When does it become news?

21 October 2009, 7:19pm

Comments (2)

Is something news if most of the media pretends it hasn't happened?

I've written before about the apparent reluctance of metropolitan media to follow scoops from the country.

One example this year involved the loss of 90 jobs at a timber mill. We broke the story, Adelaide media ignored it.

Another example concerned a local swine flu death, also ignored.

A recent more puzzling example regarded the date being set for a significant murder trial.

The Adelaide media (The Advertiser and ABC) had previously been all over this case.

There was silence from them after the story (of the trial date and venue) broke in the Mount Gambier newspaper.

Quite frankly, if I was news editor at The Advertiser or the ABC in Adelaide, I'd be kicking arses after being beaten to that story by a country paper.

Maybe that's why they're pretending the story doesn't exist.

We don't normally have the resources to attend court cases in Adelaide (450km away).

Regarding the murder trial, we had a tip-off from the local court and followed it up with the Supreme Court over the phone, still beating the metros four days after the event.

That was on Tuesday. They still haven't reported it on Wednesday evening.

I don't like being scooped, but I don't ignore news that is published elsewhere first.

The exceptions might be stories that are "placed" by companies, individuals or PR firms.

For genuine news, it either is news or it isn't. A murder trial is always news, surely.

newspapers, editing, Adelaide

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Comments

Ebony 24 October 2009, 1:13pm

Maybe the murder trial will work and put Mount Gambier on the map.
Do you ever get to watch ABC Stateline? (Friday night 7.30 after the news), Ian Henschke sometimes gives people living in the bush a great storyline with all the negatives and positives.

Peter McFarlane 25 October 2009, 11:11am

The continuing city centric coverage of the Adelaide Advertiser / Sunday Mail never ceases to disgust me.
Most of their reporting is negative - thank good we don't live in the regions type coverage - drought, fire, flood, and crime, plus any opportunity to 'put the boot' into non-liberal country politicians like Rory McEwen and Karlene Maywald.

Thankfully there are a couple of notable exceptions such as Peter Goers who consistently champions country SA, and Prof Dean Jaensch regularly reports on country politics.

There are so many great good news and human interest stories that would go completely unreported if it were not for our rural media.

Well done Border Watch!

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Michael Gorey