More headlines than facts

Sensationalism? What is it? There was a classic and expensive example on Friday, October 17 with 105 cms of front-page headlines and photo but only 13 cms of actual report on Page 3.
Chronicle readers were paying for eight times more headline than report! That’s sensationalism! It’s not unusual, is it?

The 25cm high block of headlines “Pair to face court over attempted murder - Brutal bashing leaves man, 45, in coma” occupied pretty well all Page 1 – there was no text to go with them, Just a pointer to Page 3. The facts of the meagre 13cm report there had already been reported the previous night by WIN TV news and by the ABC.

The Chronicle was at it again on Saturday with the court sequel – 89 cms to headings and display to sell a report of only 36 cm. Harvey Norman uses space far better than that.

Here are some facts about recent Chronicle history:

Ø In the last 12 years, The Chronicle has had SIX editors, not one of them from the Toowoomba region.

Ø One editor, a top-ranking journalist from Sydney, left after only four months, in protest at management’s refusal to give him more editorial resources.

Ø Since the resignation of long-term General Manger Bruce Manning in 1995, The Chronicle has had three General Mangers, only one of them with a Toowoomba background.

Ø Since 1996, budgets for The Chronicle’s Editorial Department have depreciated as a proportion of total advertising revenue.

Ø The Chronicle has been converted into a monopoly advertising predator, giving less to the editorial resources that should automatically be afforded to a genuine community newspaper.

Ø In the last 12 years, The Chronicle’s editorial competence has gravely deteriorated and so consequently has its news coverage and commentary.

When Bruce Hincliffe retired in 1996 after 27 years as Editor of Toowoomba’s Chronicle newspaper, following his father Bert’s editorship of more than 25 years, it was the beginning of the end of public loyalty to and respect and affection for its community newspaper.

The loss of local ownership

That was when the multi-national media company Australian Provincial Newspapers entered the Toowoomba scene – when local ownership was halved and eventually disappeared altogether.

All during the "Hinchliffe Dyuasty" – which stood for quality involvement and decency - local ownership ensured The Chronicle was always closely identified with local social and political issues involving the entire Toowoomba regional community.

When Hincliffe became Editor in 1969, net circulation was 17,882. By the March quarter of 1983 it had risen to 26,692. Before he retired in 1996, average daily circulation topped 30,000.

So what has happened since the end of the half-century “Hinchliffe Dynasty” - as this newsletter commented last week, The Chronicle’s advertising revenue is buoyant and its circulation appears to be crumbling. Sheer advertising volume maintains its Saturday sales far above its Monday to Friday sales. Editorial content hardly rates in building circulation or in holding it.

Last week, this newsletter questioned what kind of city The Chronicle’s
sensationalist reporting represents Toowoomba to be – lawless and violent and a least desirable place to live.

Why on earth would any paper whose advertising revenue is buoyant but its circulation uncertain find it wise to lessen its editorial integrity? Why should its reporting and commentary cover have been allowed to deteriorate so markedly? How should it improve?

The target? Driving advertising revenue

The answers to the “whys” are simply given - this is a multi-national driven company with no links to the community it purposefully milks for advertising revenue, offering back only token contributions of good involved journalism..

Here are some of the growing gaps in The Chronicle’s news reporting record:

Ø It gives no continuing coherent coverage of Federal, State or local government.

Ø Its cover of the new Toowoomba Regional Council since inception at the start of the year has been sporadic and haphazard. This massive change in local government administration, effecting the people of Toowoomba and its seven contiguous shires, has all but been ignored. As have repeated TRC pleas for greater reporting cover.

Ø The Chronicle postures bombastically on “campaigns’ – blatantly it claims to run a campaign for a new Range Crossing but gives the issue only token occasional cover.

Ø In September it front-paged Mayor Peter Taylor’s call for a Crossing petition to government with a million signatures. There has been not a word since - despite the Editor-in-Chief’s finger-wagging Page 1 editorial calling on the Prime Minister to get up here.

Ø Readers of this newsletter will welcome the news that 11 South-East Queensland local authorities, including the City of Brisbane, together representing one-seventh of Australia’s population are supporting the petition. It is being professionally organised. Its wording is now being finalised to ensure it complies with the procedural rules for presentation to the Federal Parliament..

Ø The Chronicle should be giving Mayor Taylor full encouragement and support and offering, without charge, its own pages for signatures.

The Chronicle offers its readers no authoritative commentary on Federal or State governments, despite its being the flagship of the APN’s battery of wealthy provincial newspapers.

It fails to recognise the greatest asset of any newsroom – In my day newspapers had reporters who among their other assignments were expected to specialise in Political Rounds, Parliamentary Rounds, Council Rounds, Business Rounds, Police Rounds, Rural Rounds, Education and Entertainment.

When reporters were trained to be experts

Reporters specialising in local government were expected to understand and constantly examine the legislation, by-laws, and procedures regulating councils. Roundsmen were not haphazard occasional reporters.

With this reporting structure, no good community newspaper ....

Ø Would virtually ignore the coal mining threat to Toowoomba’s neighbouring iconic farmlands and families, at Felton, Acland, and Warra.

Ø Or fail to examine why Toowoomba’s water recycling referendum result came to be so final? Why Federal funding could not have been altered to kick-start non-potable recycling? And what were the political manipulations leading to this decision?

Ø Would fail to reveal the real effect of the Rudd Government’s Alcopops tax rather than the massive and misleading publicity generated by the liquor industry. The FACTS are that overall alcohol consumption has fallen since the tax rise. Alcopops have suffered a stunning collapse and although beer and spirit consumption is up, the increase comes nowhere near offsetting the fall.

Ø Would fail to report the confusion and political deceit of local Labor’s election promise to the city’s University of the Third Age of accommodation at the Baillie Henderson hospital complex – while here and now a year later it is cruelly evident that no enabling funding was intended and the U3A with its 1000 members are all but homeless.

Ø Would fail to enliven its readership’s political awareness of the performance and standing of its local politicians, thus virtually embedding them safely in their parliamentary electorates.

Ø Would posture sensationally that, as a committed but short-lived “campaign”, it was “protecting” the community from paedophiles – while at the same time inciting public disorder and contemptuously defying the State Government’s reluctant and proper decision not to make public a paedophile register for reasons of law.

Ø Could fail to recognise the growing public distaste for its editorial antics.

And so it could go on ….

I have always thought of journalism and editorship as a proud creative responsibility. The most precious of its privileges is the ability to offer informed opinion. An Editor’s most precious possessions are his paper’s Editorials – or his own personal column, should he be self-indulgent and want to stamp his own intelligence on his paper.

Currently on Saturdays we are offered instead the Editor-in-Chief’s comic idiosyncratic meanderings through his personal and family foibles. Ye Gods, how he thus shows his intelligent commitment to his community!

FOOTNOTE from Hugh Bingham: Health and age problems are becoming a difficulty and this newsletter, after today, will become occasional rather than weekly. It has been going for three months or so now. Not a bad effort for an 80-year-old who retains a passionate belief in community-involved journalism and who mourns the deterioration of The Chronicle with its long history of community commitment.