May 16th, 2023Just Sayin’…

By Donna Kelly

A FRIEND once told me, as the editor/journalist, I should attend council meetings. I told her she could go along in my stead. Her reply? “No thanks, what a waste of time.” Exactly.
I do get asked now and again why we don’t cover things like the aforementioned
council meetings, court rounds, police rounds or why we don’t chase ambulances or
perhaps do death knocks. If that has kept you up at night, it’s time I came clean.
Council meetings. Firstly, covering them is pretty much note taking. All the
decisions have already been made and these days the public pretty much gets about
two minutes to speak before they are pounced on for wasting time. Much better to
do the story before or after the meeting – and some of them last for hours. They are
live-streamed on Facebook if you are bored and have finished rearranging your sock
drawer.
Courts. When I was a young journo working on the Southern Peninsula Gazette
out of Rosebud, you would spend every Friday covering the courts in Dromana.
Now, sometimes you would find something good but mostly it was something pretty
ordinary. But we were there because that’s what old-fashioned newspapers did/do.
So some poor school principal who had spent 30 years giving his all to educate
thousands of kids, gets his name in the paper, and probably loses his job, for
being .051, or some woman with three shitty kids and a nasty, abusive husband is
named because her only chance to cry for help was stealing something at the local
supermarket. But we named and shamed. Not my kind of journalism and because I
am the editor, I get the last say.
Police rounds. Now, in the old days, police reporting was fun because cops and
journos would talk to each other. In fact there was more than one young female
journo, not me, who got all the best yarns in return for the odd bit of sex. And I also
remember one police station burning off a huge stash of marijuana – we all stood
around breathing deeply. And I am sure some of it went missing. But these days
everything has to pretty much go through the media liaison unit – so that was the end
of that.
Ambulance chasing. Who does this? Someone is having the most crap night/day
of their life and you want to know who and where and why. Maybe put a photo of
the crashed car on social media before the family has been informed? Maybe if you
are a TV station you can get a journo to stand in front of the Alfred Hospital and talk
about their condition? Maybe you could get a helicopter to fly above and get some
footage of the person being wheeled into said hospital? What a great way to spend a
day and what fantastic news. Really changing people’s lives. No thanks.
Oh, death knocks. Ever done one? There’s where they send mostly young journos
to someone’s house to try and find a relative to talk about the dead and dying.
Perhaps say things like “people would like to know what sort of person they were” or
“how is everyone holding up?”. If all really goes to plan you could take a moment to
grab a quick snap of a photo on the mantelpiece. Done the knock, nothing else, and
never again.
When we started The Local 10 years ago this September we wanted something
inspiring, educational, fun and informative. And I think we have done that.
And if you really want all that news above, just head to your phone. It is there
24/7 and we could never compete with that, even if we wanted to. Which we don’t.
We’ll just keep to connecting the community. Just sayin’…