It’s not often you get to talk about yourself for half an hour uninterrupted in front of an eager audience.
The only attention and understanding I get these days is when I sit on the verandah step with Grand Duke Prince Finski and tell him about the daily struggle I have in selling my soul to feed him a fat-free diet to keep his liver functioning.
He always nods in appreciation. Sometimes, he even drools.
Anyway, I was pleased to accept an invitation to speak to a group of Year 10 students this week about my life as a journalist.
At first, I thought, do you really want to hear about all that?
It was a life of privilege and bribery being fed cream scones and jam at CWA meetings, or iced buns and cake at milestone birthdays, or beers and chips at awards nights in return for a lovely story about other people’s lives and achievements.
No wonder I had to join a fat-busting online program when I retired.
Then I thought a life as a journalist was actually a bit more than scoffing treats. It was a bit like being a soldier in a trench. Half an hour of non-stop talking and intense listening followed by hours of sitting down, staring at a screen and pushing words around.
Of course, I didn’t mention any of that. Teenagers want the exciting stuff. So, I talked about my time as a motorcycle courier in London dodging IRA bombs and following photographers, meeting film stars, sports champs, royals and racing back through the mad London traffic to the Fleet St office with a film of Princess Diana.
Then I told them about my 30 years at The News. I thought it would be impossible to pick out any events in the Goulburn Valley that would be as interesting or exciting as my ten years in London.
Then I realised that telling the stories of ordinary people’s lives, being welcomed into their homes or special places and being entrusted with their words of achievement, struggle, survival, loss or joy was even more special than meeting film stars and royals because these were real people with real lives. They weren’t the manufactured biographies of celebrities wanting publicity for their next money-making project.
These were genuine stories that have stayed with me. During my decades at The News, some things became embedded in my memory with more detail and emotion than others.
I was on the first commercial flight over Antarctica; I was on a bus full of media taken through the devastation of the 2009 Black Saturday fires two days after the deadly blazes tore through Flowerdale and surrounds; I boarded a train full of Shepparton people in their pyjamas who went to Spring St in Melbourne to demand more rail services.
These were all exciting times, but their emotional power pales when I remember sitting with a mother in her teenage daughter’s bedroom, listening to her recount how her daughter died next to her in the passenger seat of their car, which had crashed on a remote bend of the Murray Valley Hwy. There were many other stories like that.
After my talk to the Year 10 students finished, I asked how many of them read The News. I was flabbergasted when about 80 per cent of the 20 or so teens put up their hands to say yes, they do read their local paper. I was even more surprised to learn they read the actual article, not the digital version.
I took this as proof there is still a place for locally produced news in people’s lives. If more proof is needed that The News is doing something right, it is once again in the running for the title of Media Outlet of the Year in the Rural Press Club’s 2023 awards.
After battling on through the rise of social media, COVID and the pernicious spread of the Murdoch empire into rural areas, The News — still independently owned and locally produced — is now a bright flower in a media desert.
Long may it bloom.