I t seems a very long time since we were putting our (late) November to bed... and so much seems to have happened.
Australia’s January floods were – among other things – a reminder of how the role of the newspaper has changed. No longer one of the ‘essential supplies’ which must be got through, print editions (which sometimes didn’t) were supplanted by online news services.
Yet, in my home region on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the APN’s website became the must-see destination for information when the local council’s site crashed.
On the way back from Tamworth’s country music, my wife and I were stranded in Warwick for a couple of days: The local Daily News (printed in Toowoomba) was initially missing in action, but its news site some help with updates. The road through the Cunningham Gap to Ipswich, for example – just repaired at horrendous cost – was blocked by new landslips. When it was available, ‘the local’ became a souvenir of the event.
There have been more floods since, and as we go to press, weather modellers can’t agree where or whether the next cylone will hit. But as long as the internet connection holds up – and sometimes it does so only barely – we’re still in business.
Despite the impression fostered by some of the metro dailies, Tamworth in late January is not all ‘yee-hah’ and clogging. Country music festival organisers helped launch Boxtcode there in an effort to bring new dimensions to the ‘c’-word.
The location-based app delivers advertising messages and engagement to those who key in a four-digit code. Then it’s off to a mobile-optimised website, or to await a coupon or offer delivered direct to their smartphone.
In town for the event, it neither interfered nor contributed to my fussy musical tastes – which were mostly well-catered at a hostelry on the Gunnedah road. Frankly I was more impressed with the McDonald’s virtual reality promotion, which I caught in Warwick.
In fact, with floodwater all around and a store-full of smartphone and tablet-equipped customers, Macca’s became a sort of ad hoc nerve centre for TV and online news. Their free wireless offer was apparently also taken up by journos at the Sunshine Coast Daily, who moved to the fast-food restaurateur’s Maroochydore store for a while when their own internet failed.
It’s fair to say we don’t get a lot of feedback to our print and online publications, and we’re resting the poll feature on our new GXdigital website (digital.gxpress.net) for that reason. So it was a delight to receive a websform reply from Andrew Holden, editor-in-chief of The Age, to our ‘20 questions about the Fairfax mini metros’ (see page 37), just we were going to press.
His detailed and comprehensive response (thank you, Andrew) is on our website. We run some of Mario Garcia’s expert comment, but I guess it’s no good asking if anyone would welcome more discussion – in print or online – on design issues? Anyone? Anyone???
Oh, and the poll? We asked, ‘What do think the major change at Fairfax Media will be by the time it closes its Tullamarine and Chullora print sites, in June 2014?’ No one thought Gina Rinehart would be the major shareholder; 57.1 per cent thought Kerry Stokes’ Seven West would be. A further 28.6 per cent reckoned the board or chief executive would have changed, and 14.3 per cent thought print publication would have ceased. From a sample poll experts would call unrepresentative (do the math!).
News that Singapore’s Sunday Times will start publishing pet obituaries – appropriately in its CATS classified section – brought back memories of distant days at my family’s Sheerness, UK, weekly paper.
Obituaries, complete with paid lists of floral tributes, were a traditional part of editorial content, and one we were pressured to maintain.
On one occasion, following the funeral of a local hairdresser, the pet dogs of the deceased sent a wreath. Sadly I can’t recall the message… except for the licks and woofs at the end.
