, 66, 81, 82, 85, 90, 92, 97, 98, 121, 129, 130, 158, 160, 163, 164, 166, 189, 192, 205, 206, 212, 214, 235, 236, 237, 240–1, 243, 276, 295, 297, 298, 299, 303, 306–8, 316, 337, 338, 348–9, 350, 351, 357, 360, 365, 422, 445, 446, 447, 450, 451, 452, 453, 462, 468, 474, 490, 491, 499, 501; see also broadsheets; tabloids newspaper illustration 11, 24, 36, 47, 55, 83–4, 96, 97, 98, 118, 122, 144, 213–14, 217, 235, 297, 298, 307, 308–10, 311, 316, 321, 337, 339, 350, 351, 357, 360, 364, 401, 432, 447, 451, 452, 453, 455, 462, 480, 486, 489, 490, 491, 496, 501 newspaper libraries 310–11 newspaper (and magazine) supplements 8, 10, 19, 35, 50, 60, 61, 77, 86–7, 96, 97, 119, 121, 130, 166, 177, 195, 202, 260–1, 286, 294, 308, 311–12, 321, 347, 350, 352, 370, 409, 414, 417, 447, 452, 458, 468, 476, 483, 491, 492, 499, 501; see also Good Weekend; QWeekend Newspaper News 8, 96, 270, 474–5, 488; see also Advertising and Newspaper News Newspaper Publishers’ Association see Newspaper Works

Newspaper Works 33, 330 Newspoll 33, 373 newsprint 7, 10, 11, 29, 30, 57, 58, 79, 90, 98, 99, 130, 137, 144, 205, 235, 253, 276, 312–13, 317, 349, 351, 354, 359, 364, 366, 367–8, 378, 409, 443, 445, 447, 452, 462, 483, 499, 501 newsreels 25, 132, 136, 204, 214, 217, 228, 313–14, 333, 339, 436, 437, 486, 490 Newsweek 77, 177 Newton-John, Olivia 472 Newton, Bert 231, 314–15, 397, 472, 479, 480 Newton, John 176 Newton, Maxwell 37, 54, 55, 146, 306, 315, 365 Newton, Patti 315 Next 220 Next Media 275 NG (Ngaanyatjarra) Media 416 Ngarda TV 114 Nguyen, Luke 176 Nice’n Juicy 463 Nicholls, Syd 84, 92, 99, 228, 309 Nichols, Barney 347 Nichols, Isaac 459 Nichols, Rev. Reginald Gordon 411 Nicholson, Peter 85, 309 Nicholsons Ltd 399 Nickel Queen, The 239 Nicklaus, Jack 428 ‘Nicky’ see Whitta, Clifford Nicholls Nicolaides, George 357 Nicolls, Murray 489 Nielsen 31, 32, 33, 322, 373 Nielsen TAM 32 Nielsen, Juanita 370 Niesigh, Captain J.W. 345 Night Beat 125, 193, 257 Niland, D’Arcy 383 Nimmo, Julie 484 Nine Entertainment Co. 51, 109, 194, 248, 325, 428; ninemsn 323 Nine Network 1, 5, 14, 30, 32, 50, 51, 69, 79, 94, 106, 115, 116, 123, 128, 139, 150, 151, 166, 172, 180, 184, 188, 199, 202, 206, 218, 222, 225, 227, 228, 232, 244, 248, 254, 255, 269, 271, 281, 283, 315, 320, 321, 331, 334, 335, 371, 403, 419, 420, 423, 424, 427, 433, 436, 441, 459, 463, 467, 472, 276, 484, 485, 490, 491, 494, 502; see also television stations and networks Nine to Five (Sydney) 170 9PM 192 NITV News 293 Nixon, Mary 34 Nixon, Richard 293 NME.com 287 No Fibs 169 No Name 444 No Place for Sheep 172 Noad, Gwen 235 Noise, The 284 Noonan, Chris 53, 465 Noonan, Frank 25 Noongar Radio 400 Norfolk Island Government Gazette 347 Norfolk Island Newsletter 347 Norfolk Islander 347 Norfolk Window to the World 347 Norgard, John 45 Norman Banks Program 63 Norman Gunston Show, The 44, 463 Norman, Greg 428, 472 Norris, Sir Frank Kingsley 202 Norris, Justice J.G. 363 Norske Skog (Norway) 313 North Australian (Darwin) 352 North Australian (Ipswich) 354, 378, 408, 414 North Australian Workers’ Union 353 North East Newspapers 312 North Queensland Newspaper Company Ltd 409 North Queensland Register 354, 355 North West Post (Devonport) 358, 359

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North Western Advocate (Devonport) see Advocate (Burnie) North-Eastern Advertiser (Scottsdale) 359 Northcliffe, Lord 166, 249, 282, 337, 431 Northcote Examiner 240 Northcote Leader and District Record 240 Northern Argus (Clare) 356 Northern Daily Leader (Tamworth) 432 Northern Land Council 237–8 Northern Leader 170 Northern Miner (Charters Towers) 320, 354, 409 Northern Newspapers Pty Ltd 432 Northern Scene (Launceston) 276 Northern Standard (Darwin) 316, 352–3, 391 Northern Star (Kapunda) 356 Northern Star (Lismore) 91, 125, 233, 315–16, 444 Northern Star (Holdings) Ltd 299, 316, 372, 409 Northern Territory Library 353 Northern Territory News (Darwin) 12, 90, 301, 316–17, 347, 353, 401, 492 Northern Territory Newspaper and Telegraphic Agency Company Ltd 352 Northern Territory Times (and Gazette) (Darwin) 352 Northern Territory University 353 Northern TV Pty Ltd 396 Northside News (Hobart) 276 Norton family (NSW) 11, 29, 57, 58, 164, 170, 317–18, 331, 336, 350, 351, 364, 446, 477, 478; Ada (née McGrath) 317–18, 477; Emma (Peggy; née Morrison) 318; Ezra 11, 29, 57, 58, 164, 170, 317–18, 331, 351, 446, 477, 478; Joan 317, 318; John 317, 336, 350, 364, 477; Mary 318; Mollie (née Willoughby) 318 Not Quite Nigella 177 Notes on the News 21, 44 Noud, Keith 462 Nova 175, 283, 341, 400, 407; see also radio stations and networks Novacast 114 Now 192, 370 Nowra, Louis 386 Noyce, Phillip 53, 173, 228 Nuclear Research Foundation see Science Foundation for Physics Nugent, Tania 64 Nugini Toktok 347 Number 96 105, 467 NW 500 O’Brien, Denis 60 O’Brien, John 77 O’Brien, Kathleen 98 O’Brien, Kerry 128, 181, 202, 319, 321 O’Brien, Maria 444 O’Byrne, Gordon 400 O’Callaghan, Gary 141, 319, 475 O’Callaghan, Mary Louise 2 O’Callaghan, Nicholas 319 O’Connell Pty Ltd 164, 351 O’Connor, C.Y. 450 O’Connor, Cathy 498 O’Connor, Deirdre 47 O’Connor, Michael 444 O’Donoghue, Lowitja 324 O’Donoghue, Rory 463 O’Flynn, Helen 346 O’Hara, John 53 O’Kane, Thadeus 319–20, 354 O’Keefe, Johnny 283, 479 O’Laughlin, Peter 177 O’Meara, Maeve 176 O’Neil, Alison (née Cameron) 196; see also Grant family O’Neill, Eugene 470 O’Neill, Graeme 424 O’Neill, Ward 309 O’Reilly family (Ireland) 23, 372, 410; Tony 23 O’Reilly, Charles Bernard 120 O’Reilly, Michael 219 O’Shaughnessy, Peter 134 O’Shea, Clarrie 218 Oakes, Laurie 77, 169, 197, 320, 444

a companion to the australian media Obeid, ‘Eddie’ 157, 186, 222 obituary 66, 320–1 obscenity 88, 185, 186, 329, 343, 443 Observer 50, 209, 252 Oceanis 357 Ockham’s Razor 44, 423 Octapod 504 Odd Angry Shot 231 OECD Council 73 Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18 64 Office of Communication (UK) 48 Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) 33, 344 Office of Multicultural Affairs 34 Office of War Information (USA) 488 Offset Alpine Printing 170, 232 Offspring 433 Ogilvy & Mather 6, 426 Ogilvie, Clive 388 Ogilvie, Graham 313 Ogilvie, Will 77 OK! 80, 500 ‘Old Timer, The’ 98 Oliver, Jamie 176, 243 Oliver, Margot 466 Olle, Andrew 181, 221, 321–2; see also Andrew Olle Media Lecture Olympic Games, in Melbourne (1956) 63, 273, 280, 435–6, 437, 464; in Sydney (2000) 140, 177, 436; overseas 63, 180, 438 Omnicom Group 7, 376 On Being 415 On Dit 443, 444 On Line Opinion 68, 323 On Our Selection 290 On the Record: 20 Years of Women’s Radio 171 Onassis, Jackie 296 One, The 31 One.Tel 51, 282, 331 online audiences 32, 33, 34, 38, 46, 49, 67, 73, 85, 86, 93, 98, 116, 124, 140, 149, 156, 164, 171, 177, 195, 219, 220, 223, 247, 252, 258, 261, 262, 263, 268, 270, 278, 281, 285, 298–9, 303, 304, 322–3, 324, 325, 363, 373, 374, 402, 411, 413, 424, 429, 438, 439, 446, 452, 453, 459, 477 online news and magazines 5, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 28, 35, 38, 39, 44, 46, 49, 51, 55, 58, 59, 64, 67, 68, 71, 79, 81, 85, 86, 90–1, 93, 94–5, 98, 116, 121, 122, 124–5, 126, 127, 131, 151, 156, 157–8, 161, 164, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 176, 177, 187, 191, 195, 196, 202, 204, 219, 220, 222, 223, 226, 227, 241, 242, 247, 252, 254, 261, 267, 268, 269, 270, 281, 287, 295, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 308, 309–10, 322, 323–5, 333, 339, 341, 342, 343, 344, 346, 348, 358, 359, 361, 363, 368, 370, 371, 373, 374, 402, 406, 409, 411, 414, 415, 421, 424, 426, 435, 438, 439, 445, 446, 450, 452, 453, 459, 469, 471, 475, 477, 484, 485, 501–2 Online Opinion 21 online video 5, 116, 122, 124, 126, 149, 183, 187, 215, 220, 278, 281, 300, 304, 322, 325, 339, 376, 430, 494; see also YouTube Open Channel 113 Open Road 35 Open Universities Australia 149 Opera Australia and Opera-Opera 286 Opera for the People 123 Opes Prime 222 opinion columns and publications 18, 20, 21, 36, 38, 55, 63, 66, 67, 68 opinion polls see public opinion and opinion polls Options for Women 171 Optus Communications 113, 139, 149, 182, 183, 219, 220, 271, 277, 335, 406, 420, 436–7, 461, 469; Optus Vision 183, 335; see also SingTel Optus Pty Ltd Opus 443 Oracle, The 228, 239 Orange Advocate 96

orchestras 42, 43, 44, 45, 51, 71, 280, 283, 396, 399, 434, 479, 480 Ord, Garry 202 organisational communication 38, 325–6, 374 ‘Oriolus’ 152 Orr, Sam see Beckett, Richard Ortigosa, Manuel 2 Osborne, R.G. 41, 196, 263 Ossie Awards 493 Oster, John 166 Osteralia 25 Oswin, James 137, 138 Other Voices 27 Our News/Nius Bilong Yumi 347 Out of Sight, Out of Mind 466 Out of the Mouths of Babes 274 Out of the Silent Land Inquiry 73 Outback Digital Network 214–15 Outdoor Advertising Association of Australia see Outdoor Media Association Outdoor Australia see Australian Geographic Outdoor outdoor magazines 230, 275, 326–7, 477, 483 Outdoor Media Association (OMA) 327–8 Outdoors and Fishing see Australian Outdoors Outer Edge 477 Outlook 252 OutRage 192 Outside the Box report 434 Outskirts 171 Outtrim, Steve 219 Ovenden, Barrie 216 Ovens Tribune 281 Overland 70, 172, 252 Overland Telegraph Line 81, 178, 298, 328–9, 357, 391, 459; see also telegraph and telegraphy Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) 72–3, 179, 419, 420, 460, 461, 469; see also Telstra Overton, Peter 427 ownership see media ownership Oxford Scientific Films see Southern Star Factual Oxford Weekender News 192 Oyster 166 OZ 20, 89, 252, 309, 329 Oz Music Project 287 Ozbike 275 OzEmail 219, 232 OzTaku 99 OzTAM 32, 105 Paar, Jack 480 Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association (PANPA) 161, 192, 212, 330, 453; PANPA Awards 161, 192, 212, 453; PANPA Bulletin 330 Pacific Magazines 36, 68, 250, 252, 296, 440, 498, 499, 500; see also Seven West Media Pacific Publications 469 Packed to the Rafters 467 Packer family (NSW) 29, 49, 50, 51, 54, 60, 69, 77, 80, 82, 96, 97, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 115, 123, 126, 127, 130, 132, 163, 164, 165, 170, 174, 183, 194, 195, 199, 203, 209, 210, 225, 228, 230, 232, 236, 253, 263, 267, 269, 283, 295, 297, 317, 319, 330–2, 334, 335, 336, 349, 350, 351, 352, 372, 375, 410, 411, 412, 419–20, 423, 427, 428, 429, 436, 437, 438, 440, 441, 445, 446, 452, 453, 456, 463, 488, 492, 498, 502; Clyde 50, 127, 228, 331; Ethel Maude (née Hewson) 330; Sir Frank Hewson 29, 49, 50, 54, 60, 77, 96, 97, 107, 108, 130, 132, 163, 164, 165, 174, 194, 199, 203, 209, 210, 232, 236, 253, 263, 267, 297, 317, 331, 336, 351, 352, 372, 375, 410, 411, 412, 423, 452, 488, 492, 498; Gretel (née Bullmore) 115, 331; Gretel 331, 332; James Douglas 51, 225, 283, 331–2, 437, 438; Kerry Francis 50, 51, 69, 77, 80, 82, 104, 106, 123, 127, 163, 183, 195, 199, 225, 228, 232, 263, 267, 295, 319, 331, 334, 335, 349, 411,

530

419–20, 427, 436, 437, 441, 456, 463, 502; Robert Clyde 29, 49, 115, 330, 331, 351, 411, 428, 429, 438, 488; Roslyn 331; see also Australian Consolidated Press; Nine Network; Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd Page One 128, 222, 255 Page Publications 98 Page, Bruce 221 Pagemasters 39, 40 Pakula, Alan J. 227 Palace of Dreams 44 Palmer, Nettie 70–1, 77 Palmer, Patricia 34 Palmer, Vance 70, 71, 470 Palmerston Sun 353 Pals 92, 98 pamphlets 63, 83, 95, 241, 332–3, 366, 367, 368, 375, 402 Pandemonium 252 Panel, The 128 Panorama (airline magazine) 476 Panorama (UK) 180 PANPA Bulletin and PANPA Awards see Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association Papapetrou, Polexeni 27 Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo 80, 228, 433, 499 Paper Giants: Magazine Wars 68, 69, 228, 233, 433, 500 Paper Man, The 127, 228 Papps, Nick 192 Papua New Guinea Post-Courier 247, 346, 347 Papuan Courier 346 Papuan Times and Tropical Advertiser 346 Papuan Villager 347 Parade 274 Paramount Gazette (newsreel) 313 Paramount International 194 Paramount Punch 172 Paramount’s Australian Gazette (newsreel) 313, 314, 333 Parer, Damien 25, 314, 333, 338, 486, 493 Parer, Damien Robert 333 Park, Ruth 383, 385 Park, Sejong 54 Parker Bowles, Camilla 68 Parker, Erica 462 Parker, Georgie 10, 340 Parker, John Lindsay 237 Parker, Kirstie 233 Parkes, Sir Henry 200, 345, 350, 414, 441 Parkes, William 209 Parkinson family (Qld) 371, 378; Hugh 378; see also Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd Parks, Harold see Edwards, George parliamentary broadcasting 22, 43, 99, 102, 113, 139, 169, 217, 333–4, 342, 346, 388 parliamentary press reporting see Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery; New South Wales Parliamentary Press Gallery; Queensland Parliamentary Press/Media Gallery; South Australian Parliamentary Press Gallery; Victorian Parliamentary Press Gallery Parmenter, Ian 40, 176 Paroikiako Vema 358 Parr, Ronnie 193 Parramatta Advertiser 126, 127 Parramatta Chronicle and Cumberland General Advertiser 126, 445 Parramatta Courier 126 Parsons, Fred 381 Party Line 239 Pascall Prize 27, 173 Pascall, Geraldine 27 Pasquin: Pastoral, Mineral and Agricultural Advocate (Adelaide) 15 Passmore, John 289 Pastoral Times (Deniliquin) 257 Pastoralist’s Review (Melbourne) 15, 474 Paterson, Andrew Barton (‘Banjo’) 60, 77, 167, 178, 485 Pathé Frères (France) 313 Pathé’s Animated Gazette (Australasian Edition) see Australasian Gazette

index Paton Advertising Service 6 Patrick, Kevin 264 Patten, John T. 215 Patterson Market Research 373 Patterson, Ric 396 Patton, General George 493 Paul VI, Pope 228 Paul Hamlyn 176 Paul Hogan Show, The 463 Pauncefort, Rita 382 PAW (Pintubi Amatyerre Warlpirri) Media 392, 416 Paxton family 1 Paxton, Joseph 189 pay television 5, 32, 47, 51, 52, 74, 75, 94, 106, 107, 113, 116, 117, 128, 138, 139, 140, 149, 158, 177, 182–3, 184, 194, 220, 244, 248, 260, 269, 285, 289, 292, 300, 322, 333, 334–5, 421, 428, 435, 436, 440, 445, 466, 467, 469, 481; see also especially Foxtel; Sky News Australia Payne, Cathy 433 Payne, Trish 263 payola 142, 335–6 PC Powerplay 458 Peach, Bill 181, 465, 471, 476 Peach, Robert 21, 383 Peach’s Australia 476 Peacock, Andrew 150 Peacock, Matt 22 Pead, J.H. 348 Pearce, Guy 295 Pearcey, Trevor 218 Pearl, Cyril Alston 130, 231, 279, 289, 290, 317, 336, 443 Pearl, Irma 336 Pearson Television group (UK) 198 Pearson, Christopher 2 Pedersen, Aaron 467 Peep: For Men Only 274 Pelican 443 ‘Pen Parliaments’ 498 Penberthy, David 130, 444 Penberthy, Jefferson 295 Pender, John 59 ‘Penelope’ 431 Penguin Award 206 Penguin Television 424 Peninsula Press 25 Pennells, Steve 484 Penny Magazine (UK) 213 Penthouse see Australian Penthouse Penton, Brian 130, 132, 303 People 29, 163, 274–5, 276, 338 People’s Printing and Publishing Company of Western Australia Ltd 400 People’s Weekly 475 Peoples’ Horn Boy (Tas.) 358 Percival, Lacey 313 Perfect Match 188 periodicals see magazines and periodicals Perkin, (Edwin) Graham 13, 28, 85, 153, 221, 231, 273, 337, 454; see also Graham Perkin Award Perkins, Charles 216 Perkins, Rachel 466 Péron, François 287 Perry Como Show, The 248 Perry Mason 248 Perry, Bill 229 Perry, Joseph 244, 245 Personal Investment 79, 195 Personal Service Bureau 30 Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal 241, 363–4, 491; see also West Australian Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News 491; see also West Australian Perth Gazette and Western Australian Times 491; see also West Australian Perth Independent Newspapers 365 Perth Suburban Newspapers 365, 445–6; see also Perth Independent Newspapers Perth Symphony Orchestra 399 PerthNow 450 Peter Gardner & Associates 373 Peter Isaacson Publications 330 Peter, Rev. James 412

Peters, Brian 62 Peters, Cathy 384 Peters, Tom 326 Petersen, Neville 263 Petersen, Ralph 383 Peterson, Ralph 381, 463 Petrov spy scandal 247, 319 Petrov, Vladimir and Evdokia 314, 319 Petty, Bruce 13, 85 PGR 149 ‘Phantom, The’ 97, 99 Philby, Kim 221 Philip, Godfrey 93 Philips Electrical Industries 386 Phillip, Arthur 349, 367 Phillips, A.A. 71, 289, 470 Pho Thong News 365 ‘Phoebe the Early Cook’ see Robertson, Jess Phoenix 467 phone hacking scandal (UK) 154, 187, 283, 301 Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) 36, 110, 285 photographic libraries 433 photography 3, 25, 26, 56, 57, 60, 63, 86, 90, 92, 95, 96, 118, 130, 136, 152, 153, 154, 165, 166, 169, 205, 208, 212, 213, 217, 230, 240, 244, 250, 251, 253, 254, 270, 271, 274, 286, 294, 297, 298, 302, 307, 308–9, 310, 324, 327, 331, 333, 337, 337–40, 351, 357, 360, 364, 367, 369–70, 376, 430, 432, 433, 447, 451, 453, 455, 480, 483, 484, 486, 490, 491, 496, 498, 500, 501 Photoplay 230 Piccinini, Paula 323 Pick-a-Box 144, 188 Pickering, Larry 85, 294 Pickhaver, Greig 382 Pictorial Australian 357 Picture 274, 276 Picture Show 172 Piddington, Sydney 30 Pidgeon, William E. (‘WEP’) 229, 309 Pike, Glenville 355 Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media (PAKAM) 416 Pilger, John 95, 221, 270 Pilkington, Tony 394 Pincher, Harry Chapman 423 Pinkboard.com.au 191 Pinwell, William 492 Pioneer (Renmark) see Murray Pioneer piracy see copyright Pitchfork.com 287 Pitt, George H. 262 Pix 29, 71, 214, 274, 338 Pizza 464, 468 Plain Christianity: A Word to the Wayfarer 412 Play School 44, 92, 148, 149, 340 Playboy see Australian Playboy Playford government (SA) 443 Playford, Sir Thomas 143 Playguy 192 Playschool (UK) 340 Playwrights Advisory Board 385 Pleasure 274 Plumridge, Jack 190 Plunkett, J.H. 241 PM see AM and PM Pocket Man see Man and Man Junior Pockley, Professor Peter 110, 423 podcasting 46, 101, 285, 340–1, 383, 384, 473 Poetry Magazine see New Poetry Poetry Society of Australia 252 Poh’s Kitchen 176 Point of View (Australia) 412 Points of View (UK) 271 POL 96, 166, 171, 499 Polaris, Steven 432 political campaigns 4, 6, 12–13, 33–4, 37, 38, 41, 67, 124, 130, 131, 143, 147, 150–2, 161, 162, 182, 205, 209, 215–16, 236, 242, 253, 256, 266, 282, 290, 293, 297, 301, 302, 332, 333, 351, 359, 360, 364,

531

372, 378, 430, 452, 456, 471, 475, 477, 478, 491, 492 political journalism 1, 11, 12–13, 18, 21, 22, 27, 28, 37, 43, 54, 55, 58, 64, 67, 71, 77–8, 81, 85, 87, 91, 117, 121, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 135, 143, 144, 146, 147, 148, 150, 151–2, 156–7, 158, 168–9, 177, 181, 186, 196–7, 205, 216, 231, 233, 234, 239, 246, 251, 252, 255, 256, 259, 261, 271, 272, 274, 282, 289, 290, 293, 294, 295, 298, 301, 302, 306, 308, 309, 310, 314, 315, 316–17, 319, 320, 324, 328, 329, 333, 336, 337, 339, 341–3, 345, 347, 353, 354, 355, 356, 359, 360, 361, 363, 364, 365, 377, 378, 387, 388, 398, 401, 411, 428, 432, 439, 440, 442, 443, 450, 451, 452, 455, 456, 471, 472, 477, 488, 490, 491, 492, 495, 497, 498, 504; see also local government reporting Pomeranz, Margaret 173 Poole, Ruth Lane 55 Pope, Alexander 162, 452 Pope, Leslie 30 Popstars 285 popular music 87, 92, 141, 142, 284, 286, 287, 288, 391, 399, 400 Porn Report, The 344–5 pornography 34, 183, 258, 275, 315, 325, 343–5, 403, 443, 459, 477 Port Augusta Dispatch 299 Port Kembla Pilot 212 Port Lincoln Herald 356, 408 Port Macquarie News 432 Port Phillip Christian Herald 414 Port Phillip Gazette 360 Port Phillip (Morning) Herald see Herald (Melbourne) Port Phillip Patriot 131, 359, 360, 367 Port Pirie Recorder 299, 357 Portapak 404 Porter Novelli 376 Porter, Hal 77, 385 Porter, Pip 272 Portia Faces Life 193 ‘Possum’ (columnist) 448 Possum (WA) 364 Post Newspapers 365 Post-Courier (PNG) 346 Postal and Telecommunications Department 46, 136 posters 4, 5–6, 8, 25, 96, 129, 327, 367, 375 postal service and delivery 18, 59, 81, 109, 119, 135, 136, 163, 165, 171, 219, 240, 242, 243, 249, 305, 307, 311, 328, 332, 333, 344, 350, 361, 401, 448, 451, 459, 461, 469, 474, 501, 504; see also Australia Post Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) 41, 42, 43, 52, 71, 76, 88, 99, 101, 102, 103, 106, 108, 115, 135, 136, 174, 202, 234, 245, 267, 387, 389, 397, 456, 460, 469 Potter, Harry 125 Potter, Hugh 34 Potter, Simon J. 264 Potts, David 376 ‘Potts, The’ 84, 97 Pountney, Ashley Needham 225 Powell, Gareth 458 Power Games: The Packer–Murdoch War 127, 228, 433 Power Without Glory 44, 466 Power, John 465 Powis, John 294 Powter brothers 482 Practical Plastics 474 Prentice, Captain J.M. 387, 388 Prerauer, Kurt (Curt) 287–8 Prerauer, Maria 288 Presbyterian (NSW) see New South Wales Presbyterian Presbyterian Magazine see New South Wales Presbyterian Press (newspaper) 414 press galleries, state 22, 168, 298, 302, 341, 342, 345–6 press gallery, federal see Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery

a companion to the australian media press in Australia’s external territories 25, 346–8 press, Australian Capital Territory 11, 50, 55, 71, 81–3, 115, 163, 164, 185, 195, 196, 216, 218, 267, 293–4, 307, 308, 321, 348– 9, 361, 365, 373, 425–6, 440, 442, 449, 497, 501; see also Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery press, ethnic see ethnic press press, New South Wales 3, 10, 11–12, 13, 15, 17–18, 19, 23–4, 26, 29–30, 35, 49, 50, 54, 55, 57, 59, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 70, 71, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 115, 119–20, 122, 125, 126, 127, 129–31, 132, 135, 137, 142–3, 146–7, 150, 152, 153, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166–7, 169–70, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180, 185, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 215–16, 217, 218, 221, 222, 224, 225, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 239–40, 241, 242, 246, 247, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258, 259, 262, 263, 267, 271–2, 273, 280, 281, 286, 287, 288, 289, 293, 295, 296–7, 298, 299, 301, 302, 303, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 313, 315–16, 317, 318, 319, 320–1, 323, 328, 329, 330–2, 336, 339, 341, 342, 345, 346, 348, 349–52, 355, 356, 357, 358, 360, 361, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367, 370, 372, 373, 374, 375, 376, 386, 387, 389, 400, 401, 402, 408, 409, 410, 411, 413, 414, 415, 417, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 428–9, 430–2, 437, 438, 439, 440, 441, 442, 444, 445, 446–7, 448–9, 450–3, 458, 459, 462, 468, 470, 473, 475, 476, 477–8, 481–2, 485, 487–8, 489, 490, 491, 492, 493, 495, 496, 497, 498, 500, 501 press, Northern Territory 12, 90, 170, 237–8, 264, 267, 301, 316–17, 347, 352–3, 391, 401, 445, 449, 492 press, Queensland 11, 12, 15–15, 19, 23, 25–6, 38, 70, 72, 83, 85, 96, 97, 98, 118, 120–2, 170, 176, 189, 193, 196, 197–8, 201, 202, 217, 222, 235, 238, 243, 252, 256, 263, 267, 286, 288, 299, 301, 307, 310, 311, 319, 320, 330, 345, 353–6, 361, 368, 371–2, 378, 386, 400–1, 408, 409, 410, 411, 413, 414, 422, 430–1, 440, 441, 445, 446, 449, 461–2, 468, 473, 480, 483–4, 490, 492, 496, 501 press, South Australia 2–3, 11, 12, 15, 19, 55, 63–4, 69, 70, 71, 72, 81, 83, 85, 91, 92, 120, 129, 132, 143, 153, 170, 189, 194, 196, 204, 207, 218, 236, 241, 243, 246, 252, 255, 256, 262, 267, 273, 282, 286, 299, 300, 301, 307, 321, 330, 345, 356–8, 361, 363, 368, 372, 373, 386, 394, 408–9, 410, 411, 414, 415, 421, 422, 423, 432–3, 437, 442, 445, 448, 449, 457–8, 468, 473, 501 press, Tasmania 10–11, 15, 19, 64–5, 70, 83, 87, 131–2, 152, 160, 161, 170, 196, 200, 201, 215, 221, 241, 250, 262, 267, 276–7, 297, 299, 301, 306, 307, 312, 330, 358–9, 368, 372, 373, 386, 401, 408, 409, 410, 411, 414, 415, 422, 449, 473 press, Victoria 2, 10, 11, 12–14, 15, 17–18, 24–5, 26, 28, 40, 55, 62, 66, 70, 71, 72, 77, 78, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 92, 95, 96, 97, 98, 117, 119, 120, 125, 127, 132, 135, 138, 143, 146, 152, 153, 157, 158, 162, 164, 169, 170, 173, 176, 178, 179–80, 185, 189, 192, 193–4, 195, 196, 200, 201, 203–6, 210, 213, 217, 218, 221, 222, 224, 236, 238, 239, 240–1, 242, 243, 247, 249, 251, 256, 257, 258, 263, 272, 273, 274, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 286, 287, 288, 290, 293, 295, 298, 299, 300, 301, 302, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 315, 320, 321, 323, 330, 336, 337, 339, 341, 345, 351, 352, 355, 359, 360–3, 367, 368, 370, 372, 373, 386, 397, 402, 408, 409, 410, 411, 414, 422, 423, 424, 427, 431, 437, 438, 441, 442, 444, 445, 446, 447–8, 449, 450, 453–4, 455, 457, 459,

462, 468, 470, 471, 473, 475, 477, 478, 484, 485, 489, 490, 493, 495, 496, 501 press, Western Australia 3, 11, 12, 16, 59, 69, 85, 91, 118, 129, 138, 170, 193, 194, 196, 197, 202, 204, 207, 208, 216, 222, 235–6, 241, 249, 264, 267, 269, 281, 286, 288, 298, 299, 301, 307, 310, 315, 342, 363–5, 368, 372, 373, 386, 408, 409, 410, 411, 414, 421, 422, 424, 437, 441, 444, 445–6, 449, 450, 468, 470, 473, 475, 490, 491–2, 496, 501 Preston Leader 240 Preston, Matt 40 Preston, Yvonne 294 Price is Right, The 188 Price, Jenna 497 Price, Matt 247 Price, Steve 89, 124, 457 Prichard, Frederick 160 Prichard, Katharine Susannah 115 Prime Media 109, 196, 268, 407, 440; Prime Radio 196, 393, 407; Prime Television 32, 109, 184, 268, 407 Princeton University 372, 377 Pringle, John Martin Douglas 82, 163, 231, 308, 348–9, 365–6, 452; see also John Douglas Pringle Award Print Council of Australia 27 print workers 29, 63, 64, 65, 97, 123, 143, 160, 171, 195, 200, 203, 213, 238, 241, 247, 253, 257, 262, 290, 308, 315, 346, 350, 357, 358–9, 363, 366, 367, 368, 413, 425, 440, 441, 442, 449, 452, 474, 482, 483 Printer’s Ink 8 Printers and Newspapers Act 1864 88 printers see print workers printers’ furnishers 366–7, 368 printing 2, 3–4, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, 24, 29, 50, 55, 61, 63, 82, 83, 84, 85, 90, 96, 97, 118, 127, 129, 143, 144, 158, 164, 165, 170, 171, 189, 190, 192, 193, 195–6, 203, 205, 206, 208, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214, 230, 233, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 250, 251, 253, 254, 264, 270, 273, 276, 297, 301, 306–7, 308, 308, 309, 315, 316, 321, 330, 331, 332, 338, 346, 350, 352, 354, 355, 357, 358, 359, 360, 363, 364–5, 366, 367–9, 401, 402, 408, 409, 410–11, 413, 442, 443, 444, 449, 451, 452, 453, 458, 474, 476, 490, 491, 492, 501 printing companies 3, 8, 29, 50, 96, 143, 144, 157, 170, 195–6, 203, 205, 210, 213, 230, 232, 233, 237, 240, 241, 262, 330, 367, 368, 441, 474 Printing & Kindred Industries Union 366, 441 Printing Industry Employees’ Union of Australia see Printing & Kindred Industries Union Prior family 76, 77; S.H. 76, 77; see also S.H. Prior Award Prisk, Judy 402 Prism see New Poetry Prisoner 198, 467; Prisoner: Cell Block H The Musical (London) 485 privacy 28, 59, 133, 154, 271, 278, 369–70, 429, 430, 459 Private Media Partners 124, 125, 323, 324, 370 Prix Futura 385 Prix Italia 383, 386 prizes see awards and prizes; competitions Proclamations of the Province 368 Professional Public Relations 376 Progress Press 240, 281, 330 Project ’64 423 Project, The 128, 480 Proletarian (newspaper) 353 Proletariat (magazine) 252 Proof 270 Property Observer 125, 324, 370 property reporting 54, 55, 97, 125, 240, 244, 257, 282, 301, 311, 324, 361, 370–1, 445, 446, 447, 448, 474 PROSH 443 Prospect 252

532

Protestants and media 88, 412, 413–14, 422; see also religious broadcasting; religious press Provincial Newspaper Press Association of New South Wales 119 Provincial Newspaper Union 119 Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd 23, 316, 355, 356, 371–2, 378, 410; and Cook family 378; and Dunn family 355–6, 371; and Irwin family 356, 371; and Kippen family 371, 378; and Manning family 120, 125, 356, 371; and Parkinson family 371, 378; and Stephenson family 371, 378 Provincial Press Association of South Australia 120 Pryor, Geoff 83 Puberty Blues 467 Public Broadcasting Association of Australia see Community Broadcasting Association of Australia Public Eye, The 128, 222 public health campaigns 4, 5, 203 Public Library of New South Wales see State Library of New South Wales public opinion and opinion polls 6, 31, 32, 33, 66, 67, 102, 105, 111, 116, 121, 150, 183, 204, 215, 245, 246, 250, 261, 322, 372–4, 375 public relations 5, 38, 39, 76, 86, 87, 126, 151, 177, 185, 210, 224, 255, 259, 261, 264, 265, 273, 277, 280, 281, 282, 293, 298, 306, 316, 325, 326, 333, 342, 343, 346, 353, 355, 374–7, 404, 424, 477, 478, 489, 492 Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA) 38, 374, 375, 376, 377, 492 Public Relations, Newsletters and Internet Usage for Organisations 306 Public Relations Practice in Australia 376 Publishers of Australia 377 Publishers Australia Excellence Awards 377 Publishers Holdings Ltd 50, 230 Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd (PBL) 51, 163, 183, 233, 331, 332, 419, 436; see also Packer family Pudney, Jeremy 432 Pugh, Clifton 203 Pugh, Theophilus 121, 355, 462 Pugh’s Queensland Almanac 19, 121, 355, 462 Pulitzer Prize 27, 153 Pulitzer, Joseph 65 Pulse, The 202 Punch (London) 83, 274 Punch (Melbourne) see Melbourne Punch Punch (Tas.) 358 Punch, The (News Limited) 67, 324 Pure Adrenalin 275 Putnis, Peter 264 PY (Pitjantjatjarra Yankunytjatjara) Media 416 Q&A 44, 128, 151, 322 Qintex 427–8 QTC 386 Quadrant 138, 172, 174, 209, 252, 259, 260 Quadrant Radio Strategies 116 Quakers and media 358 Quantum 44, 202, 424 Quarterly Essay 168, 254 Queanbeyan Age 348, 425 Queensland Agricultural Journal 16 Queensland Art Society 26 Queensland Broadcasting Network 393, 406; see also radio stations and networks Queensland Country Life 15–16, 355 Queensland Country Press Association 120 Queensland Electrical and Radio World 474 Queensland Figaro 354, 355 Queensland Government Printing Office 196 Queensland Guardian (Brisbane) 354 Queensland Journalists’ Association 355 Queensland Media Club 378 Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd 72, 121, 256, 282 Queensland Parliamentary Press/Media Gallery 345, 354, 355, 378 Queensland Radio Services 392

index Queensland Radio Transmitters League 386 Queensland Remote Aboriginal Media 394 Queensland Public Relations Bureau 355 Queensland Press Ltd 249, 250, 256, 355, 371, 372, 462 Queensland Radio News 386 Queensland Remote Aboriginal Media (QRAM) 416 Queensland School Paper 422 Queensland Times 319, 371, 378 Queensland University Magazine see Galmahra Queensland University of Technology 443 Queenslander 176, 189, 354–5, 430–1, 490, 501 Queer Young Thing 191 Quest Suburban Newspapers 445 Quigg, John 14 Quill Awards 68–9, 274 Quinn, Bishop James 414 Quinn, Meredith 264 Quinn, Rod 83 Quints, Romsey see Tuckey, Bill Quintus Servington 359 Quiz Kids 148, 188 quiz shows see game shows QWeekend see Courier-Mail RAAF 25, 26 RAAF Radio Butterworth 26; see also radio stations and networks Rabaul Record 25, 346 Rabaul Times 346–7 Rabelais 443, 444 Race Around the World 115 Racial Discrimination Act (various years) 87, 88, 89 Radic, Leonard 471 Radio Advertising in Australia (book) 245 Radio and Hobbies 386, 387 Radio Australia 16, 26, 43, 44, 46, 62, 72, 133, 136, 137, 156, 177, 179, 379–80, 391; see also radio stations and networks Radio Call 386 Radio Canteen 395 radio clubs 92, 93, 172, 245, 315, 386, 387, 390, 400, 405, 475 radio comedy 90, 100, 341, 380–2, 394, 457, 479 Radio Commonwealth (Korea) 26; see also radio stations and networks Radio DJ Vietnam 26; see also radio stations and networks radio documentary 44, 264, 382–4, 391 radio drama 44, 61, 68, 92, 99, 100, 115, 123, 125, 149–50, 172, 174, 193, 208, 234, 257, 264, 280, 383, 384–6, 388, 389, 390, 394, 399, 479 radio education 53, 54, 89, 92, 111, 156, 171, 391, 395 Radio Ethnic Australia 155; see also radio stations and networks Radio Eye 383 Radio for the Print Handicapped (RPH) 110, 112, 140, 388, 394, 400, 406; see also Blind people and media Radio in Australia and New Zealand 386 ‘Radio in Education’ (conference) 71 Radio Journal of Australia 474 Radio Larrakia 392 Radio Lord Howe 347; see also radio stations and networks radio magazines 29, 102, 115, 204, 245, 246, 386–7, 397, 400, 491 Radio National Breakfast 196 radio news commentators 2, 21–2, 127–8, 148, 387–8, 391, 421, 456 Radio Norfolk 347; see also radio stations and networks Radio Pictorial of Australia 386 Radio Record (NZ) 493 Radio Retailer 270, 386 Radio Sales Network 196 radio stations and networks: 1RPH 388; 1WAY FM 388; 2AY 405; 2BE 389, 390; 2BL 30, 131, 225, 321, 322, 387, 389, 391; 2CA 388, 389, 390; 2CC 17, 142, 388, 389; 2CH 22, 103, 155, 266, 281,

390, 411, 412, 413, 418, 427, 488, 493; 2CN 388; 2CO 405; 2CY 388; 2CZ 405; 2Day-FM 101, 116, 142, 175, 239, 284, 341, 391, 494; 2DU 196; 2EA 111, 155, 433, 434; 2FC 387, 389; 2GB 30, 79, 86, 99, 100, 127, 131, 148, 149, 164, 172, 193, 202, 224, 225, 239, 245, 281, 319, 341, 371, 384, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 411, 428, 456, 476, 479; 2GF 405; 2GZ 16, 405; 2JJ 137, 284, 391; 2HD 234, 235, 389, 405; 2HR 234; 2JJ 398, 405; 2KO 141, 239; 2KY 80, 101, 196, 234, 235, 319, 333, 387, 389, 390, 426, 438, 476; 2LM 405; 2LT 196; 2MBS FM 110, 175, 284, 285, 390; 2MC-FM 319; 2MCE 111; 2MK 389; 2MMM FM 103, 116, 175, 202, 284, 391; 2NC 405; 2NCR 111; 2NX 142; 2RE 390; 2RG 155, 390; 2SB 389, 390, 391; 2SER FM 21, 111, 175, 191, 261, 424; 2SM 115, 142, 148, 239, 284, 319, 383, 387, 389, 390, 411, 412, 413, 418, 421, 473, 475, 485; 2SM Super Network 104; 2ST 196; 2TM 284; 2UE 2, 16, 29, 30, 80, 85–6, 100, 103, 104, 115, 127, 128, 141, 148, 163, 202, 224, 225, 239, 256, 319, 387, 389, 390, 391, 413, 418, 456, 457, 459, 473, 475, 496; 2UW 17, 30, 103, 104, 127, 142, 149, 155, 172, 175, 239, 245, 256, 284, 385, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391, 413; 2VM 390; 2WL 212; 2WS 391; 2XX 21, 111, 388; 3AK 30, 142, 397, 398, 456; 3AR 397; 3AW 42, 63, 92, 104, 127, 202, 206–7, 387, 397, 398, 399, 456, 457, 488, 493; 3BA 397, 405; 3BO 239, 405; 3CR 21, 171, 398, 424; 3DB 103, 175, 204, 234, 249, 315, 397, 398, 399, 427, 456; 3DR 398; 3EA 111, 155, 398, 433, 434; 3EON FM 284; 3FOX FM 398, 399; 3GL 397; 3GV 397; 3KY 101; 3KZ 30, 63, 142, 234, 235, 397, 399, 493; 3LO 92, 204, 397, 488, 493; 3MA 418; 3MBS FM 175, 398; 3MMM 103, 398, 399; 3MP 398; 3PBS 111, 284, 398; 3PR 398; 3RMT 398; 3RRR 21, 111, 175, 284, 285, 398, 424; 3RRRFM 398; 3SH 405; 2SR 485; 3TR 397; 3TT 17; 3UZ 141, 142, 161, 231, 387, 397, 456, 493; 3XY 142, 155, 175, 315, 397, 418, 475, 485; 3ZZ 137, 155, 398; 3ZZZ 156; 4AK 393; 4BBB 393; 4BC 17, 103, 104, 141, 142, 148, 387, 388, 393, 456, 488; 4BH 115, 393, 418, 475; 4BK 103, 175, 284, 393; 4BU 393; 4CA 393, 407; 4CBL 393; 4CRB 393; 4DDB 393; 4EB 111, 155, 393; 4FC 393; 4GR 17, 393, 405; 4IP 142, 393; 4K1G 394; 4KQ 234, 235, 393; 4LG 393; 4MB 17, 393; 4MBS-FM 111, 112, 393; 4MI 393; 4MK 393, 407; 4MMM FM 284; 4MOB 394; 4MW 394; 4OUR 393; 4QA 393; 4QB 393; 4QG 234, 392; 4QL 393; 4QN 392, 393; 4QS 392, 393; 4QY 393; 4RK 392, 393, 405; 4RO 17, 393, 407; 4RR FM 394; 4SB 393; 4SO 393; 4TO 393; 4US 394; 4VL 393; 4WK 393; 4YOU 393; 4ZR 393; 4ZZ 393; 4ZZZ 21, 111, 175, 284, 393; 5AA 183, 394–5, 456; 5AD 3, 103, 141, 142, 143, 180, 183, 394, 395, 456; 5AL 391; 5AN 395; 5AU 234; 5CK 405; 5CL 394; 5DDD 395; 5DN 86, 183, 284, 394, 395, 413, 456, 457, 489; 5DR 391; 5EBI 111, 155, 395; 5KA 115, 142, 175, 234, 394, 395, 412; 5MMM 111, 395; 5NPY 395; 5RPH 394; 5SSA FM 284; 5UMA 395; 5UV 21, 111, 155, 214, 395; 6AM 400; 6AR 400; 6CKI 348; 6IX 79, 103, 400; 6EBA 400; 6KG 400; 6KY 234, 235, 400; 6ML 103, 172, 399; 6NR 400; 6PM 142, 175, 400; 6PR 86, 141, 142, 284, 399–400, 421, 456, 457; 6RCI 348; 6RPH 400; 6RTR FM 171; 6UVS 111, 400; 6UWA FM 400; 6VA 115; 6WA 399; 6WF 399, 400; 6WN 399, 400; 666ABC 388, 389; 7AD 396; 7BU 396; 7CAE FM 396; 7DY 396; 7EX 160, 396; 7HO 32, 141, 142, 396, 418; 7HT 103, 142, 396; 7LA 396; 7NT

533

396; 7QT 396, 405; 7RGY 396; 7SD 396; 7TTT 396; 7XS 396; 7ZL 276, 395, 396; 7ZR 396; 702 ABC Sydney 225, 321, 391; 774 ABC 399; 8CCC 89, 392; 8DN 391, 392, 489; 8DR 391; 8EAR 392; 8HA 89, 391, 392; 8HOT-FM 392; 8KIN-FM 89; 8KN 391; 8KNB 392; 8KTR 392; 8TC 391; 8TOPFM 392; 846AM 389; 891 ABC Adelaide 395; 9PA 26, 347; 90.1 Chilli FM 396; 90.3 FM 393; 92.9 FM 175, 400; 95.3 FM 393; 96FM/fm 175, 284, 400, 440; 96.9FM 142; 97.3fm 393; 98.9 FM 393; 102.3 FM 395; 103.9 triple t 393; 104.3fm 399; 1071 AM 393; ABC Radio (generally) 26, 28, 30, 31, 32, 41, 42–3, 44, 46, 51, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, 71–2, 73, 76, 89, 92, 99, 101, 103, 104, 107, 110, 127, 128, 135, 136, 137, 140, 143, 148, 150, 151, 155, 171, 172, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 193, 195, 197, 202, 214, 217, 218, 222, 232, 234, 245, 246, 256, 276, 279–80, 283, 288, 292, 298, 300, 333, 340–1, 342, 347, 381, 382, 383–4, 385–6, 387, 388, 389, 390, 391–3, 394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 404, 405–6, 411–12, 413, 419, 423, 424, 433, 434, 435, 436, 437, 442, 459, 476, 479, 488, 489, 493, 496, 497, 498; ABC Brisbane 393; ABC Capricornia 393; ABC Classic FM 46, 175, 284, 288, 383, 389, 395, 405, 406; ABC Coast FM 393; ABC DiG Country 285; ABC DiG Jazz 285; ABC DiG Music 140, 285; ABC Far North 393; ABC Local Radio 46, 128, 322, 392–3, 395, 397, 406; ABC NewsRadio 46, 128, 151, 333, 334, 389, 395, 406; ABC North Queensland 393; ABC North West Queensland 393; ABC Radio National 2, 16, 17, 27, 43, 46, 71, 128, 148, 151, 173, 196, 202, 225, 254, 260, 323, 340–1, 383, 386, 395, 396, 397, 406; ABC Radio One 21, 43, 391; ABC Radio Two 21, 43, 383; ABC Southern Coast 393; ABC Southern Queensland 393; ABC Triple J 46, 94, 137, 175, 284, 285, 288, 340, 341, 382, 389, 391, 398, 400, 405, 406, 424; ABC Triple J Unearthed 140, 285; ABC Tropical North 393; ABC Western Queensland 393; ABC Wide Bay 393; ArtSound 92.7 388; Austereo network 101, 104, 284, 285, 388, 389, 391, 395, 400; Australian Fine Music Network 110; Australian Radio Network 17, 101, 104, 389, 395; B105 FM 175, 393; Black Star Network 394; Buddah Radio 140; Bumma Bippera Media 98.7 FM 394; Bundaberg Broadcasters Pty Ltd 393; CAAMA 416; Capital Radio Network 196, 389, 400; Chemist Warehouse Remix 140; Chill 285, 435; Chilli FM 396; City Park Radio 171, 396; CMS 91.1 388; Commercial Broadcasters Pty Ltd 396; Commonwealth Broadcasting Network 103, 115, 390, 399; Community Radio Network 406; Consolidated Broadcasting Network 104, 319, 456; Cruise 1323 395; DMG Radio 101, 104, 175, 393, 395, 406, 407, 498; Double J 140, 285; Double SA-FM 395; EON-FM 103, 175, 284, 398; FBi 284, 384; Federal Radio Network 103, 390, 399; Findlay Tasmanian Network 103; FIVEaa 395; Flow FM 392; FM104 and 104.7 175, 388, 389; FM Radio 102 FM 395; FOX FM 175, 284, 398, 399; GOLD104.3 399; Grandstand 140; Grant Broadcasters Pty Ltd 196, 393, 396; Hobart FM 396; Huon FM 396; Joy Melbourne 398; JOY 94.9FM 191, 341; KAFM 394; KIIS 1065 FM 175; KIX106 389–90; KIX-FM 17; Koffee 140; Koool 140; Macquarie Network 70, 79, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 127, 131, 148, 188, 387, 388, 390, 395, 396, 399–400, 427, 497; Macquarie Regional RadioWorks 104, 391, 393, 406–7; Major Network 103, 390, 399, 400; MIX 94.5 FM 400; MIX 101.1 FM

a companion to the australian media 175, 399; MIX 102.3 FM 395; MIX106.3 389; MIX 106.5 FM 17; Murri FM 105.9 394; National Indigenous News Service 214; National Indigenous Radio Service 214; NG Media 416; Noongar Radio 400; Nova Entertainment 175, 283, 341, 393, 395, 400, 407; Nova 91.9 FM 104, 395; Nova 93.7 400; Nova 100 399; Nova 106.9 393; novanation 140; PAKAM 416; PAW Media 392, 416; PopAraby 285, 435; PopAsia 285, 435; PopDesi 285, 435; Prime Radio 196, 393, 407; PY Media 416; QRAM 416; Queensland Broadcasting Network 393, 406; Radio 1323 395; RAAF Radio Butterworth 26; Radio Adelaide 111; Radio Australia 16, 26, 43, 44, 46, 62, 72, 133, 136, 137, 156, 177, 179, 379–80, 391; Radio Commonwealth 26; Radio DJ Vietnam 26; Radio Ethnic Australia 155; Radio Larrakia 392; Radio Lord Howe FM 347; Radio Norfolk 347; Radio TAB 235, 393, 394, 400, 407; RG Capital Radio 104, 232, 393, 396, 406, 407; Rhema Network 392, 413; RPH (generally) 110, 112, 140, 388, 394, 400, 406; SA FM 175; SAFM 395; SBS Radio (generally) 31, 101, 102, 111, 140, 155, 156, 175, 214, 283, 285, 389, 390, 398, 399, 406, 419, 433, 434, 435; SBS Radio One 389, 435; SBS Radio Two 389, 435; SBS Radio Three 435; SBS Radio Four 435; Sea FM (generally) 196, 396; Sea FM 101.9 142, 196; SEN116 Melbourne 395, 438; SEN1323 Adelaide 438; smoothfm 91.5 FM 175, 399; smoothfm 95.3 FM 175; Sports and Entertainment Network 395, 438; South Eastern Indigenous Media Association 398; Southern Cross Austereo 101, 104, 391, 393, 400; Southern Cross Broadcasting 86, 101, 164, 269, 391, 396, 400, 407; Star 104.5 FM 104, 407; Student Youth Network 398; SUN-FM 392; Super Radio Network 235, 239; Tasmanian Broadcasting Network 103, 396; TEABBA 416; Ten10 23; Three D Radio 111; Triple M (generally) 101, 103, 111, 175, 394, 395; Triple M 104.5 FM 393; Triple M 104.7 394; Triple R 398; Triple Seven Communications 398; TT-101.1 FM 17; Umewarra Radio 395; Valley FM 89.5 388; Vega Network 175; Vision Radio Network 392, 394, 407, 413; Whitford Network 103, 197, 400; X102 395; Yolgnu Radio 392; Zinc Radio 407; see also commercial radio; commercial radio networks; community radio; Indigenous broadcasting; Radio Australia Radio TAB 235, 393, 394, 400, 407; see also radio stations and networks Radio Television News 8 Radio Times 386 Radio War Service Committee 102; see also Commercial Radio Australia Radio Week 102, 115 radio, Australian Capital Territory 17, 21, 32, 101, 111, 142, 175, 196, 214, 388–9 radio, New South Wales 2, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 79, 80, 85–6, 89, 99, 100, 101, 103, 104, 110, 111, 115, 116, 127–8, 130, 131, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 148, 149, 155, 160, 163, 164, 172, 175, 191, 193, 196, 202, 212, 224–5, 228, 234, 235, 239, 245, 256, 258, 266, 280, 281, 284, 319, 321, 322, 341, 371, 383, 384, 385, 387, 388, 389–91, 397, 398, 405, 407, 411, 412, 413, 418, 421, 424, 426, 427, 433, 434, 455, 456, 457, 459, 473, 475, 476, 479, 485, 488, 493, 496, 497 radio, Northern Territory 44, 89, 101, 175, 196, 264, 391–2, 434, 489 radio, Queensland 17, 21, 31, 32, 44, 101, 103, 104, 111, 112, 115, 139, 140, 141, 142, 148, 155, 175, 196, 214, 234, 235, 387, 388, 392–4, 405, 407, 413, 418, 434, 456, 475, 488

radio, South Australia 3, 21, 31, 85, 86, 101, 103, 104, 111, 115, 139, 140, 141, 142, 155, 175, 180, 183, 196, 214, 234, 394–5, 405, 411, 412, 413, 434, 456, 457, 489 radio, Tasmania 32, 103, 132, 141, 160, 171, 175, 196, 214, 276, 395–7, 405, 413, 418 radio, Victoria 17, 21, 30, 31, 32, 33, 42, 44, 63, 85, 92, 101, 103, 104, 111, 115, 127, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 155, 161, 171, 175, 191, 196, 202, 204, 206, 214, 231, 234, 235, 239, 249, 280, 315, 341, 384, 387, 397–9, 405, 411, 413, 418, 421, 424, 427, 433, 434, 456, 457, 475, 485, 488, 493, 497 radio, Western Australia 31, 44, 79, 85, 86, 101, 103, 104, 111, 115, 139, 140, 141, 142, 171, 172, 175, 232, 234, 235, 264, 399–400, 421, 440, 456, 457 Radiotonic 383 Radiotronics 386 Rag Times 166 Rage 44, 285 Railroad 236 Rainbow Warrior 255 Ralph 274, 275, 276 Ramadge, Paul 13 Ramp Up 141 Ramsay, Paul 268 Ramsden, Samuel 367–8 Ramsey, Alan 169, 400–1 Randazzo, Nino 157 Randi, James 30 Randwick District News 169 Rank, J. Arthur 418 Rankin, John 378 Ratcliffe, J.V. 50 ratings see audience research Ravlich, Robyn 384 RAWARDS see Commercial Radio Australia Ray, Edgar 274 Raye, Carol 462 Raymond Longford Award 2, 147 Raymond, Glenda 123; see also Crawford family Raymond, Robert 180, 423, 465 Rayner, Michelle 383–4 Reader’s Digest 138, 230 readers 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18–19, 24, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 51, 54, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 66, 67, 68, 72, 76, 77, 79, 81, 82–3, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 90, 96, 97, 98, 99, 115, 121, 122, 125, 129, 130, 131, 133, 138, 147, 153, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 178, 181, 182, 189–90, 191, 192, 193, 195, 201, 203, 204–6, 208, 212, 213, 215, 222, 223, 230, 231, 232, 233, 235, 237, 238, 240, 241, 242, 243, 250, 251, 253, 254, 257, 258, 259, 264, 274, 275–6, 277, 286, 290, 293, 294, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299, 303, 304, 306, 309, 316, 317, 320, 323, 324, 327, 337, 342, 346, 348, 349–50, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356, 359, 360–1, 362, 363, 364, 366, 372, 378, 387, 401–2, 411, 429, 430, 431, 439, 440, 444, 445, 446, 447, 448, 450, 451, 452, 453, 455, 457, 458, 459, 462, 468, 469, 474, 475, 477, 478, 483, 486, 489, 490, 491, 492, 494, 495, 498, 499, 500, 501 Reading, Writing Roadshow, The 149 Reagan, Ronald 301 Real Australian 414 Real Estate 474 real estate reporting see property reporting Real Life 222 Real Property Annual see Australian Home Beautiful realestate.com.au 282, 301, 370 reality television 5, 48, 87, 114, 116, 118, 126, 243, 244, 270, 278, 283, 285, 403–4, 433, 434, 466, 467, 480, 481 Reark Group 373 Reason Why, The 8, 270 Record (Catholic pamphlet) 332 Recorder 306 Recording Industry Association of America 284

534

recording technologies 404–5; see also compact discs; digital video discs; video cassette recorders ‘Red Page’ 70, 77, 439, 440, 474; see also Bulletin; Stephens, Alfred George Redfern Now 44, 466 Redfern, Jamie 479, 503 Reed Elsevier 270 Rees, Leslie 385, 470 Reeve, Henry 408 Referee (Sydney) 402, 437 Refractory Girl 170 Reg Grundy Enterprises see Grundy Organisation regional broadcasting 14, 16, 24, 32, 47, 56, 69, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 113, 114, 138, 139, 161, 175, 194, 196, 203, 212, 214, 215, 234, 246, 255, 266, 268, 280, 284, 334, 381, 389, 390, 391, 392, 393, 394, 397, 405–7, 416, 419, 420, 473, 481, 485 Regional Dailies of Australia Ltd 58 Regional Geevston Youth 396 regional Indigenous media organisations see Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme regional press 12, 18, 19, 23, 35, 66, 82, 83, 85, 192, 193, 194, 197–8, 200–1, 203, 212, 217, 225, 238, 239, 246, 247, 253, 255, 256, 257, 263, 267, 268, 269, 280, 281, 282, 296–7, 299, 301, 307, 311, 315–16, 330, 339, 345, 352, 353, 354, 355–7, 358, 360, 362–3, 364–5, 366, 368, 371–2, 378, 408–11, 422, 431–2, 442, 444, 447, 449, 457–8, 475, 483–4, 489–90, 492, 493, 497, 501 Regional Publishers Pty Ltd 253, 352, 409, 410 Register (Adelaide) 72, 132, 204, 243, 431, 432 Register News-Pictorial (Adelaide) see Register (Adelaide) Reid, Alan 77, 130, 169, 293, 411 Reid, Arthur 450 Reid, David 34 Reid, George 209 Reilly, Cameron 340 Reilly, Gary 382, 463 Reilly, Jane 166 Reilly, Virgil 429 Reith Lectures (UK) 72 Reith, Sir John (later: Lord) 43 Relax with Me 44 religious broadcasting 30, 44, 45, 112, 115, 148, 155, 172, 234, 244–5, 246, 289, 375, 387, 388, 389, 390, 392, 394, 397, 399, 407, 411–13, 457, 476; see also Anglicans and media; Baptists and media; Catholics and media; Jehovah’s Witnesses and media; Jewish people and media; Lutherans and media; New South Wales Council of Churches and media; Methodists and media; Protestants and media; Seventh-day Adventists and media; Theosophists and media religious press 21, 121, 127, 136, 203, 205, 250, 288, 305, 306, 332, 346–7, 358, 361, 364, 391, 413–16, 422, 450; see also Anglicans and media; Baptists and media; Catholics and media; Jewish people and media; Lutherans and media; Methodists and media; Protestants and media; Quakers and media; Salvation Army and media; Seventh-day Adventists and media Remote Area Broadcast Scheme 406 Remote Area Television Scheme (RATS) 419 Remote Commercial Television Service 73–4, 89, 416, 420 Remote Indigenous Broadcasting Services (RIBS) 89, 214, 215, 292, 293, 394, 406, 416 Remote Indigenous Media Organisations 214, 416 Rene, Roy (‘Mo’) 381, 394, 479 Renewing Australia 415 Rennie, Malcolm 62 Renovation Rescue 244 Renton, Nick 306

index Report from South Africa 464 Reporters Without Borders 293 reporting see agricultural reporting; business and finance reporting; court reporting; crime reporting; economics reporting; election reporting; environmental reporting; ethnic reporting and representation; food journalism and reviewing; foreign reporting; health and medical reporting; industrial reporting; local government reporting; news reporting; political journalism; property reporting; science reporting; social pages; sports media and reporting; technology reporting; traffic reporting; travel reporting; war reporting; weather and natural disasters reporting Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions etc (UK) 165 Republican (Charters Towers) 354 Republican Weekly 21 Reserve Bank of Australia 146, 147 Reserved and Equity Judgments of the Supreme Court of New South Wales 241 Restless Years, The 198 Retail Week 475 Reucassel, Craig 91 Reuter, Paul Julius 81 Reuters (UK) 39, 78, 81, 144, 177, 178, 179, 203, 300, 328, 337, 339 Review see Astrological Monthly Review; Nation and Nation Review Review of Reviews (London) 249, 408, 440 reviewing see art magazines and reviewing; book reviewing; film reviewing; food journalism and reviewing; music reviewing; theatre reviewing Revolution 20, 286 Revue ’61 283, 479; Revue ’62 479 RG Capital Radio 104, 232, 393, 396, 406, 407 Rhema Network 392, 413 Rich, Justice 369 Richards, Arthur 202 Richards, Lou 447 Richardson, A.H. 240 Richardson, Graham 232 Richardson, John 212 Richardson, Nick 126 Richardson, W. 240 Richmond River Express (Casino) 316 Richmond River Times (Ballina) 120 Rickard’s Realty Review 370 Riddell, Don 433 Riddell, Elizabeth 179, 465, 496 Rienits, Rex 385 Rigby, Paul 129 Rigg, Julie 171, 173, 272 Riley, Gina 464 Rin Tin Tin (USA) 93 Rinehart, Gina (née Hancock) 453 Rip It Up Magazine 286 Rising Sun 25 Rita’s Lullaby 386 River News (Waikerie) 458 Riverine Herald (Echuca) 257 Rivett, Rohan 167, 273, 299 Rivkin, Rene 134, 232, 370 Roadrunner: Australia’s Independent Music Paper 286 Roadshow Films 285 Roaming Around Australia 476 Roar, The 324, 438 Roberts, E.J. 148 Roberts, Hera 208 Roberts, Ron 288 Roberts, Russell 208 Roberts, T.D.C. 263 Roberts, Tom 163 Robertson, Austin 502 Robertson, Connie (née Stephens) 417, 501 Robertson, C.W. 414 Robertson, David 280 Robertson, Hamish 21 Robertson, Ian 86 Robertson, Jess 400 Robinson, Carl 177 Robinson, George Augustus 215

Robinson, Peter (foreign correspondent) 179 Robinson, Peter (motoring journalist) 280 Robinson, Ron 432 Robinson, W.S. 3, 204 Robinson, William 189 Robson, Levey and Franklyn (UK) 205 Rochester Irrigator 257 Rock 327 Rock Arena 284 Rock Around the World 284 Rock Australia Magazine 286 Rockhampton Bulletin see Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton) RocKwiz 285 Rodgers, Don 239 Rofe, Stan (‘The Man’) 142, 286 Rogers, Robert Barton (‘Bob’) 100, 141, 336, 390, 418 Roland, Betty 385 Rolfe, Patricia 70 Rolling Stone 220, 286; Rolling Stone Australia 286, 476 Rolph family (Tas.) 160, 359, 396; Dorothy Rouse (née Rolph) 160, 396; Edmund Alexander Rouse 160, 396; Sir Gordon Burns Rolph 160; William Robert Rolph 160; see also Rouse family Romans, George 334 Romero Community 358 Roosevelt, Eleanor 383 Roosevelt, Theodore 221 Rose Tattoo 17 Rose, John 384 Rose, Michael 263 Ross’s Monthly of Protest, Personality and Progress 88 Ross, Barry 437 Ross, James 19 Ross, Dr Lloyd 205, 236 Ross, Merrick 382 Ross, R.S. 88 Round the Twist 94, 147 Rouse family (Tas.) 160, 396; Dorothy (née Rolph) 160; Edmund Alexander 160, 396; see also Rolph family Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory 321 Rove 480; Rove Live 152, 480 Rowbotham, David 70 Rowe, David 309 Rowe, Jennifer 227 Rowe, Normie 503 Rowlandson, Thomas 308 Rowse, Tim 262 Roxon, Lillian 288, 365 Roxon, Nicola 294 Roy and HG 44, 115–16, 382 Roy Morgan Research 31, 32, 33, 121, 250, 325, 372–3 Royal Automobile Club of Queensland 475 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) 25, 26 Royal Australian Navy (RAN) 26 Royal Commission on Television (1953–54) 41, 93, 267, 412, 461 Royal Commission on Wireless (1927) 389, 395–6, 397, 405 Royal Flying Doctor Service 148 Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology 255, 376, 398, 444 Royal Readers 422 Royal Society of New Zealand 38 royal reporting 60, 68, 72, 91, 96, 143, 165, 307, 319, 417, 488 royalties see copyright RPA 403 RS Productions 382 RSS technology 151, 340 rsvp.com.au 164 Rudd government 45, 136, 220, 291, 344 Rudd, Kevin 38, 131, 151, 152, 168, 231, 254, 378, 428, 457 Rudd, Steele see Davis, Arthur Hoey Rugby League Week 438 Rule, Andrew 125 Rumble, Dr Leslie 412 Runaway Bride, The 227 Rundle, Guy 124 Rupert (play) 228

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Rural Australian 15 Rural Health Education Foundation 149 Rural Magazine 189 Rural Newspapers Ltd 410 Rural Press Events 284 Rural Press Ltd 11, 82, 83, 143, 161, 163, 201, 237, 253, 269, 349, 351, 352, 358, 359, 409–10, 432, 449, 458 Rural Weekly 311 Rush 44 Russell Clarke, Peter 176, 296 Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures 464 Russell, Jim 84 Russh 166 Russo, Dr Peter 72, 179 Ryan 467 Ryan, A.J. (Jack) 388, 389 Ryan, John 347 Ryan, Peter 478 Ryan, Ronald 242 Ryan, T.J. 484 Rydge, Norman B. 418 Rydge’s 270, 418 Ryle, Gerard 222, 484 Ryman, Dorothy Dale 166 S. Bennett Ltd 29, 60, 130, 351 S.H. Prior Award 77 S.Well 202 Saatchi & Saatchi 7 Safran, John 115, 464 Sailah, Stephen 383 Sale of the Century 188, 198 Salisbury News 63 Salisbury, Alan 98 SALT 25 Salter, David 271 Salusinszky, Imre 70 Salvation Army 172, 244–5, 375, 414 SameSame.com.au 191 Sammy Awards see TV Times ‘Sammy Sparrow’ 319; see also O’Callaghan, Gary Samperi, Kate 10 Samson Clark 6 Samuel, Peter 82 Sandel, Otto 389 Sanders, F. Hedley 55 Sargent, George E. 92 Sargent, Hadyn 456 Sargent, Stefan 465 Sandilands, Kyle 457; see also Kyle and Jackie O Sands & Kenny 367 Sands & McDougall 367; Sands & McDougall directories (Melbourne) 310 Sangster, Robert 50 Santamaria, B.A. 236, 411, 412 ‘Sappho Smith’ see Wildman, Alexina Sara, Sally 180 satellite broadcasting 14, 39, 44, 47, 69, 73, 74, 89, 100, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 138, 139, 148, 149, 151, 158, 179, 180, 182, 183, 214, 215, 220, 292, 293, 300, 335, 380, 392, 400, 402, 406, 413, 416, 419–21, 426, 458, 461, 473, 481, 488, 489; see also AUSSAT; Austar; Broadcasting for Remote Aboriginal Communities Scheme; ComRadSat; DOMSAT; Foxtel; Imparja Television; Indigenous Community Television; INTELSAT; pay television; Southern Cross Central 7; television stations and networks; Viewer Access Satellite Television Satellite Community Television 114 Satellite Media Group 191 Satellite Program Services 73 Satirist and Sydney Spectator 88 Sattler File, The 421 Sattler, Howard 86, 421, 457 Sattler, Tony 382, 463 Saturday Evening Express (Launceston) 160 Saturday Evening Mercury (Hobart) 276 Saturday Express (Adelaide) 70 Saturday Mail (Adelaide) 448 Saturday Paper, The 254, 361 Saturday Show, The 283 Saulwick, Irving 372, 373

a companion to the australian media Saunders, G.A. 390 Savery, Henry 359 Sawer, Geoffrey 169, 289 Sayers, Stuart 70, 273 Sayle, Murray 221, 227 Scales of Justice 44 Scali, Jane 503 Scanlon, Peter 335 Scarlet Women 171 Schippan, Mary 357 Schofield, Leo 176, 177 school broadcasts see educational media School Magazine (NSW) 422 School of the Air 148, 149 school papers 249, 402, 421–2 Schreck, Paul 209 Schuler, (Gottlieb) Frederick 12 Schultz, Julianne 221, 263, 342, 373, 444 Schwartz Media 361 Schwartz, Morry 324 Science Australia 423 Science Foundation for Physics 423 Science Question Time 423 Science Report, The 44 Science Show, The 423 science reporting 15, 44, 59, 94, 189, 250, 302, 323, 387, 422–4, 458, 483, 490 Scoop (novel) 138 scoops, in news reporting 68, 125, 126, 130, 132, 195, 205, 207, 319, 320, 401, 452, 484 Scorfield, Ted 84 Scott Group of Companies 358 Scott, C.P. 65 Scott, Mark 46, 271 Scott, Phil 280 Scott, Rodney James 160 Scott, Captain William 2 Screen Australia 51, 149 Screen News 172 Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA) 424–5 Screenrights 149, 466 Scrimgeour, C.G. 334 Scripsi 252 Scullin government 22, 43, 135, 169 Sculthorpe, Peter 288, 322 Sea Change 44, 467 Sea Shepherd Conservation Society 153 Sea, Land and Air see Radio in Australia and New Zealand SEACOM 21 Seacraft see Modern Boating Search see Australasian Science Search for Meaning, The 44, 225, 413 Sebastian, Guy 116, 285 Second Life 141 Secret Life of Us, The 433, 466 Secrets and Lies 467 sedition 87, 89, 118, 185, 186, 194, 234, 299, 349, 394 See It Now (USA) 465 SEEK 51 Seekamp, Henry Erle 194 Self-Help Television Reception Scheme 419 Semmler, Dr Clement 148, 180 Semper Floreat 21, 443, 444 Senses of Cinema 173 Sentia Media see Media Monitors Australia Sentimental Bloke, The 290 Sentinel 414 ‘Sentinel, The’ see Blamey, Sir Thomas Serventy, Vincent 423, 483 Sesame Street (USA) 148 Sestier, Marius 245 Seven Days 365 Seven Group Holdings 440 Seven Little Australians 44 Seven Network 10, 14, 31, 32, 45, 68, 79, 107, 115, 116, 128, 139, 144, 150, 166, 172, 176, 180, 184, 199, 202, 206, 207, 208, 222, 243–4, 269, 271, 280, 283, 295, 320, 334, 335, 380, 403, 419, 423, 424, 428, 433, 436, 440, 441, 459, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 469, 472, 276, 485, 491, 492, 495; see also television stations and networks 7.30 43, 44, 128, 151, 247, 317, 319, 471

7.30 Report see 7.30 Seven West Media 33, 40, 59, 103, 109, 226, 250, 252, 269, 296, 365, 428, 440, 445, 500 Seventh-day Adventists and media 412, 414; see also religious broadcasting; religious press 77 Sunset Strip 248 Sewell, Hamish 384 Seymour Telegraph 257 Seymour, Alan 471 Shackleton, Gregory 62 ‘Shaggy’ 97 Shakespeare family (NSW/ACT) 82, 120, 348, 425–6; A.E. (Alf) 425; Ann (née Forster) 425; Arthur Thomas 82, 425, 426; Christopher John (Jack) 82, 425, 426; Clarence Eugene (Clarrie) 82, 425; James William (Bill) 82, 425; Thomas Mitchell 82, 120, 348, 425 Shakespeare Head Press Pty Ltd 50 Shakespeare, John 309 Shakespeare, William 385, 470, 471 Shannon, Gary 142 Shares 79, 195 Sharp, Martin 89, 309, 329 Shaw, George Bernard 383 Shawcross, William 302 Shearers’ and General Labourers’ Record 235 Shears, Doug 487 Shehadie, Sir Nicholas 434 Sheilas 172 Sheldon, Linda 34 Shell’s Australia 423 Shelton-Smith, Adele (‘Tilly’) 179, 496 Shenton, Arthur 491 Shenton, William 368 Shepparton Advertiser 257, 410 Shepparton News see News (Shepparton) Shepparton Newspapers Pty Ltd 257 Shergold, John 427 Sheridan, J.B. and Bakewell, J.W. 241 Shier, Jonathan 46, 319 Shiff, Jonathan M. 94 Shifrin, Sol 98 Shine 282 shipping news 78, 121, 178, 298, 302, 315, 364, 426, 450, 460 Shipway, Gary 316 Shire Pictorial (Caringbah) 97 Shmith, Athol 338 Showcase 124 Shrew (Brisbane) 170 Silk, George 338, 486 Silver Jacket 92 Silvester, John 125 Simmonds, Ralph 447 Simons, John J. 450 Simons, Margaret 68, 95, 261 Simper, Errol 261 Simpson, Bill 212 Simpson, Colin 383, 476 Simpson, Ebony 125 Sinclair, Professor John (media academic) 34, 264 Sinclair, John (music critic) 288 Sinclair, Keith 13 Sing Tao 158 Singapore Women’s Weekly 61 Singers of Renown 44 Single Tax League of South Australia 457 Singleton Group 426–7 Singleton, Palmer, Strauss and McAllan see SPASM Singleton, John Desmond 23, 235, 413, 426–7, 441 SingTel Optus Pty Ltd 420 Sinnett, Frederick 274 Sir (magazine) 274 Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism 283 Sisterhood 170 Sisters Publishing and Book Club 171 Sitch, Rob 187, 476 Six O’Clock Rock 44, 283 Sixth Channel Report 113 60 Minutes 87, 128, 150, 180, 222, 225, 254, 322, 427, 441, 471, 490, 494

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66 and All That 485 Skalkos, Theo 157 Skase, Charles 427 Skase, Christopher Charles 106, 208, 427–8 Skase, Pixie 428 Skelton, Joseph 352 Skeptical Science 424 Ski Australia 230 Skippy the Bush Kangaroo 248, 466 Skrzynski, Joseph 435 Sky News Australia 45, 51, 69, 128, 151, 169, 333, 380, 420, 428, 440 Skyline 327 Skyways 124 Slap, The 44, 467 Sleek Geeks 424 Slessor, Kenneth 77, 136, 172, 228, 429, 486 Sloman, J. Bowring 378 Smales, Angus (‘Gus’) 347 SMART agency 102 Smart Company 125, 324 Smart, William 142 Smash Hits 286 Smee, Sebastian 27 Smith & Julius 26, 96 Smith and Miles 270 Smith, Albert 54 Smith, Arthur (radio engineer) 313 Smith, Arthur Norman (journalist) 27–8, 272 Smith, Charles Kingsford 388 Smith, Deborah 424 Smith, Dick 327 Smith, Ivan 383 Smith, James 26, 70, 274, 470 Smith, Sir James Joynton 330, 351, 428, 429; see also Smith’s Weekly Smith, Keith 156 Smith, Michael 13 Smith, Sam Ure 27 Smith, Sydney Ure 26, 27, 55, 165, 208 Smith, Terry 27 Smith, W.J. (‘Bulldog’) 429 Smith’s Newspapers Ltd 29, 331 Smith’s Weekly 24, 29, 30, 47, 83, 84, 97, 167, 172, 227, 251, 307, 330–1, 338, 351, 394, 402, 428–9, 476, 487 Smoke Signals 216 Smoky Dawson Show, The 283 Smulyan, Susan 264 Smyth, Dacre; see also Syme family ‘Snake Tales’ 98 Snell family (Norfolk Island) 347 Snipers Shots 25 Snow, Deborah 222 Snowden, Edward 494 Snowdon, Warren 317 social media 2, 5, 26, 53, 62, 68, 83, 116, 122, 126, 141, 151, 167, 172, 181, 182, 202, 206, 220, 237, 247, 248, 250, 258, 261, 270, 278, 285, 287, 304, 308, 320, 322, 323, 325, 333, 339, 342, 346, 369, 373, 374, 374, 375, 376, 402, 429–30, 437, 438, 439, 471, 481, 487, 489; see also blogging; Twitter; YouTube social pages 60, 68, 77, 86, 165, 167, 205, 272, 274, 302, 308, 317, 321, 347, 350, 361, 365, 402, 417, 430–1, 452, 455, 495, 496, 500, 501; see also women’s pages Social Salvation 245 Socialist 87 socialist press see alternative media; labour press Society of Artists (Sydney) 27 Soldier 474 Soldiers of the Cross 245, 375 Solness, Peter 294 Solo One 467 Solomon, Charmaine 176 Solomon, David 82 Solomon, Eric 8 Solomon, Vaiben 352 Somervaille, Robert 45 Somers, Daryl 479, 480 Sommerlad family (NSW) 102, 120, 409, 431–2, 482; David John Ross 432; Ernest Christian 120, 431–2, 482; Ernest Lloyd 102, 432; John Wesley 432 Sons and Daughters 198, 295

index SonyBMG 285 Sorell, William 64 Sound Alliance 324 Sound of Music 199 Sound. Music. Word 383 Soundproof 383 Source 20 Souter, D.H. 26, 77 Souter, Gavin 162, 163, 164, 262, 263, 365 South-Asian Register 250 South Australian 432 South Australian Advertiser 207 South Australian Advertiser and Weekly Chronicle Company Limited 2 South Australian Chinese Weekly see Nan’ao Shi Bao 358 South Australian Chronicle 91 South Australian Country Press Association 63, 457 South Australian Dairymen’s Journal 16 South Australian Education Department 421, 422 South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register 2, 3, 241, 356, 357, 368, 432 South Australian Government Printing Office 196 South Australian Homes and Gardens 55 South Australian Horticulturalist 189 South Australian Institute of Technology 376 South Australian Parliamentary Press Gallery 143, 345 South Australian Press Club 432–3 South Australian Primitive Methodist Record 415 South Australian Radio and Broadcasting Company 394 South Coast Times (NSW) 212 South Coast Times Pty Ltd 164 South East Asia Pacific Audio Visual Archive 291 South Eastern Indigenous Media Association 398; see also radio stations and networks South Pacific Post see Papua Guinea PostCourier South Sydney Herald 446 South Sydney Uniting Church 446 South West Pacific 230 Southdown Press 68, 96, 232, 233, 296, 468, 498; see also Pacific Magazines Southerly 252 Southern Argus (Strathalbyn) 356 Southern Australian (Adelaide) 246, 356, 432; see also South Australian Southern Grocer (Vic.) 474 South Australian Weekly Chronicle 357 Southern Baptist 415 Southern Cross (Anglican) 414 Southern Cross Austereo 101, 104, 391, 393, 400; see also radio stations and networks Southern Cross Broadcasting 86, 101, 164, 269, 391, 396, 400, 407, 421, 433; see also radio stations and networks Southern Cross Media 101 Southern Euphrosyne and Australian Miscellany, The 287 Southern Independent Publishers 170 Southern News 170 Southern Riverina News (Finley) 257 Southern Squadron 99 Southern Star 359 Southern Star Entertainment 106, 228, 433 Southern Star Factual 433 Southern Star Group Ltd 433 Southern Weekly 311 Southside News (Hobart) 276 Sowden, William 432 space see time and space Sparks, Ron E. 142 Sparrow, Daniel 485 SPASM 7, 426 Speaking Out 214 Speaking Personally 496 Spearritt, Peter 332 Special Broadcasting Committee 435 Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) 31, 33, 71, 75, 101, 102, 111, 115, 128, 139, 140, 148, 154, 155, 156, 159, 172, 173, 175, 176, 180, 188, 199, 214, 243, 248, 263,

267, 270, 281, 283, 284, 285, 292, 293, 298, 389, 390, 398, 399, 406, 419, 433–5, 439, 441, 442, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 491; SBS Independent 434, 466, 467; SBS Online 435; SBS Radio and Television Youth Orchestra 283, 434; see also radio stations and networks; television stations and networks Spectator: Journal of Literature and Art 498 Spectrum (polling) 373 Speers, David 428 Speight, Selwyn (Dan) 21, 289 Spence, Catherine Helen 495 Spencer, Adam 424 Spender, Percy 387 Spicer, Tracey 498 Spicks and Specks 188, 285 Spigelman, James 45, 138 Spinifex Press 171 Spinning the Media project 261 Spooner, John 13, 85, 309 Sporting and Dramatic News 29 Sporting Globe (Melbourne) 204, 402, 438 Sporting Mail 448 Sports and Entertainment Network (SEN) 395, 438; see also radio stations and networks sports broadcasting rights 50, 106, 117, 123, 183, 194, 228, 301, 334, 335, 435–7, 438, 439, 502; see also Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War Sports Car World 230, 275, 280 sports media and reporting 5, 11, 13, 39, 40, 44, 59, 63, 74, 77, 82, 96, 99, 100, 101, 103, 105, 106, 109, 116–17, 118, 123, 129, 138, 141, 143, 149, 166, 178, 180, 181, 192, 194, 198, 204, 205, 212, 233, 235, 245, 246, 251, 255, 256–7, 274, 275, 279, 280, 298, 301, 302, 307, 310, 311, 321, 324, 331, 334, 335, 336, 337, 357, 359, 361, 364, 365, 369, 388, 389, 391, 394–5, 396, 397, 400, 402, 407, 420, 427, 428, 429, 434, 435, 436, 437–9, 442, 447, 448, 455, 457, 460, 462, 464, 472, 475, 477, 480, 484, 490, 492, 496, 497, 502, 504; see also cricket; Empire Games; football; horse racing; Olympic Games Sportsline 428 Spotify 285 Springbok Tour 133 Squire 274 Sruss-Sruss 443 St Kilda Access Television 113 St Peeters, John 503 Stacey, Angela 183 Stag Publishing Co. 274 Standard (Tas.) see Advocate (Tas.) Standard Group 240 Stanic, Mick 340 Stanley Awards 48 Stanley, Millicent Preston 10 Stannage, Tom 364 Stannard, Bruce 294 Stanton, John 208 Stapleton, Russell 383 Stapleton, Terry 123 Star (Hobart) 359 Star (London) 50 Star (Melbourne) 24, 204, 205, 210, 336, 360 Star (Sydney) 287 Star Enquirer 468; see also TV Star Star Finder 283 Star News Group 240 Star Observer 191, 439 Star News Group and Star Suburban Newspapers 359, 446 Star Trek 322; fan club 504 Star TV (Asia) 283 StartUp Smart 125, 324 State Library of New South Wales 210, 310, 457 State Library of Victoria 310, 401, 504 Stateline see 7.30 Stead’s Review 251 Stead, W.T. 249, 440 Steel, Rev. Dr Robert 414 Steele Rudd’s Magazine 251 Stegemann, Luke 2

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Stephens, Alfred George 70, 249, 251, 417, 439–40 Stephens, Alfred Ward 349, 451–2 Stephens, Connie see Robertson, Connie Stephens, J.B. (Vic. suburban newspaper proprietor) 445 Stephens, J. Brunton (poet) 307, 355 Stephens, John (SA newspaper proprietor) 356, 432 Stephens, Thomas Blacket 121 Stephensen, P.R. 215, 252, 443 Stephenson family (Qld) 371, 378; see also Provincial Newspapers (Qld) Ltd Stepping Out 465 Steptoe and Son (UK) 463 Stevens Review 293 Stevens, Bertram 26, 27, 77, 208 Stevens, David 208 Stevens, Joyce 171 Stevens, Michael 83 Stevenson, C.V. 389 Stevenson, George 356, 368, 432 Stewart, A.M. 272 Stewart, Anthony 62 Stewart, Douglas 70, 77, 385 Sticky Institute 504 Stinson air crash 462 Stirling Bros. 129, 363, 364 Stirling, Edmund 363 Stirling, Nell 149, 150, 384 Stirling, Horace 129 Stock Journal (SA) 357 Stockbridge, Sally 34 Stocklmayer, Professor Sue 424 Stockwell, S. and Scott, P. 159, 160 Stokes, Doris 30 Stokes, Frederick 162, 349, 452 Stokes family (WA) 440, 453; Bryant 440; Kerry Matthew 50, 68, 82, 269, 296, 349, 365, 428, 436, 440, 453, 492; Ryan 440 ‘Stoking the Fires’ 181 Stone, Curtis 176 Stone, Gerald Louis 76, 221, 232, 427, 441, 471, 491, 494 Stone, Walter 289 Storm Financial 222 Stow, Jefferson 3 Straits, The 467 Strand (London) 77 Stranger, The 93 Stratton, David 173 Stream 252, 336 Street & Strip 275 Street Press Australia 286 Street Stories 383 Street, Jessie 488 Streeton, Arthur 472 Strickland, Sir Edward 242 Strife 252 strikes (journalists’ and printers’) 29, 37, 61, 123, 129, 228, 273, 295, 350, 355, 366, 378, 393, 441–2 Strong, Sir Archibald 205 Strong, Dorothy (née Crawford) 123, 124; see also Crawford family Strong, Roland 123 Stuart, Rupert Max 299 student broadcasting 398 student magazines 27, 264 student newspapers 21, 90, 209, 259, 264, 290, 309, 336, 353, 442–4 Student Youth Network 398; see also radio stations and networks Studio (UK) 26 Studio 3 94 Stumm, Lorraine 496 Sturt, Captain Charles 321 Subiaco Post 365 subscription television see pay television suburban newspapers 19–20, 21, 35, 50, 59, 90, 126, 169–70, 192, 209, 239, 240–1, 246, 264, 267, 268, 276, 280, 281, 282, 301, 320, 329, 330, 350–2, 356, 357–8, 359, 360, 361, 362, 363, 365, 366, 368, 370, 444–6, 475, 489, 492, 496 Suburban Newspapers Audit Board (Melbourne) 35 suburban press see suburban newspapers

a companion to the australian media Suburban Publications Pty Ltd 50, 127, 170, 445 Süd Australische Zeitung 356 ‘Sue Flay’ 55 Sugar and Snails Press 171 Sugar Journal and Tropical Cultivator 15 Suich, Max 133, 294 suicide, reporting of 141, 203, 239, 257, 258; see also health and medical reporting Sullivan, Errol 433 Sullivans, The 1, 124, 466, 467 Sully, Walter 313 Summer of the Aliens 386 Summer Heights High 44, 464 Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 470 Summerfield, Rose 235 Summers, Anne 222, 294, 497 Sun (Brisbane) 12, 299, 462 Sun (Kalgoorlie) 364, 450 Sun (Sydney) 11, 29, 30, 35, 39, 49, 54, 125, 142, 163, 164, 179, 204, 206, 221, 287, 288, 298, 300, 307, 313, 319, 331, 339, 350, 351, 352, 389, 411, 417, 431, 437, 441, 446–7, 496, 501; see also Sunday Sun Sun Herald Cable Service 39 Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne) 11, 24, 56, 96, 97, 98, 143, 204, 205, 206, 249, 273, 298, 307, 320, 337, 351, 360–1, 363, 402, 423, 427, 446, 447–8, 493; Sun Aria 447; Sun Home Show 447; Sun Moomba Queen 447; see also Sunday Sun News-Pictorial Sun Newspapers Ltd 29, 130, 351, 363, 417 Sun-Herald (Sydney) 29, 30, 39, 83, 85, 98, 134, 163, 202, 267, 280, 310, 373, 446, 449, 477, 501 Sunbeams (Tas.) 358 Sunbeams Book series 97 Sunday (newspaper, Melbourne) 449 Sunday (Nine Network TV) 151, 218, 222, 320, 321, 491 Sunday Advertiser (Adelaide) 3, 299, 448, 449 Sunday Age (Melbourne) 13, 39, 222, 258, 361, 449, 450 Sunday Australian 37, 130, 294, 352, 449; see also Weekend Australian Sunday Canberra Times 349, 449 Sunday Chronicle (Perth) 449 Sunday Examiner (Launceston) 160, 161 Sunday Guardian (Sydney) 29, 331, 351, 449, 487 Sunday Herald (Melbourne) 206, 361, 447, 449 Sunday Herald (Sydney) 29, 125, 163, 267, 446, 449, 452 Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne) 204, 206, 301, 361, 449 Sunday Independent (Perth) 315, 365, 421, 449 Sunday Mail (Adelaide) 3, 299, 301, 358, 448, 449, 468; TV Plus (TV guide) 468 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 72, 301, 355, 449, 501 Sunday Mercury (Hobart) 160 Sunday Mirror (Newcastle) 449 Sunday Mirror (Sydney) 98, 164, 336, 449, 477 Sunday News (Melbourne) 449 Sunday News (Sydney) 29, 60, 307, 350, 351, 449 Sunday newspapers 3, 10, 13, 20, 23, 29, 37, 39, 49, 50, 60, 72, 77, 80, 82, 84, 96, 97, 98, 125, 129, 130, 137, 160, 161, 163, 164, 169, 176, 202, 204, 206, 210, 221, 222, 239, 258, 267, 276, 277, 280, 281, 290, 294, 299, 301, 307, 315, 316, 330, 331, 336, 349, 350, 351, 352, 353, 355, 358, 361, 364, 365, 387, 421, 441, 446, 447, 448, 448–50, 468, 477, 489, 492, 501 Sunday Night (Seven Network TV) 128, 222, 495 Sunday Night Radio Two 383 Sunday Observer (Melbourne) 290, 361, 449 Sunday Pictorial (Sydney) 29, 351, 449 Sunday Press (Melbourne) 361, 449 Sunday Review 20, 290, 361, 449; see also Nation and Nation Review Sunday Star Times (NZ) 23

Sunday Sun (Brisbane) 449 Sunday Sun (Melbourne) 449 Sunday Sun (Sydney) 10, 29, 49, 96, 97, 98, 163, 267, 330, 351, 387, 417, 431, 446, 449, 452 Sunday Sun News-Pictorial (Melbourne) 361, 447, 449 Sunday Tasmanian 276, 277, 301, 449 Sunday Telegraph (Sydney) 49, 50, 77, 80, 96, 97, 98, 130, 137, 169, 176, 210, 221, 239, 280, 281, 301, 307, 331, 336, 352, 423, 449, 471, 492, 497, 501 Sunday Territorian (Darwin) 301, 316, 353, 449 Sunday Times (London) 210, 211, 221 Sunday Times (Melbourne) 449 Sunday Times (Perth) 129, 301, 364, 365, 443, 449, 450, 492 Sunday Times (Sydney) 330, 350, 448, 450 Sunday Truth (Brisbane) 449 Sunderland, Jeff 394 Sundown murders 90 Sundown Rundown 79 Sungravure Ltd 29, 30, 83, 163, 483 Sunraysia Daily (Mildura) 238, 239, 256, 362, 410 Sunrise (Seven Network TV) 151, 202, 459 Sunshine Coast Daily 98, 372, 410 Sunshine Coast Sunday 449 Sunshine System, The 222 Super Food Ideas 170 Super League and Super 12 Rugby 117, 123, 301, 335, 436 Super Radio Network 235, 239; see also radio stations and networks Survey Research Centre 32 Survivor 403 Sustainable Agriculture 16 Sutherland, Dame Joan 123, 472, 479 Swain, Dawn 60 Swalwell, Melanie and Wilson, Jason 263 ‘Swamp’ 98 Swan Breweries 316 Swan Express 365 Swan Hill Guardian 410 Swan River Guardian 363 Swan, Annie 10 Swan, James 121, 368 Swan, Dr Norman 202, 222 Swanson, Gillian 264 Sweeney, Basil 125 Sweet & Maxwell (UK) 241 Sweet Smell of Success, The 227 Sweet, John 296 Sybil (Perth) 170 Sybylla Press 171 the(sydney)magazine 311 Sydney Advocate 192 Sydney Bushwalker 327 Sydney Bushwalkers 327 Sydney Chronicle 414 Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser 3, 66, 78, 87, 122, 152, 153, 166–7, 178, 195, 201, 203, 205, 210, 241, 242, 262, 297, 306, 308, 311, 320–1, 345, 349, 366, 367, 369, 401, 413, 444, 450–1, 459 Sydney Fart 192 Sydney Gay Community Publishing 439 Sydney Guardian 308 Sydney Harbour Bridge opening 99, 103, 298, 314 Sydney Herald 78, 162, 242, 246, 306, 311, 345, 349–50, 413, 441, 451–2; see also Sydney Morning Herald Sydney Institute, The 260 Sydney Mail 59, 60, 92, 96, 163, 189, 251, 307, 308, 310, 350, 451, 470, 490; Sydney Mail Annual 451 Sydney Monitor see Monitor (Sydney) Sydney Morning Herald 10, 11, 13, 20, 27, 35, 39, 48, 50, 54, 55, 64, 66, 67, 70, 71, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 91, 97, 115, 122, 125, 126, 130, 132, 146–7, 150, 152, 160, 162, 163, 164, 167, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 180, 185, 189, 192, 194, 196, 201, 203, 206, 209, 212, 218, 221, 222, 224, 231, 242, 243, 246, 249, 254, 255, 260,

538

267, 280, 281, 287, 288, 289, 295, 297, 298, 302, 306, 307, 308, 309, 310, 311, 315, 321, 323, 328, 331, 336, 339, 341, 345, 348, 349–50, 351, 365, 366, 370, 372, 373, 374, 376, 401, 402, 413, 414, 417, 421, 422, 423, 424, 425, 431, 437, 441, 451–3, 458, 462, 470–1, 475, 476, 481, 485, 487, 488, 490, 491, 495, 496, 497, 498, 501; Good Weekend magazine 10, 295, 308, 311, 452; smh.com.au 323, 452; see also Sunday Herald Sydney Newspapers Pty Ltd 29, 49, 50, 130, 331 Sydney Peace Prize 270 Sydney Publicity Club 7 Sydney Punch 83, 251 Sydney Review of Books 71 Sydney Sportsman 317, 438 Sydney Standard and Colonial Advocate 414 Sydney Star Observer see Star Observer Sydney Stock & Station Journal 351 Sydney Studio Kitchen 176 Sydney Symphony Orchestra 45 Sydney Tonight 283 Sydney Weekender 476 Sydney Weekly 170 Sykes, Roberta 216 Sylvania Waters 403 Syme Community Newspapers 361; see also David Syme and Co. Ltd Syme family (Vic.) 12, 13, 127, 162, 164, 205, 263, 282, 337, 360, 431, 449, 453–4; Annabella 454; Arthur 454; Dacre Smyth 454; David 12, 13, 127, 162, 164, 205, 263, 337, 360, 449, 453, 454; Ebenezer 12, 453; E.H.B. Neill 454; Sir Geoffrey 12, 13, 453, 454; George 453; Herbert 453, 454; Hugh Randall 454; Jane 453; John Gourlay 453; Joseph Cowen 453; Kathleen 454; Oswald 164, 453–4; Ranald Macdonald 13, 164, 337, 454; see also David Syme and Co. Ltd; E. & D. Syme Symes, Joseph 88 Symons, Beverley 333 Symons, Sandra 271 Symphony in Steel 314 TAB see Radio TAB TAB (NSW) 235 Tabakoff, Jenny 228 Tabberer, Maggie 243 Table Talk 204, 251, 274, 307, 361, 455, 498 Table Tops 26 tabloids 3, 11, 12, 14, 24, 36, 37, 54, 82, 85, 87, 91, 97, 121, 126, 128, 129, 130, 160, 163, 164, 166, 187, 192, 204, 205, 206, 212, 214, 221, 240, 247, 252, 258, 276, 297, 298, 299, 307, 308, 316, 317, 318, 337, 338, 348, 349, 351, 353, 357, 358, 360,368, 269,370–1, 373, 402, 429, 432, 443, 445, 446, 447, 450, 452, 453, 462, 464, 468, 477, 478, 490, 491, 494, 501; see also newspaper formats and design Tabloid Story 252 Tachydromos 357 Taft Hardie Group 433; see also Southern Star Entertainment Tailor and Men’s Wear 475 Tailors’ Art Journal and Cutters’ Review, The 475 Tait, Peter Guthrie 474 ‘Take A Stand’ 258 Take Five 233, 499 Take 40 101, 142 Take That 462 Takeovers, Equities and Management Securities (TEAM) 427 talent quests see competitions; game shows; reality television Talese, Gay 168 talkback radio 2, 28, 31, 75, 85, 86, 100, 101, 115, 127–8, 141, 142, 151, 160, 166, 183, 186, 202, 224, 228, 239, 246, 255, 258, 263, 271, 336, 373, 388, 390–1, 394, 395, 398, 407, 413, 418, 421, 424, 455–7, 485, 497 Talking Health 202

index Tampa 222, 435 Tamworth Country Music Festival 284 Tan, Shaun 99 Tanami Network 214 Tancredi, Michael 323 Tandberg, Ron 13, 85, 484 Tangle 467 Tanner, Les 13, 84–5, 263 Tanner, Lindsay 444 Tantrum Press 171 Tanunda Deutsche Zeitung 356 Taranaki Daily News (NZ) 493 Taranaki Herald (NZ) 206 Tarax Show 93 Tariff Week 306, 315 Tasker, Doug 413 Tasker, Norman 257 Taskforce on Aboriginal and Islander Broadcasting and Communications 420 Tasman Pulp and Paper Co. Ltd (NZ) 312 Tasmania Enjoy! 359 Tasmanian 200, 358 Tasmanian Anglican 358, 414 Tasmanian and Port Dalrymple Advertiser 408 Tasmanian Broadcasters Pty Ltd 396 Tasmanian Broadcasting Network 103, 396; see also radio stations and networks Tasmanian Church Chronicle 414 Tasmanian College of Advanced Education 396 Tasmanian Country 276 Tasmanian Daily News 276 Tasmanian Democrat 358 Tasmanian Government Film Unit 132 Tasmanian Government Printing Office 196 Tasmanian Life 359 Tasmanian Mail (est. 1877) 131, 276 Tasmanian Mail (est. 1978) 276, 396 Tasmanian News 330 Tasmanian Opinion Polls see Essential Market Research Services Tasmanian Radio-Talk 386 Tasmanian School Paper 422 Tasmanian Style 359 Tasmanian Television Ltd 276, 396; see also television stations and networks Tasmanian Tramp 327 Tasmanian Weekly Dictator 358 Tate, Henry 287 Tattam, Peter 219 Tatura Guardian 257 Taverner Research Company 373 Taylor family (SA) 64, 409, 410, 457–8; Benjamin Gilmore 457; Darnley Harry Gilmore 457; Gilmore 457; Harry Samuel 457; Judith 457; Latitia 457; Paul Harry Gilmore 457 Taylor, Chris 91 Taylor, Florence 474 Taylor, Fredrick W. 326 Taylor, George (newspaper editor) 447 Taylor, George A. (trade press publisher) 474 Taylor, Greg 13 Taylor, Rennie 423 Teale, Leonard 208 Tebbutt, John 263 Tech Trader 386 TechGuide 459 Technicolor 433 technology reporting 458–9 Ted Bates 6, 7 Ted Mulry Gang 17 ‘Teenagers Weekly’ 10, 60, 288, 499 Teetotal Advocate (Tas.) 358 Tegg, James 251 Tegg’s Magazine 251 Telecom Australia 113, 218, 277, 420, 461, 469; see also Telstra telecommunications 21, 22, 39, 41, 48, 49, 51, 72–3, 74, 76, 78, 81, 92, 106, 109, 116, 119, 135–6, 139, 140, 151, 173–4, 178, 179, 180, 214–15, 218–20, 264, 270, 277–8, 299, 328–9, 331, 357, 364, 420, 459–61, 469; see also Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd; cable news; convergence; email and email services; internet; microwave MDS technology;

Optus; Overseas Telecommunications Corporation; Overland Telegraph Line; postal services and delivery; satellite broadcasting; Telecom; telegraph and telegraphy; telephones and telephony; Telstra; time and space Telefunken (Germany) 22 Telegraph (Adelaide) 357 Telegraph (Brisbane) 12, 121, 307, 310, 354, 355, 356, 368, 413, 461–2, 501 Telegraph (Launceston) 160 Telegraph (Sydney) see Daily Telegraph (Sydney) telegraph and telegraphy 22, 72, 76, 78, 81, 99, 119, 120, 135, 173, 174, 178, 179, 193, 213, 277, 299, 328, 338, 357, 364, 408, 409, 426, 437, 459, 460, 461, 469, 472; see also Overland Telegraph Line; telecommunications Telegraph Mirror (Sydney) see Daily Telegraph (Sydney) Telegraph Newspaper Co. Ltd 461 Telemedia 306 telephones and telephony 22, 49, 72, 76, 100, 116, 117, 122, 135, 138, 173, 179, 180, 182, 215, 218, 247, 277, 278, 378, 391, 438, 455, 456, 460, 461, 469, 489; see also Telstra; Optus Teleradio 386 Telescope 128 Television Advertising Board 184 television comedy 44, 90, 91, 115–16, 141, 144, 151, 187, 188, 231, 232, 315, 339, 462–4, 480 Television Corporation Ltd 50 television documentary 44, 52, 89, 115, 128, 248, 255, 262, 319, 321, 339, 404, 423, 464–6, 472, 476, 495 television drama 34, 44, 47, 52, 61, 68, 75, 93, 94, 100, 105–6, 123–4, 126, 127, 137, 140, 144, 156, 171, 188, 198, 208–9, 228, 248, 295, 403, 433, 466–8, 469 television education see film and television education television magazines 2, 8, 96, 115, 181, 232, 248, 386, 468–9, 499 Television Norfolk Island (TVNI) 347 Television Owners Club of Australia 468 Television Preview 468 television stations and networks: ABC Television (generally) and ABC1 (digital) 1, 16, 21, 28, 31, 32, 43, 44, 46, 64, 67, 68, 71, 72, 73, 79, 85, 91, 92–3, 94, 104, 105, 121, 128, 134, 138, 139, 140, 141, 143, 148–9, 150, 151, 153, 154, 156, 169, 172, 173, 176, 177, 180–1, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 202, 212, 214, 218, 220, 221, 222, 224, 225, 228, 239, 243, 247, 254, 255, 258, 260, 271, 280, 283, 284, 285, 298, 314, 317, 319, 321, 322, 323, 324, 334, 336, 339, 340, 342, 343, 348, 369, 404, 406, 407, 412, 413, 419, 421, 423, 424, 427, 428, 433, 434, 436, 437, 441, 442, 457, 458, 461, 463–4, 465–6, 467, 468, 471–2, 473, 475, 476, 479, 487, 488, 491, 494, 497, 498; ABC2 (digital) 44, 46, 94, 139; ABC3 (digital) 44, 46, 94, 139; ABC24 (digital) 44, 46, 139, 151, 169, 202, 421, 428; ABC Asia Pacific 45, 195; Access 31 114; ADS7 3, 105, 107, 144; ATN7 17, 29, 93, 104, 107, 131, 137, 164, 183, 188, 202, 203, 319, 365, 373, 418, 428, 436, 437, 462–3, 488; ATV0/10 93, 268, 490; Austar 220, 421, 436, 481; Australia Network 45, 46, 149; Australian Television International (ATVI) 45; BTQ7 107, 428; Bushvision 114; CAAMA 89–90, 128, 214, 225, 284, 392, 400, 406, 416; CBeebies 94; Channel 0/28 434; Channel 31 112, 113, 114, 191; Channel 47 113; Channel [V] 285; C7 440; CTC7 164; CTC10 115; CTV7 108, 440; Disney 94, 433; EVTV 113; Examiner-Northern Television Ltd (ENT) 396; Fairfax Media 104–5, 107, 108; Fox Sports 51, 301, 436, 437, 438; Foxtel 51, 113, 116, 139, 177, 182–3, 220, 244, 248, 269, 271, 301, 335, 421, 435, 436, 437, 469–70, 481, 488;

539

FOX8 403; Golden West Network 406, 440; GTV 114; GTV9 50, 63, 69, 93, 107, 183, 199, 204, 231, 315, 397, 412, 462, 463, 464, 468, 480, 493; Horizon Learning Channel 149; HSV7 62, 107, 123, 183, 204, 283, 315, 397, 412, 428, 447, 462, 468; ICTV 114, 215, 292, 293, 416; Imparja TV 89, 113, 184, 214, 215, 292, 293, 406, 416, 420, 421; Larrakia TV 114; LifeStyle Channel 244; Lifestyle Food 177, 244; LifeStyle Home 244; LifeStyle You 244; LINC TB 114; Mulka TV 114; Murrumbidgee Television 334; NBN Network 184; NBN3 108, 235, 297; NG Media 416; Ngarda TV 114; Nickelodeon 94; Nine Network 1, 5, 14, 30, 32, 50, 51, 69, 79, 94, 106, 115, 116, 123, 128, 139, 150, 151, 166, 172, 180, 184, 188, 199, 202, 206, 218, 222, 225, 227, 228, 232, 244, 248, 254, 255, 269, 271, 281, 283, 315, 320, 321, 331, 334, 335, 371, 403, 419, 420, 423, 424, 427, 433, 436, 441, 459, 463, 467, 472, 276, 484, 485, 490, 491, 494, 502; Nine Gem (digital) 139; Nine GO! 94, 139, 194; NITV 56, 74, 139, 215, 292–3, 416, 435; Northern TV Pty Ltd 396; NWS9 206; Optus Network 113, 149, 182, 183, 335, 436–7; PAKAM 416; PAW Media 416; Prime Television 32, 109, 184, 268, 407; PY Media 416; QRAM 416; QTQ9 69, 164, 203, 319; QTV 416; Satellite Community Television 114; SAS7 428; SBS Television (generally) and SBS1 (digital) 71, 113, 115, 128, 139, 140, 148, 156, 173, 176, 180, 188, 199, 214, 243, 270, 281, 283, 284, 285, 293, 298, 406, 419, 433, 434, 435, 439, 442, 464, 465, 466, 467, 468, 491; SBS2 (digital) 139, 435; Seven Network 10, 14, 31, 32, 45, 68, 79, 107, 115, 116, 128, 139, 144, 150, 166, 172, 176, 180, 184, 199, 202, 206, 207, 208, 222, 243–4, 269, 271, 280, 283, 295, 320, 334, 335, 380, 403, 419, 423, 424, 428, 433, 436, 440, 441, 459, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 469, 472, 276, 485, 491, 492, 495; 7mate (digital) 139; 7TWO (digital) 139; Seven Central 406; Seven West Media 33, 40, 59, 103, 109, 226, 250, 252, 269, 296, 365, 428, 440, 445, 500; SKA TV 113; Sky News Australia 45, 51, 69, 128, 151, 169, 333, 380, 420, 428, 440; Southern Cross Central 7 421; Southern Cross Television (generally) 32, 109, 184; St Kilda Access Television 113; STUDIO 435; STW9 69, 235; Tasmanian Television Ltd 276; TCN9 50, 62, 69, 105, 108, 183, 188, 194, 198, 199, 283, 314, 331, 411, 412, 418, 436, 465, 481; TEABBA 416; Ten Network 14, 32, 48, 64, 94, 108, 109, 115, 125, 128, 139, 150, 151, 156, 166, 172, 176, 184, 194, 202, 222, 225, 243, 244, 255, 266, 268, 269, 283, 285, 295, 315, 319, 320, 324, 334, 403, 419, 424, 433, 436, 440, 464, 480, 485, 494, 497; TEN10 267–8, 427; Ten ONE (digital) 139, 413; Ten ELEVEN (digital) 94, 139, 295; TNT9 396; TVNI 347; TVQ0 428; TVS 114; TVT6 132, 276, 396; TVW7 69, 93, 166, 208, 421, 428, 492; UBI World TV 114; Warlpiri Media Association 113; Weather Channel 488; West TV 114; Westlink 149; WIN Television 32, 109, 184, 194, 268, 396, 407; WIN4 108, 194, 267–8; WIN West 406; World Movies 435; see also commercial television; commercial television networks; community television; Indigenous broadcasting Telstra 72–3, 113, 116, 136, 139, 140, 177, 182, 183, 215, 218, 219, 220, 239, 270, 277–8, 301, 325, 334, 335, 420, 436, 437, 461, 469–70; see also Telecom Australia Temperance Banner (Tas.) 358 Temperley, Thomas 120 Ten Network 14, 32, 48, 64, 94, 108, 109, 115, 125, 128, 139, 150, 151, 156, 166, 172, 176, 184, 194, 202, 222, 225, 243, 244,255, 266, 268, 269, 283, 285, 295,

a companion to the australian media 315, 319, 320, 324, 334, 403, 419, 424, 433, 436, 440, 464, 480, 485, 494, 497; see also television stations and networks 10 on the Town 485 Tench, Captain Watkin 470 Tenders 474 Tennant and District Times 353 Tennant Creek Times 90 Tennant, Kylie 77 Tenniel, John 83, 209 Tennison, Patrick 273 Terrigal massacre 125 Terriss, Wykeham see Haire, Dr Norman Territorial 348 Text Media 170 Thalidomide 221 Thank God You’re Here 464 Tharunka 21, 329, 443 That Was the Week That Was (UK) 462 That’s Life! 233, 499 Thatcher, Margaret 294, 301 Theatre Australia 471 theatre industry 26, 28, 36, 61, 62, 90, 95, 115, 149, 194, 361, 380, 381, 384–5, 389, 462–3, 479, 485, 490; see also radio drama Theatre Magazine 470 theatre reviewing 70, 71, 134, 167, 251, 259, 274, 287, 361, 455, 470–1, 490 Theatregoer 470 Theirs Be the Glory 383 TheNewspaperWorks 330; see also Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers’ Association Theodore government (Qld) 234 Theodore, E.G. (‘Ted’) 29, 49, 50, 331, 488, 498 Theodore, John 50 Theosophists and media 30, 389, 411, 476; see also religious broadcasting Thiele, Colin 385 Things I Hear 169, 336 ‘36 faceless men’ 130, 411 This American Life 341 This Day Tonight (TDT) 1, 21, 43, 44, 128, 150, 221, 225, 247, 271, 321, 342, 441, 471–2, 476, 487, 494, 497 This I Believe 388 This Is Your Life 472 Thomas Miller 6 Thomas, Andrew 432 Thomas, Deborah 60 Thomas, Evan Henry 65 Thomas, Gordon 346–7 Thomas, Hedley 222 Thomas, Joan 129 Thomas, Josh 341 Thomas, Martin 384 Thomas, Robert 356, 368, 432 Thomas, William Kyffin 432 Thompson, Alexander 366 Thompson, Gerald Marr 278, 470 Thompson, Hunter S. 294 Thompson, J.C. 378 Thompson, John 253 Thompson, Keith 209 Thompson, Michael 110 Thompson, Paul 395 Thompson, R.J. 34 Thompson, Sydney 443 Thomson Publications (UK) 230 Thomson, John 399 Thomson, Owen 478 Thomson, Robert 300 Thorn Birds, The 467 Thorn Electrical Industries 23 Thornley, Evan 219 Thornley, Jeni 466 Thornley, Phoebe 263 Thornton, Freda see Glynn, Freda Thorpe, Andy 183 Thorpe, Billy 17 Thorpe, D.W. 270 Those Terrible Twins 97 Thousands, The 324 3 (mobile phone company) 438 360documentaries 383 Throsby, Margaret 497 Through Australian Eyes 434 Tickner, Robert 292

Tiffen, Rodney 221, 264 ‘Tightrope Tim’ 98 Tildesley, Beatrice 172 Till Death Us Do Part (UK) 463 Tilley, Elspeth 94 time and space 3, 22, 32, 59, 81, 106, 109, 119, 178, 191, 341, 379, 422, 426, 444, 451, 455, 459, 460, 472–3, 481 Time 494; Time Australia 168, 319, 373, 401 Time in Our Hands report 291 Time Off 286 time-keeping, and Australian life 22, 119, 341, 421, 473, 481; see also time and space Times (London) 82, 178, 207, 210, 279, 298, 365, 367, 401, 446; see also Sunday Times Times on Sunday see National Times Times, The (TV) 128 Tindall, Kevin 34 Tingwell, Charles (‘Bud’) 208 Tipping, E.W. (Bill) 28, 205 Tjiyangu, Simon and Panjiti 113 To Market, to Market 16 Tobruk Truth 25 Tocsin 236 Today 151, 225, 459 Today Tonight 202 Today’s Astrology 30 Todd, Sir Charles 328; see also Overland Telegraph Line Toeplitz, Jerzy 53 Togatus 443 Tokyo’s Burning 383 Tonic 202 Tonight Live with Steve Vizard 480 Tonight with Dave Allen 283 Tonight with Don Lane 480 Tonight Show (USA) 231, 480 Too Much Medicine 202 Toohey, Brian 295, 492 Toohey, Paul 168 Toowoomba Chronicle see Chronicle (Toowoomba) Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association (TEABBA) 392, 416 Top 40 music 100, 101, 141, 142, 155, 174, 175, 183, 246, 283, 336, 390, 418 Top Gear (UK) 281 Top Gear Australia 281 TOPOF (Thirty Odd Foot of Podast) 341 Torch Publishing 446 ‘Torkan’ 98 Torney-Parlicki, Prue 39, 263 Torres News 216 Torsh, Daniela see Humphreys, Dany Torque 280 Total News 64 Totally Wild 424 Touch the Sun 94, 147 Towards 2000 424; see also Beyond 2000 Town and Country 311 Townsville Aboriginal and Islander Media Association 394 Townsville Daily Bulletin 330, 355, 371, 409 Toyne, Peter 214–15 Toyota Camry Solid Gold Countdown 142 Tracks 438 Trade Practices Commission 23, 82, 258, 259, 268, 372; see also Australian Competition and Consumer Commission trade press 4, 6, 8, 78, 79, 172, 230, 235, 270, 286, 288, 315, 337, 363, 367, 473–5, 485, 496, 497 TradeMe (NZ) 269 Trades and Labour Council (NSW) 234, 235 Traeger, Alf 391 traffic reporting 5, 100, 126, 127, 319, 475–6 Traill, William H. 76, 209, 350, 440 Tran, Natalie 322 Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty 494 Transmedia 1, 494, 495 Tranter, John 252 Travel and Living 477 travel reporting 167, 178, 275, 311, 332, 333, 338, 370, 458, 465, 476–7, 483, 490, 493, 504 Travel Weekly 477 Traveller 477

540

Travelling North 231 Travers, Carmel 497 Trembath, Richard 263 Trengove, Alan 447 Triad 251 Tribune (Catholic) 414 Tribune (Communist) 218, 236, 237 Triguboff, Harry 370 Triguboff, Eleonora 27 triple j magazine 286 Triple M network see radio stations and networks Triple Seven Communications 398; see also radio stations and networks Tripp, David 34 Troedels 96 Trollope, Anthony 476, 477 Trove database 25, 264, 306, 311; see also National Library of Australia Trudeau, Pierre 294 True Catholic: Or Tasmanian Evangelical Miscellany 358 True Confessions 402 True Experience 230, 402 True Romance 230, 402 True Story 230, 402 Trumpeter (Tas.) 358 Truth (Melbourne) 168, 222, 242 Truth (Sydney) 125, 164, 201, 202, 203, 221, 310, 317, 350, 361, 364, 387, 394, 402, 449, 477–8 Truth and Sportsman Ltd 57, 203, 317, 351 Tryart Pty Ltd 163 Tsiolkas, Christos 444 Tucker, Lyle 273 Tucker, Thomas William 253 Tuckey, Bill 280 Tully, George 296 Tupper, Fred (‘Tuppy’) 493 Turnbull, Clive 205, 478 Turnbull, Joyce 478 Turnbull, Lyle 447 Turnbull, Malcolm 136, 168, 219, 220, 232, 342 Turnbull, Sue 33, 263, 264 Turner Broadcasting (USA) 433 Turner, Ethel 59, 91–2, 249, 431 Turner, Graeme 87, 264, 404 Turner, Gwyn 30 Turner, Ian 36 Turner, Jane 464 Turner, Neil 113 Turner, Paul J. 142 Turpie, Duncan 324 TV Competitions—Win Free Stuff 116 TV Ed 148 TV Guide 468 TV News 468 TV News-Times 468 TV Now 436–7; see also Optus TV Open Learning 149 TV Scene 468 TV Times 468; Sammy Awards 468 TV Week 96, 115, 181, 232, 248, 459, 468, 469, 499; TV Week Awards see Logie Awards TV-Radio Extra 486 TV-Radio Tonight 486 TV-Radio Week 486 Twain, Mark 476, 477 20 to 1 315 21st Century Fox 283, 300 24 Hours 286 Twitter 2, 5, 68, 126, 151, 191, 220, 258, 320, 322, 333, 342, 376, 429, 430, 438, 439, 489 Two Wheels 170, 275 2GB News Review 387 Twomey, Paul 219 Twopeny, Richard 474, 490 Tycho, Tommy 283 Type & Talk 8 ‘tyranny of distance’ 455, 472; see also time and space UBI World TV 114; see also television stations and networks UHF transmission 137, 175, 434

index Uhlmann, Chris 21, 247 Ulman, Jane 383 Ulman, Philip 383 Umewarra Radio 395 Unaipon, David 208 Uncensored (TV) 491 ‘Uncle George’ see Saunders, G.A. ‘Uncle Jack’ see Prentice, Captain J.M. Under the Stars 395 Underbelly 126, 467 Unearthed 284 Unfair Publication: Defamation and Privacy report 369 Unforgiving Minute, The 473 Unit 443 United Australia 372 United Cable Association 178, 179 United Cable Service 29, 143, 179, 204, 300 United Christian Broadcasters of Australia 407, 413; see also Vision Radio Network United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Awards see Media Peace Awards United Nations Information Board 56–7 United Press (Melbourne) 55 United Press (Perth) 474 United Press International 39, 441 Uniting see Journey Universal recording company 285 university calendars 19 University of Adelaide 111, 443, 444 University of Canberra 196 University of Hawaii 218 University of Melbourne 28, 62–3, 218, 219, 226, 228, 309, 324, 336, 337, 398, 443 University of New South Wales 329, 443 University of Newcastle 111, 443 University of Queensland 70, 226, 255, 256, 264, 324, 327, 355, 393, 443 University of South Australia 326 University of Sydney 34, 91, 209, 226, 227, 320, 329, 376, 423, 424, 442–3 University of Tasmania 70, 443 University of Technology, Sydney 260, 444 University of the Air 72 University of Western Australia 225, 226, 400, 443 Unleashed 324 Upfield, Arthur 483 Upham, Jo 171 Uralla Times 481 Urban Cinefile 173 ‘Us Fellers’ 97 Usher, Michael 427 USP Needham 277 Ustinov, Peter 273, 294 ‘Vagabond, The’ see James, John Stanley Valassis 50 Valenti, Jack 61 Valentine, Alana 384 Vampire 99 Van Diemen’s Land Pocket Almanack 64 Van Diemen’s Gazette and General Advertiser 358 Van Diemen’s Land Monthly 250 Vanda, Harry 17 variety 92, 93, 105, 131, 144, 149, 156, 254, 283, 381, 384, 395, 397, 462, 479–80, 485, 503 Variety (USA) 172 Varsity Ragge 443 Vashti (Melbourne) 170 VCRs see video cassette recorders VDTs see visual display terminals Vega 4 93 Vega Network 175; see also radio stations and networks Venture 252 Vermeer, Tony 40 Vertigo 444 ‘Vesta’ see Allan, Stella May Vicpress 300 Victoria Express see Geraldton Guardian Victoria, Queen 307 Victorian Aborigines Advancement League 216, 362 Victorian Ad Men’s Club 7

Victorian Advertising Club 8 Victorian Agricultural and Horticultural Gazette 15, 189 Victorian Almanac 19 Victorian Artists’ Society Journal 26 Victorian Country Press Association 257, 311 Victorian Government Printing Office 195, 196 Victorian Grocers’ Association 474 Victorian Parliamentary Press Gallery 342, 345, 346 Victorian Printers Operatives’ Union 366 Victorian Provincial Press Association 120, 362 Victorian Review 70 Victorian Typographical Association 363, 441 video cassette recorders (VCRs) 73, 119, 405, 481 Video Hits 285 Vietnam (mini-series) 467 View Access Satellite Television (VAST) 114, 139, 293, 406, 421; see also satellite broadcasting viewers 1, 14, 31, 32, 33, 34, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 68, 74, 86, 87, 98, 99, 100, 105, 107, 114, 115, 116, 119, 124, 128, 138, 139, 144, 150, 152, 180, 182, 183, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 208, 214, 215, 222, 225, 243, 244, 248, 258, 259, 260, 262, 268, 270, 283, 284, 292, 295, 313, 314, 322, 335, 344, 371, 381, 403, 404, 405, 419, 421, 423, 427, 428, 434, 435, 436–7, 441, 462, 463, 465, 466, 467, 468, 471, 473, 477, 479, 480–1, 485 vilification 9, 88–9, 159, 185, 220, 258, 421 Village Glee Club 44 Village Roadshow 36, 395 Village Voice 192 Vima Tis Ekklisias 157 Vincent family (NSW) 481–2; Ernest (Lloyd) 482; Frank Walter 481–2; Henry 481; Henry Cleave 481–2; Henry Cleave St 482; Reginald Henry 482; Roy Stanley 482; William Edward 481 Vincent Report 42, 52, 123, 137, 466 Vincent, Alf 77 Vincent, Victor 42 violence see media and violence Virgin Mobile 278 Visibility signage company 239 Vision Radio Network 392, 394, 407, 413; see also radio stations and networks; religious broadcasting Vision: A Literary Quarterly 251 Visnews (UK) 132, 179, 339 visual display terminals 330, 442 Vizard, Steve 480 Vocalion Records 313 Vodafone 277, 469 Vogel Literary Award 115 Vogue 30, 165, 170, 499; British Vogue 165; Vogue Australia 165, 166 Voice of Jacob 351 Voice of Prophecy, The 412 Voice of the Business Girl 63 Voice of the Islands 26 Voice of the People 63 Voice of the Shopper 63 Voice of the Voyager 63 Voice, The 189, 480 Voigt, Emil 101, 234 Vosper, Frederick Charles Burleigh 118, 364, 450 Vosper, Venetia 450 Voumard, Sonya 227 Vox Populi 434 VoxNews 415 Vulnerability and the News Media study 160 W.H. Groom & Sons Ltd 197 W.R. Rolph & Sons 160, 396 W&G Records 284 WA Broadcasters Ltd 400 ‘WA Inc.’ scandal 185, 492 Waddell, Jonathan Stammers 160 Waddell, William Holmes 120 Waddy, The 8, 270

541

Wagga Wagga Advertiser 493 Wainer, Dr Bertram 478 Wakefield, Edward 375 Walch, R.F. 19 Walch’s Tasmanian Almanac 19 Walkabout 71, 251, 338, 476, 483 Walker, Alan (anthropologist) 33 Walker Rev. Alan 413 Walker, Clinton 288 Walker, Denis 216 Walker, May and Co. 367 Walker, R.B. 262 Walker, Ray 229 Walker, Dr Ross 202 Walker, Stephen Daniel Mallikoff 483–4 Walkley, Sir William Gaston 273, 484 Walkley Awards 2, 22, 55, 83, 125, 127, 153, 168, 181, 195, 197, 202, 212, 222, 223, 225, 231, 247, 254, 255, 258, 271, 273, 293, 297, 316, 319, 320, 324, 337, 339, 347, 383, 484–5, 489, 494 Walkley Foundation 484–5 Walkley Magazine 260, 485 Wall Street Journal 78 Wallace, Cec 273 Wallace, DeWitt 138 Wallace, George (Jr) 381, 462 Wallace, W. Vincent 287 Walling, Edna 55, 189 ‘Wally and the Major’ 98 Walsh, Ernest 314 Walsh, Maximillian 54, 76, 232 Walsh, Mike Hayden 30, 485 Walsh, Richard 60, 171, 259, 290, 329, 444 Walsh, Robert 367, 368 Walters, Doug 502 Walton, Storry 53 ‘Wanda the War Girl’ 98 Wangaratta Chronicle-Despatch 239 Wansey, Sydney 296 Wantok (PNG) 347 war correspondents see war reporting War Cry 172, 414 War in the Air (UK) 464 war reporting 21, 22, 25–6, 28, 39, 56–7, 62, 63, 64, 65, 72, 77–8, 81, 87, 98, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 143, 144, 156, 160, 167, 178, 179, 180, 183, 203, 204, 210, 211, 245, 247, 249, 263, 278–9, 294, 302, 307, 309, 311, 313, 314, 316, 321, 333, 338, 339, 346, 365, 383, 401, 417, 427, 451, 452, 462, 478, 485–7, 493, 495, 496, 498–9; see also especially Balibo Five; Bean, Charles Edwin Woodrow; Davis, Neil Brian; Burchett, Wilfred Graham; Hughes, Richard Joseph; Mack, Marie Louise Hamilton; Moorehead, Alan McCrae; Parer, Damien; White, Osmar Egmont Dorkin; Willoughby, Howard Ward, Bernie Kirwan 129 Ward, Rev. Frederick William 130, 350, 413, 462 Ward, Ian 377 Ward, Russel 472 Ward, Thomas Thompson 253 Ward, Tom 341 Wardell, Robert 349 Warlpiri Media Association 113, 416; see also PAW; television stations and networks Warnecke, Glen William (‘George’) 49–50, 60, 487–8, 498 Warner Music 284, 285 Warner, Denis 179, 205, 486 Warner, Joan 103 Warner, Russell 21 Warren, Mervyn 462 Warren, Samuel D. 369 Warrnambool Standard 362 ‘Warrumbunglers, The’ 98 Warwick Argus 371 Warwick Daily News 371 Warwick Examiner & Times 371 Washington Post 221, 473 Washington, Megan 17 ‘Watchman, The’ see Mann, E.A. Water Rats 433, 467 Waterford, Jack 82

a companion to the australian media Watergate scandal (USA) 184, 220, 221, 227, 443 Waterloo 465 Waterman, Robert 326 Waters, J.C. (Jack) 447 Waters, John 340 Watson Review 292 Watson, John Christian 236 Watson, Paul 403 Watson, Reg 295 Watson, Trevor 177 Watt, Malcolm 166 Watt, R.G. 387 Watt, William Angus 210, 451 Watts, Ken 471 Watts, Tim 382 Waugh, Evelyn 138 Wave Hill walk-off 353 We Aim to Please 465 We Can Be Heroes 44, 464 Weakest Link, The 188 weather and natural disasters reporting 83, 100, 104, 109, 127, 152, 156, 213, 247, 296, 297, 307, 316, 393, 399, 405, 426, 427, 428, 429, 475, 488–9; see also Cyclone Tracy Weavell, John 368 Weaver, Jackie 207 Web 2.0 67, 76, 322, 323, 402 Web Wombat 219, 323 Web: New Reality 504 Webb, E.M. 296 Webb, Elizabeth 496 Webb, John 76 Webb, Ray 30 Webb, T.P. 241 Webby, Elizabeth 70 Webdiary 67, 323 Weber Shandwick 376 Webster, Owen 290 Webster’s Tasmanian Agriculturist and Machinery Gazette 15 Wedd, Monty 98 Week (Brisbane) 354, 462 Weekend 50, 209, 382 Weekend Australian 37, 38, 130, 294, 301, 308, 352; Weekend Australian Magazine 308; see also Sunday Australian Weekend Magazine 314 Weekend News (Perth) 12 Weekly Advertiser (Sandhurst/ Bendigo) 489 Weekly Age 361, 453 Weekly Courier (Launceston) 160 Weekly Courier 170 Weekly Free Press and Port Phillip Commercial Advertiser 414 Weekly Herald (SA) 236, 357 Weekly Mercury (Sandhurst/ Bendigo) 489 weekly newspapers 10, 15, 18, 36, 59–60, 91, 96, 163, 164, 189, 203, 204, 213–14, 237, 239, 251, 276, 307, 350, 354, 357, 359, 361, 401, 409–10, 432, 448, 451, 462, 489–90, 491 Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature 251 Weekly Review (Melbourne) 287 Weekly Star (Ballarat) 489 Weekly Times (Vic.) 10, 15, 203, 204, 251, 361, 490; Weekly Times’ Farmers Handbook 490 Weigel’s Journal of Fashions 165 Weiley, John 425 Weir, Peter 173 Weird Science 343 Wellbeing 202 Weller, Patrick 197 Welles, Orson 227 Wellington Independent (NZ) 481 Wellington Times (Burnie) see Emu Bay Times Wells, H.G. 144, 234 Wells, Richard 352 Wells, Thomas E. 64 Welsh, Frank 330 Wendt, Jana 1, 69, 128, 222, 427, 441, 490–1 Wentworth Courier 170 Wentworth, William Charles 349 Werder, Felix 288 Wertheim, Margaret 424

Wesgo Holdings Ltd 104, 142, 235, 413 West Advertiser (Perth) 492 West Australian 3, 59, 69, 85, 138, 197, 202, 204, 207, 208, 222, 288, 298, 307, 310, 364, 365, 373, 424, 437, 445, 470, 475, 490, 491–2, 496, 501 West Australian Catholic Record 364 West Australian Newspapers Holdings 296, 410, 492 West Australian Newspapers Ltd (WAN) 40, 103, 129, 204, 207, 249, 267, 269, 296, 365, 400, 410, 440, 491, 492 West Australian Sunday Times 450; see also Sunday Times (Perth) West Wimmera Mail 247 West, Michael 79 West, Rev. John 160, 359, 414, 452 West’s Journal of Daily Events 313 Westerly 252 Western Australian Bulletin 364 Western Australian Chinese Periodical 365 Western Australian Chronicle 363, 368 Western Australian Goldfields Courier 207 Western Australian Government Printing Office 196 Western Australian Institute of Technology 400 Western Australian Kindergarten Union 232 Western Australian Provincial Press Association 120 Western Australian Sportsman see Call (WA) Western Australian Times 491; see also West Australian Western Broadcasters Pty Ltd 196; see also Grant Broadcasters Pty Ltd Western Mail (WA, 1885–1955) 207, 251, 364, 490, 491; see also Countryman Western Mail (WA, 1980– ) 492 Western Newspapers Pty Ltd 352, 409, 410 Western Press Ltd 450 Western Stock and Station Journal 410 Western Times (Melbourne) 240 Western Vindicator (Bath, UK) 481 Western, J.S. 33 Westerner (Queenstown) 276 Westfield Capital Corporation 334 Westgate Park Printing Complex 206 Weston family (NSW) 63, 170 Westralian Aborigine 216 Westralian Farmers Ltd 399 Westralian Worker 35, 235–6, 364 Westside Observer 192, 364 Whack-ho 443 Whalley, John and Robert 240 What the Papers Say (UK) 271 What the People Want 323 What’s Good for You 202 What’s On Weekly 469 Wheel of Fortune 188, 198 Wheels 230, 275, 280 Whelan, Kerry 125 Wherrett, Peter 280, 465 Whitaker, Joseph 19 White, Alan 125 White, Brian 456 White, Earl 126, 127 White, Eric 316, 353, 375, 492 White, Hugh 492 White, Osmar Egmont Dorkin 57, 167, 486, 493 White, Patrick 254, 471 White, Peter 264 White, Sally A. 493 White, William 142 Whitehead, Charles 274 Whitehead, Geoffrey 45 Whitehead, Gregory 384 Whitehouse, Mary 343 Whitelock, Carole 395 Whiteman, Reg 166 Whitford (Broadcasting) Network 103, 197, 400; see also radio stations and networks Whitington, Don 316, 492 Whitington, R.S. 263 Whitlam government 4, 5, 21, 23, 27, 29, 37, 53, 57, 73, 78, 82, 88, 93, 100, 102, 110, 111, 130, 136, 146, 155, 174, 175, 177, 205, 221, 246, 256, 259, 265, 272,

542

284, 290, 293, 301, 319, 388, 390, 411, 433, 442 Whitlam, Gough 37, 62, 130, 137, 138, 150, 183, 239, 265, 273, 320, 411, 456 Whitley, W.T. 415 Whitlock, Tony 273, 330 Whitney, Mike 476 Whitta, Clifford Nicholls (‘Nicky’) 231, 397, 493 Whitton, Evan 168, 202, 222, 294 Who and Who Weekly 233, 500 Who Are We? 465 Who Do You Think You Are? 466 Who Wants to be a Millionaire? 188 Why Is It So? 44, 423 Whyte, Alison 187 wi-fi 219 Wicked Women 192 Wide Bay and Burnett Times (Maryborough) 354 Wide Open Road 281 Wiesener, Richard 335 Wiggins, J. Russell 473 Wiggles, The 340 WikiLeaks 222, 484, 485, 493–4 Wikinews 95 Wikipedia 220 Wilcher, Lewis 148, 374 Wilcox, Cathy 85 Wild 327 Wild Cat Monthly 174 Wild Life 189 Wild Men of Sydney (book) 317–18, 336 Wilding, Michael 71 Wildman, Alexina 249, 431, 501 Wildside 466, 467 Wilfred 464 Wilkie, Allan 470, 488 Wilkie, Douglas 447 Wilkins, Hubert 338, 486 Wilkins, Ormsby 127 Wilkinson, Alex 55 Wilkinson, Francis 429 Wilkinson, Geoff 125 Wilkinson, Marian 181, 222, 254, 295 Willessee 494 Willesee at Seven 320, 494 Willesee, Amy 494 Willesee, Don 494 Willesee, Michael (Mike) 1, 128, 150, 181, 221, 471, 472, 494–5 Willesee, Michael (Jr) 494 Willesee, Terry 494 William and John 190 William, Prince 91 Williams, Evan 173, 365 Williams, F.E. 347 Williams, Graham 28 Williams, Harold 45 Williams, Sir John 447 Williams, Kim 300 Williams, Robin 423 Williams, Rupert John (Jack) 160 Williams, Ted 90 Williamson, David 228 Williamson, Jean 501 Williamstown Chronicle 445 Willie Weeties Club 400 Willis, Albert 234 Willis, Dr Paul 424 Willis, William 336, 477 Willoughby, Howard 178, 485, 495 Willson family (SA) 409 Wilmot, Chester 383, 486 Wilson & Horton (NZ) 23 Wilson and Mackinnon Trust 24 Wilson, Amanda 498 Wilson, Bridget 228 Wilson, David 222 Wilson, Frank 315, 479 Wilson, Helen 264 Wilson, Janine 233 Wilson, Tony 465 Wimble, Frederick Thomas 367 Wimble’s Reminder 367 Wimmera Mail-Times 247, 444 Win Roy and HG’s Money 116

index WIN Television 32, 109, 184, 194, 268, 396, 407; see also television stations and networks Wincer, Simon 208 Windmill (Antarctica) 348 Windsor, A.L. 12 Windsor, Keith 280 Wine Buyer 176 Wing, Dr Chau Chak 158 Wings 25 Winners 94, 147 Winter, Samuel 203, 205 Wipers Times 25 Wire, The 128, 406 Wired Nation, The 472 Wireless in Australia 386 Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA) 386, 387 Wireless Society of Victoria 386 Wireless Weekly 29, 115, 148, 245, 270, 386, 387 Wirephoto service 338 Wirth’s Circus 388 Witcomb, Nan 395 Withers, Tony 141 Witness 222, 491 Witt, S.H. 76 Wogs Out of Work 463 Wolfe, Digby 472, 479 Wolfe, Tom 168 Wolff (Germany) 300 Wollongong–Shellharbour Advertiser 212 Wolstenholme, Maybanke 170, 496 Wolves of the Sea 44 Woman 165, 201, 417, 501 Woman at Home (UK) 120 Woman to Woman 197 Woman Voter 87 Woman’s Budget 29, 165, 251, 417, 487, 501 Woman’s Day 10, 30, 50, 68, 96, 163, 176, 232, 233, 402, 499, 500; see also Paper Giants: Magazine Wars Woman’s Sphere see Australian Woman’s Sphere Woman’s Voice 170, 496 Womanspeak (Sydney) 170 Women in Media group 225, 498 Women in the Media project 261 women in the media 13, 83, 172, 179, 180, 181, 189, 222, 226, 228–9, 235, 248, 260, 266, 271–2, 273, 280, 296, 339, 343, 346, 352, 365, 366, 372, 376, 378, 387, 399, 430, 431, 434, 439, 444, 457, 462, 470, 484, 486, 495–8, 499, 500, 501; see also especially Allan, Stella May; Boling, (Elizabeth) Dulcie; Buttrose, Ita; Gibson, Grace Isabel; Grattan, Michelle; Greenwood, Irene Adelaide; Jones, Caroline Mary Newman; King, Catherine Helen; King, Nene; Lawson, Louisa; Mack, Marie Louise Hamilton; Robertson, Connie; Wendt, Jana Women on the Line 171 Women-Church 415

Women’s Agenda 125, 172, 324 Women’s Film Fund 171 Women’s Health & Fitness 202 Women’s Magazine of the Air 30 women’s magazines 10, 29, 30, 32, 35, 49, 50, 60–1, 68, 70, 80, 86, 96, 97, 115, 116, 163, 164–6, 170, 171–2, 176, 179, 201, 202, 208, 232–3, 239–40, 249, 251, 252, 263, 271, 288, 295–6, 331, 338, 402, 468, 475, 476, 481, 487–8, 490, 491, 496, 497, 498–500; see also Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo; Paper Giants: Magazine Wars women’s pages 10, 18, 59, 77, 90, 129, 166, 167, 201, 235, 238, 249, 337, 417, 431, 447, 448, 450, 455, 490, 495, 496, 497, 498, 500–2; see also social pages Women’s Redress Press 171 Women’s Session 232 Wood, Alan 54, 146, 147, 294 Wood, Graeme 324 Wood, Hilda 476 Woodlands, Thomas Manning 253 Woodward, Bob 221 Wooley, Charles 427, 456 Woolnough, Rev. George 413 Woolworths 500 Worker (NSW) 235, 351, 496 Worker (Qld) 217, 221, 235, 238, 351, 354 Workers Weekly see Tribune Working Dog Productions 177, 187, 228, 463–4 World 236 World Administrative Radio Conference (1977) 419 World Food Media Awards 40 World Movies 435 World News 434 World of JK, The 383 World of Men 274 World Series Cricket 5, 50, 331, 436, 437–8, 502 World Summit on Television and Children 147 World Today, The 22, 180 World Travel Headquarters Pty Ltd 476 World We Live In, The 148 World’s News 29 Woroni 443 Worth, Charles 165 Worth’s Australian Fashion Journal 165 Worthington, Anne 153 Wot’s Wife 443 Would You Believe? 336 Wow! 274 WPP Group 376 Wran government (NSW) 265 Wran, Neville 148, 174, 228–9, 239, 346, 456 Wren, John 121, 355 Wright, Claudia 497 Wright, Dr James see Knight, Dr John Wright, John 281 Wright, Judith 77 Wright, Myles 42

543

Wright, Peter 315, 365 Wynhausen, Elisabeth 271, 294 Wynne, Watkin 350 X Factor, The 283, 285 X press Magazine 286 Xenophon, Nick 444 Yaffa Publishing/ Syndicate 8, 9, 97 Yaffa, David 8 Yahoo 285; Yahoo!7 10 Yamaji News see Mulga Mail Yarrawonga Chronicle 239 Yates’ Garden Annual 55 Years that Made Us, The 255 Yeates family (Vic.) 409; see also James Yeates & Sons Pty Ltd Yemm, Norman 208 Yen (magazine) 166 Yeomans, Athol 280 Yeow, Poh Ling 176 Yes We Canberra! 91 Yes, What? 381, 394 Yesterday & Most of Today 252 Yolgnu Radio 392; see also radio stations and networks York, Duke and Duchess of 307 YOU 504 ‘You & Me’ 97 You, Luke 504 Yorkshire Television (UK) 199 Young & Rubicam 6 Young Doctors, The 198 Young Media Australia see Australian Council on Children and the Media Young Talent Time 479, 503 Young Vagabond 172 Young, Alexander T. 160 Young, Chic 381 Young, George 17 Young, Graham 323 Young, Johnny 479, 503 Young, S. 261 Young, Stella 141 Younger, Ronald 263 Your Computer 323 Your Day by the Stars 30 Your Friendly Fascist 252 Your Hit Parade 283 Your Tech Life 341 Youth Show, The 131 YouTube 151, 206, 220, 322, 325, 376, 429 Zachariah, Richard 243 Zampatti, Carla 435 Zeehan and Dundas Herald 358 Zemanek, Stan 456 Ziegler, Aviva 465 Zinc Radio 407; see also radio stations and networks zines 20, 85, 99, 219, 286, 504 Zoo Weekly 276 Zubrycki, Tom 465