How the Editor and I can agree and disagree

Steve Etwell, Editor in Chief, gave me an unexpectedly warm and generous welcome to The Chronicle as his Tuesday columnist. I thank him. But we have parted company.

Mr Etwell is, in my professional assessment, a hard-headed instinctive editor with a flair for sensation**, presentation and content - with his paper reaching into its community.

As he has written in The Chronicle, we have had, by correspondence, quite a few exchanges. For instance, on the paedophile Denis Ferguson, he believes every community has the right to know of a possible threat to its children.

I acknowledge that, of course, but I rather blame the State Government’s detention and police services for culpable short-sightedness in relocating Ferguson. And I worry very much about the fundamental question relating to “fair trial” process which is now under consideration by the Court of Appeal.

Now The Chronicle has named another convicted and released offender who apparently is electing to return to live in Toowoomba.

More importantly, I am furious that, given we have in our area two Bishops, a couple of Archdeacons, and a host of priests, not a single clergyman of significance has spoken out in the Ferguson affair, seeking a compassionate resolution of this damaged and dangerous man’s dreadful personal isolation.

Mr Etwell further insists that his readership is not interested in recollections about Joh Petersen. And that 90% of his newsroom doesn’t know who Petersen was! I believe the Chronicle readership is indeed interested! We’ve parted company on that.

The Editor has neither met nor spoken to me.

** Sensation, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary: Stirring of the emotion or many people or of eager interest among them; display of intense common emotion or interest; literary or other use of material calculated to cause such effect; event, person etc. causing such effect.