Journalism

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Time capsule 2006: purple Walkman, anyone?

I enjoy looking through my file of stories from more than 20 years as a journalist. This week, I came across a double-page spread I did for the Sunday Herald Sun, ‘Hot in 2006’, published on January 1 of that year.

I had categories for people, fashion, and—my favourite from a retrospective perspective—gadgets. This year we would, I reported breathlessly, be able to buy the new-style Sony Walkman MP3 player in “summer’s hottest colour, purple”. I did qualify that colour choice in the fashion section, saying, “Purple shoes will be a nanna look by next year—unless you’re Madonna”. Pick of the technology was the Sony Ericsson W900i 3G Walkman phone that could store—wait for it—240 songs!

In the fashion section, I noted that everyone on trend was wearing instant bronzer with sparkly highlights: “In a couple of years we’ll say ‘so yesterday, so early 21st century’,” I remarked.

On the facing page, ‘People’, I commented that Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were tipped to marry, and that Eric Bana was a favourite to win an Oscar for Munich. They did, but he didn’t, though I still reckon Eric is one of Australia’s best actors and an awfully good bloke, too. I interviewed him lots of times in the 1990s, and he was so down-to-earth and genuine. I remember one time I had to attend an entertainment industry function and shortly beforehand, I found that my house had been broken into. When he and his partner (now wife) Rebecca found this out at the function, they immediately insisted I come to stay at their place so I didn’t have to go home alone. I explained that my dad was on his way and would stay with me, but their concern was very touching.

But back to the trends of 2006.  Interestingly, there is not one mention of an Apple product. Then again, this was before the iPhone came out. Instead, we were drooling over the T-Mobile Sidekick II with phenomenal 6Mb email account.

You can read some more for yourself…

 

 

Sunday Herald Sun, Jan 1, 2006

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Long-ago interviews No. 3: David Soul and the difficult question

My TV Week story from August 6, 1994.

My TV Week story from August 6, 1994.

When I was a child in the 1970s, one of the cool American shows we all loved was Starsky and Hutch, starring Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul as Southern Californian detectives who were an unbeatable team.
I always liked Kenneth “Hutch” Hutchinson (Soul) best, though Starsky was the more stylish of the two with his chunky belted cardigan.
Starsky was the envy of young men everywhere, as was his Ford Gran Torino: one of my friends even bought a car painted like Starsky’s car, bright red with a white vector stripe along each side.
Anyway, many years later, when I was a reporter at TV Week magazine in Australia, I had the opportunity to interview one of my idols: Hutch—actor David Soul—was coming to town.
It was 1994 and Soul was no longer a big TV star, though he was still acting in films, still singing and writing. He had moved into directing, with episodes of Miami Vice, Hill Street Blues and China Beach to his credit.
Multi-skilled Soul had also gone into stage work, and at the time I interviewed him, was touring Australia and New Zealand with the play Blood Brothers.
Anyway, to me, he was still the star of Starsky and Hutch, so for the TV Week interview and photo shoot, I had a problem: though our amazing photographers always somehow made the stars look glamorous, our “studio” was a dreary, makeshift garage with a roller-door, in a back street behind our building’s car park.
There was no fridge, so you could only make instant black coffee or tea, though there was a shop over the road (which meant we then had to pay for refreshments ourselves).
The studio was cold and uninviting, and the door to the bathroom didn’t close.
Anyway, I had been told Soul and his PR person would meet us at the studio at the appointed time. I wondered if they’d find it, so, in case they came to the front of the building, I alerted the security guard at reception.
“If a guy comes in here looking for me, he’s an actor I’m interviewing and we’re round in the studio, so could you please direct him round there?” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “What’s his name?”
“David Soul.”
He laughed. “Well that’s a name I won’t forget,” he said. “What a coincidence. Like the Starsky and Hutch guy.”
“Not only that—he really is that David Soul!” I said. The security guard saw all the stars come and go and was usually nonplussed, but he was suitably impressed by this name.
Anyway, at the time Soul was due to arrive, I was back in the studio as the photographer set up for the shoot. The hair and makeup artist also awaited his arrival.
I thought I’d duck out the roller door to see if he was coming.
He was. In true Hutch style, he was strolling down the street in a black shirt and blue jeans, jacket slung over his shoulder, sunglasses on, and smoking a large cigar.
Yes, this was certainly a bit of Hollywood in West Melbourne.
I was quaking in my high heels a bit, as I knew I had to ask him some difficult questions about his history of alcohol abuse and violence (he had been ordered by the court to stop drinking and undertake two years’ therapy in the 1980s for assaulting his then-wife Patti Sherman).
I asked that the room be cleared while I conducted the interview. So it was just him and me.
What I found was a personable being who answered all my questions openly and candidly. It was and is quite unusual, for a start, for a big-name actor to agree to an interview without a minder being present.
Anyway, I asked him about alcohol and his violence, and what he had done to change his ways.
“The problem was never really alcohol,” he told me. “It was anger, hurt, loneliness, being misunderstood. Alcohol never dominated my life, but it is a mind-altering substance. I think I can honestly say I’ve become much more circumspect and much less desperate a man. With that, the problems themselves become easier to deal with.”
Then aged 50, Soul had four ex-wives and six children aged six to 30. He has since married for a fifth time, in 2010 to Helen Snell, whom he met in 2002 while working on another play, Death Trap, in the UK. I can’t find anything much about her, so I’m presuming she’s not an actor. Soul emigrated to England not long after I interviewed him and became a British citizen in 2004. Hilariously, he and Glaser returned to the screen in cameo roles parodying themselves in the 2004 adaptation of Starsky and Hutch as a feature film starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson.
But back to my interview with Soul in 1994. He had some interesting observations about fame, which he had experienced not only as an actor, but as a singer of mega-hits in the late 1970s such as Silver Lady and Don’t Give Up On Us.
“Celebrity is a bunch of crap, because it keeps you from seeing who you are as a person,” he told me.

“Fame is a fleeting thing. It can be here today and gone tomorrow. I’m still around.”
And that dreary photographic studio-garage I was worried about? He liked it! “I’ve been working in the theatre for years,” he said. “There’s certainly no glamour in the theatre and I don’t expect or want it.”

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Long ago interviews #2: the celebrity who cared

 

There's my interview with Tim Ferguson for Don't Forget Your Toothbrush. You can just see it on the upper left of this collage of stories I did for TV Week in the 1990s

There’s my interview with Tim Ferguson for Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush. You can just see it on the upper left of this collage of stories I did for TV Week in the 1990s

You know when you’re miserable with a cold, but you either can’t take the day off work, or you have something so important to do, you couldn’t possibly stay home unless you were unconscious?

Through much of the 1990s, I worked as a journalist for TV Week magazine, which was then Australia’s highest selling entertainment weekly. One day, I had an interview scheduled with Tim Ferguson, a comedy star who had been part of the very famous and edgy group The Doug Anthony All Stars, which had toured nationally and internationally and had appeared regularly on TV.

DAAS had broken up, but Ferguson now had his own quirky game show series, Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush. Modeled on the hit British show of the same name, it involved cheesy games and random travel destinations. Here’s a picture from the very kitsch launch party at Channel 9. I’m the one in the middle. Ferguson, smart man, does not appear in this photo.

Toothbrush-1995Anyway, in conjunction with the launch of this show, on another day I was to do an interview with Ferguson. This particular day, I had a heavy head cold, but we needed the interview for the next edition, and I couldn’t really get out of it. So I struggled on.

The interview was difficult: the cold was at its peak, and I had to keep leaving the room to blow my nose and cough. This was mortifying for me, such is the vanity of youth. I was rarely ill and saw it as a failing on my part. If only I’d known then what I know now about what Ferguson himself was going through privately.

Now, most celebrities, if you turn up with a cold, will look horrified, because they don’t want to catch it themselves. Witness the reaction of Katy Perry to Australian interviewer Jackie Frank when Frank reveals she has a cold (“Are you *gulp* contagious?”):

Ferguson, however, was different. “You poor thing,” he said. “I think you need Lemsip.”

He couldn’t believe I had no idea what this was. For the record, it’s a concoction of lemon-flavoured medication you add hot water to and drink. (This is not product placement, by the way, but it still does exist!).

Anyway, later that day, a package arrived for me: it was a packet of Lemsip and a cartoon by Ferguson that I still have, of me trying to do an interview with a cold. Well, I know I still have it somewhere. Unfortunately, with our recent move, lots of things whose whereabouts I thought I knew are not where I thought they were. Well, if I find it, I will update this post.

Little did I know back in 1995 that just the year before, Ferguson had been diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis), and of course had a huge upheaval in his life at the time because of it, including having to break up the fabulous group DAAS, because their touring and stage performances were too physically demanding. Beside what he was going through, my silly little cold seems just an embarrassment.

Ferguson kept the condition to himself and didn’t reveal it publicly until about 2010. But in his typical way, he has made the best of it, writing, lecturing and speaking, and even making light of his condition, performing a one-man show about life with MS called Carry A Big Stick. You can read more about his inspiring story here.

So thanks, Tim Ferguson: besides your talent and tenacity, you are officially the nicest, most empathetic celebrity I ever interviewed.

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What price a newspaper?

newsI saw a pile of local newspapers when I was at the supermarket on Saturday. They weren’t free: they wanted 40c for a copy, the cover announced.

As I’m new to the area, I thought perhaps the local rag or ‘two-minute silence’ as we used to call such publications, would be a good source of community information.

Then when I saw the price, I hummed and hahed, and finally decided not to buy one. As I walked away, I realised how ridiculous that was. It was only 40 cents! I pay 10 times that for a coffee without baulking (well, I do baulk at it, actually, but that’s what you have to pay).

Today, I went back to the supermarket to buy the Berwick News. As a former print-media journalist, my profession for more than 20 years, I feel I should support old-fashioned newspapers, even in their dying days.

Unfortunately, there were no copies left. And the joke’s on me: the assistant informed me that those copies were going free, because they were left over from earlier in the week, when they were sold at the nearby news agent. Today I went to the news agent and got one: also free, though I’d happily have paid.

I know most community newspapers are run by big media chains, but they’re still important. The other night, in my street, there was some sort of emergency, with sirens and evacuation loud speakers, after midnight. I asked on the newspaper’s website if anyone knew what had happened. Someone from the paper has replied and is looking into it.

I met an old friend at a party recently who used to work with me on a national magazine in the 1990s. The magazine moved interstate, then she was out of the workforce for a few years as a full-time mother. Then, about seven years ago, she started looking for a job again. She found one as a sub-editor at a local paper, and loves it.

“I think we make a real difference in the community,” she says. “Everyone in the office cares about the paper, and it’s so nice working in the same suburb I live in.” She’s been promoted, too, and is now chief sub-editor.

It was a heart-warming story. Here’s cheers to all the journos I know who have reinvented themselves, retrained, or found work on a different sort of publication than they once imagined themselves working on. It’s a difficult terrain out there for our profession at the moment. You have to take what you can get: but sometimes, what you get turns out to be surprisingly OK.

Oh, and if you see a local paper for just a few cents, do buy one.

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Where are they now? Aussie stars of 1994

Through much of the 1990s, except for four years in Thailand, I worked for TV Week, which was then Australia’s biggest selling entertainment magazine (more than 500,000 copies a week). We also ran the TV Week Logie Awards (“the Logies”), which were, and still are, screened on Channel 9.

The Logies—named after the Scottish inventor of the TV set, John Logie Baird—were a big deal in those days, akin to the Emmys in the US. The televised live event was always one of the highest-rating shows of the year.

Of course, it is an invitation-only event, and in those days, we TV Week reporters received our own invitation and entered via the red carpet like anyone else. (Unlike the stars, however, we had to return to the office about midnight and write our stories. Later though, we were able to return to the all-night parties, and we got a hotel room each thrown in).

Logies

When I moved house recently, I found my invitation to the 1994 Logies, pictured above. It’s poster sized, came in a tube (which I still store it in) and featured illustrations of some of the top stars of the day.

It’s interesting, 20 years on, to see their younger selves and to reflect on the industry. Some of them are, sadly, no longer with us, including the irreplaceable actor Ruth Cracknell (left, next to my name), who I had the pleasure of interviewing about that time and who won the peer-voted award that year for Most Outstanding Actress. She died in 2002, aged 76.

The other who has gone is Graeme “Shirley” Strachan (bottom, third from right), lead singer of the 1970s group Skyhooks, who had become a lifestyle-show host. He was killed in 2001 at the aged of 49 when the helicopter he was flying crashed on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

There are many in this poster whose careers kicked on and who are still involved in the media or entertainment industries, I’m pleased to say: Garry McDonald, (Most Outstanding Actor), John Farnham, Georgie Parker, Wendy Harmer, Andrew Denton, Ian “Molly” Meldrum, Gary Sweet and Sonia Todd (Most Popular Actor and Actress, respectively, for Police Rescue), Red Symons, Melissa George (Most Popular New Talent), Libbi Gorr (as Elle McFeast), Ernie Dingo, Rob Sitch, Natalie Imbruglia. Cricketer Shane Warne, then aged 25, is there in his hey-day, too.

Ray Martin (centre right) not only hosted the show, he won statuettes for Most Popular Light Entertainment Personality and the big one, the Gold Logie for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television. He won many Logies, but he once told me every single one of them was precious to him and he loved winning them.

At centre left is Daryl Somers, host of the long-running show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which ran for 27 years before being cancelled in 1999. Somers and the show made a short-lived comeback in 2010.

There are others there who we thought were big stars at the time but who perform only occasionally now or who have gone on to other things: Kimberley Davies, Dieter Brummer, Bruce Samazan, Scott Michaelson.

There are a few glaring omissions: It’s extraordinary that Bert Newton isn’t pictured. One of the best known Australian entertainers, then as now, he had hosted the show 18 times, including the year before.

The other omission is the great actor Bud Tingwall (1923-2009), who was inducted into the TV Week Logies Hall of Fame that year.

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Long-Ago Interviews: Lord Jeffrey Archer, author

In a previous career, I was a journalist who specialised in writing about the entertainment industry, celebrities, books and authors. I did this from the 1980s until 2008, when I became a university lecturer in media studies and journalism. In this series, “Long Ago Interviews”, I want to share some anecdotes from some of my more memorable interview subjects.

In the mid-to-late 1980s, I was books editor at the Sunday Star newspaper in New Zealand (now the Sunday Star Times). I had moved back to the big city, where I was brought up, after paying my dues from the age of 17 working at rural newspapers at Waipukurau in Hawke’s Bay and Warkworth, north of Auckland. I was still only in my early 20s when I became books editor of this major newspaper, but in those days, because we started so young, we were quite accomplished by age 23 or 24.

An example of my Sunday Star books page from 1986. Unfortunately, I no longer have a clipping of my Jeffrey Archer interview.

An example of my Sunday Star books page from 1986. Unfortunately, I no longer have a clipping of my Jeffrey Archer interview

Books editor

When I say I was books editor, this was an extra duty. I was primarily employed as the TV-page writer/editor, and before that the arts writer/editor of the Auckland Star Monday to Saturday. When the new Sunday edition was being planned, I sent the Editor—the big man upstairs who we lowly reporters barely ever saw—a proposal for a books page in the Sunday Star, because management had asked for ideas from staff and were prepared to give everyone a go. My proposal for a weekly books page was accepted, but it was additional to my role as arts editor then, later, TV editor. They paid me an extra $50 a week, but as all book lovers would know, it wasn’t about the money. I would be thrilled with anticipation every day as boxes of new books were delivered from publishers hoping to get a mention on the page.

Each week, as well as reviews by myself and other journalists happy to grab a free book (they got paid for reviews too, by the way), I wrote a news story about the book industry and did an interview with an author. It was a broadsheet newspaper, so there was lots of room.

As you can imagine, I was very busy, basically doing two jobs. As TV editor, every day I had to write a page of interviews and stories about local TV, and I also had to type out the program guide with witty comments! On Saturdays, I produced a TV lift-out. Then Sunday was thrown into the mix, though I’m not sure now if it was a dedicated TV page or just a news story or two.

“Mr Archer doesn’t go to interviews; you go to him”

Jeffrey Archer in 1998. Picture courtesy London School of Economics.

Jeffrey Archer in 1998. Picture courtesy London School of Economics.

One of the interviews I remember vividly from this time was with the British author, Jeffrey Archer (now Lord Archer, but back then, plain old “Mr”). Before I write further, let me say I do not agree with his politics at all, and I wouldn’t comment on his private life, of which there are many versions (for an interesting article on truth versus fiction in his life, click here). Nevertheless, I have to say he was a most charming interviewee, humorous and talkative. In addition, he is one of only a very few among hundreds of authors I have interviewed who sent me a personally signed letter  after the interview, thanking me for my time. I still have that letter.

Jeffrey Archer was extremely famous in the 1980s, and few authors could match his sales. He is perhaps best known for Kane And Abel, of which a 30th anniversary edition was released last year, and which alone has sold 37 million copies, according to Archer himself on his blog. I’ve read several of his books and enjoyed them immensely.

Anyway, Archer’s publishing company’s publicist had called me to set up an interview time, assuming I would go to his hotel. When I said that I was actually too busy to go out to an interview that day and that Mr Archer would have to come to the Star building to see me, the publicist was aghast:
“Mr Archer doesn’t go to interviews; you go to him,” she said.

I said that unfortunately, then, I would have to pass on the interview. She then got back to me with the exciting news that the author would indeed go to the journalist.

He duly arrived. I met him in the foyer, and up the rickety elevator we went in the ancient but quaint Auckland Star building, to an interview room on the editorial floor. He was with a young male assistant, who I prefer to think of as a sort of manservant (and I’ll tell you why in a moment).

Now, when I say interview room, think monk’s cellar. These rooms were just cubbyholes, really, with only a small table and a couple of chairs inside. Nothing on the drab grey walls, rather musty smelling, no windows. They were like interview rooms you see in those old hard-boiled cop movies. Nevertheless, I got him a bad cup of instant coffee in a paper cup and away we went.

Ask a rude question…

In the 1980s, young people still mostly lived by a lot of rules about how to behave in company and, especially, to have respect for their elders. You did not talk about money, religion or politics, as a rule, and you never asked a woman over 30 her age. But as journalists, we had to forget these rules, and we used to have to ask what I saw as tough questions, which you always kept until last. For Jeffrey Archer, the tough question I had to ask was, “How much money do you earn from your writing?”

He laughed and told me he had no idea. I don’t believe that for a moment, but he qualified it with some good material for my story. This is not the exact quotation, as unfortunately, I no longer have the clipping, but he answered something like this: “Let’s just put it this way. I have enough money to go anywhere I want to and to buy anything I want without having to check if there is enough money in my bank account.” He told me he had Louis Vuitton luggage, which was very impressive. He also told me that the sole reason he had started writing his first novel, Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less, was because he desperately needed money to stop himself going bankrupt.

One’s manservant has the pen

Archer signs books in Bangalore, India, 2009. Picture: Mike Lynch.

Archer signs books in Bangalore, India, 2009. Picture: Mike Lynch

Another thing that has changed in journalism is that, in those days, you would never ask a celebrity for their autograph if you were a professional reporter. You would never show that you were “star struck”. This is the one time I broke the rules: I asked Jeffrey Archer if he would sign my paperback review copy of his book First Among Equals, which was what he was in New Zealand to publicise. He agreed, then held up his right arm with palm outstretched. Immediately, the “manservant” took a pen from his pocket and placed it in Archer’s hand. Archer signed the book, and handed the pen back to the assistant. I still have that signed paperback: you can see Archer’s signature and find out what happened to my copy of the book here.

I say “manservant”, because in New Zealand, we had nowhere like as rigid or apparent a class system as existed in England. No one else I knew or had interviewed had ever had someone else to carry their pen for them, including the then-Prime Minister, David Lange, who I met at the Beehive (as the Parliament Buildings executive area is known) in Wellington in the 1980s. Well, whatever the real reason the assistant had the pen, it makes a good story and is something that has stuck in my memory all these years.

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Writer’s Diary #7: how many drafts does it take to write a novel?

I am currently immersed in writing my second novel, trying to write most days. It’s quite a while since I wrote my first (The Occidentals, published as Caron Eastgate James by Asia Books in 1999 and later in German editions), because a PhD and a non-fiction book, not to mention employment, got in the way.
So I’m getting into the swing of writing again, aiming for 1000-2000 words a day, but currently doing 300-500 words most days. Still, anything is better than nothing. If you wrote only one page a day, every day, for a year, you’d have a novel-sized manuscript at the end of it. The main thing is, just keep going, no matter how small the input seems. Regular writing is the key to success.

The other important thing is the number of drafts you will write before you deem the novel finished, or at “final draft” stage ready for submission. The other day, I came across a writing journal I’d kept in 1992, when I was starting work on The Occidentals. In it, I had written a blueprint for drafts. I’ve done a lot of writing since then, but I think this brief piece of advice from myself more than 21 years ago is still relevant, and I’m going to keep it in mind this time, too. Here it is, unedited and exactly as I wrote it back then:

My painting of my old manual typewriter, bought in Bangkok in 1991, on which I wrote part of my first novel. I bought it so I could continue working on the novel during the frequent power cuts we had in those days.

My painting of my old manual typewriter, bought in Bangkok in 1991, on which I wrote part of my first novel. I bought it so I could continue working during the frequent power cuts we had in those days.
Image ©Caron Eastgate Dann, 2012.

 

1. First draft—tell the story;

2. Second draft—check out the facts; continuity; fill in any gaps in research; rewrite;

3. Third draft—polish the writing;

4. Fourth draft—Complete the polishing; small adjustments etc.

 

 

 

As a journalist, I’m used to writing quickly, but of course, journalism usually requires short pieces, most less than 500 words each and rarely more than 2500, even for features. But I still believe step one on that list is paramount: get your story down, no matter how badly you think you’ve written it. Then you have something to work with.

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Finally: 2013 in review

It’s a little later than everyone else’s annual report, but I finally received mine this morning. I was one of the unlucky ones, originally left out of the annual report round and feeling very much like the kid no one picked for their sports team. However, I sent a query to WordPress, et voilà! They sent me a note back within a couple of days to tell me my annual report was now available. Squeaky wheel and all that…
It’s funny how blogging changes your perceptions of being published. When I was a journalist, I worked for several publications that sold more than 500,000 copies each time they were published. Potentially, that was around 1.25 million people who might read each article I wrote (in those days, for print editions in mass media, statistics apparently showed that you multiplied sales by 2.5 to get numbers of readers).
Now as a blogger, I’m ecstatic if I get 100 views in a day. I know the blog will keep growing, and I actually don’t mind that it’s not followed by, say, 5000 people. I quite like this little club, as I’ve come to think of it.
So thanks to everyone for reading, for your kind and informative comments, and for your own amazingly interesting posts.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,500 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

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How do you interview a hitman?

The news that one of Australia’s most notorious underworld figures, Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, 58, died of liver cancer today, has prompted me to reflect on a series of interviews I did with him 10 years ago.

At the time, and then known as Caron James,  I was Melbourne Editor of Woman’s Day magazine. The story was to be about his wedding to childhood sweetheart Margaret.

At first, I was reluctant to do the interview. My editor asked me if I would like a body guard! I declined, saying it wasn’t that I was in any way scared, just that I had problems with the ethics of doing such a story.

Anyway, I did do it. I met Read and Margaret at his favourite pub in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood.  He was personable and insisted on buying me a gin and tonic. Carefully, I called him “Mark”.

My interview with Mark Brandon "Chopper Read' and his wife, Margaret, in 2003.

My interview with Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read and his wife, Margaret (centre), in 2003.

“Aww, call me Chopper,” he said, “Everyone else does.”

I turned to his wife and said, “Margaret, do you call him Chopper?”

“Of course not,” she replied. “I call him Mark.” So Mark it was.

This was a true love story. Margaret had met Mark in a fish and chip shop when they were teenagers, before he turned to crime. They went out for a while, but separated. But she always loved him. She waited for him for decades, never marrying anyone else or having children. Margaret lived a blameless life, working hard and buying a little house for herself. But she never forgot her first love.

Finally, in her 40s, they got back together again, after he had married (then divorced) another woman in Tasmania and had a child, Charlie. Mark and Margaret had their own baby, Roy, in 2003 when she was 43.

After the Collingwood pub interview, I met them several more times, attending the launch of one of his books and even going to their house to see their baby. I witnessed Mark as a tender father and loving husband, and it was hard to reconcile that image with the more commonly known one, the violent criminal who spent 23 years in jail, during which he cut off his own ears.

His life of crime was covered in the 2000 movie Chopper, starring the excellent Eric Bana, which in turn helped take Bana from Australian comedian to big-ticket Hollywood movie star.

I guess, at the end of the day, you have to give Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read credit for being rehabilitated, for joining society as a writer, artist, performer. Cynics would have a lot of criticisms.

Tonight, though, I feel sorry for Margaret, who has lost a man, a husband, the father of her only child, rather than the mediatised “former hitman” and later “colourful character” as the media depicts him.

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Position vacant: journalist. (Journalists need not apply)

I came across a job advertised online this week in which a website for sports fans was seeking a journalist to write for it. Read on, though, and you are told the successful candidate “WON’T have any professional journalism experience or qualifications” (my emphasis).

Yet, in another paragraph, it says the successful candidate is  probably already doing this journalism in their “free time”. If you get the job, you will “Write articles, generate discussion, host forums and use the…platform to grow your online following and generate copious amounts of discussion around a topic we all love. SPORT.”

To me, all those things constitute journalism in some of its many and varied forms today. What they really mean is that you must never have been paid to write. Pity if you’ve had to make a living in the meantime—but I digress.

The great irony is that this job pays—not much, but $10,000-$20,000 a year “OTE” (which, as I’ve discovered after seeing it in several job ads, means “on target earnings”, traditionally used for sales positions as a guide for what the company thinks you might be able to make).

Given that you’re never to have been paid for any journalism, wouldn’t the first story you wrote for the sports website actually then preclude you from continuing with the job? Anyway, it would disqualify you from getting another such job, since you are now a professional journalist.

I agree that in the digital world, you don’t necessarily have to have trained and been paid as a journalist or to have formal qualifications in journalism to practise journalism. There are many great aspects of citizen journalism that I like—and certainly, it cannot be ignored.

But I wonder what it is about journalists or people who have studied journalism that this company so dreads? They have a very old fashioned idea of what a journalist is or is not: these days, the term “journalist” has a very broad application, and can’t be easily delineated.

And what is “professional journalism”? For example, if you write a blog and you get free tickets to a concert, or a free book or meal for review, technically, you are being paid for writing. Does that mean a blogger who has accepted one freebie couldn’t apply for the aforementioned job?

What nonsense.

Journalists are among the most adaptable people I know. If the job requires them to write like a fan, they’ll write like a fan. You CAN be a sports fan…and one of those dratted  journalists, too, amazingly.