Last night’s AFL match result – nowhere to be found in The Age paper edition?
I get The Age delivered on weekends. On Saturdays in particular it’s good to lazily read its numerous sections in the morning.
So I picked it up wanting to know who won the football last night: Richmond or Fremantle? I just want to know if I tipped it right.
Sometimes they have the score on the front page. Not this time.
OK, so I flick to the Sports section. Not on the cover of that either.
Then I flick through the entire Sports section (not something I do very often, I confess) looking for an answer. It’s not there. Any number of other football-related articles, but not the result of last night’s game.
It seems that while the printed version that landed on my doorstep sometime around 6am doesn’t have it, a later edition (including the Digital Edition) does have it, on page 4.
Now, I know the game was in Perth, so would have been a couple of hours behind a Melbourne Friday night game. But it was three-quarter time when I went to bed around 11pm last night, so surely they could have got a result into the paper to be delivered about 7 hours later?
I eventually went back to the Footy Tips web site to find it. I correctly tipped Freo.
And they wonder why the mainstream media is in trouble.
Was it in the Herald Sun delivered to homes?
Tags: football, Media, sports, The Age
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Mad As Hell episode synopses getting pretty weird (here’s all of them for this year so far)
Those who have been paying attention might have noticed that the episode synopses for Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell (seen for instance in the Electronic Programme Guide on most TVs) have been getting weirder and weirder.
Courtesy of the ABC TV web site, here’s a summary of them this year so far (including the next couple of weeks’):
Shaun Micallef is BACK and he’s MADDER than HELL. We really should have changed the name but it’d cost us a FORTUNE in letterheads and we’d have to change the show GRAPHICS which also runs into MONEY. Anyway, he’s back FOR A SECOND SERIES – that’s the POINT. And THIS TIME he KNOWS what he’s DOING (slightly).
Nominated for an AACTA and HAILED by Fairfax Media as the ’20th WORST show ON Australian TELEVISION.
When Shaun’s racist neighbour Mr. Grealy invites him over to eat some Japanese, Shaun doesn’t know how to take it.
When Francis asks Shaun if he can change a word in one of the scripts, Shaun kills him.
A convention for people named ‘Peter’ goes horribly wrong when Shaun is mistakenly invited. And hydrochloric acid starts streaming from the sprinkler system.
Mongoose. Winter is closing in. It is not safe. Go into hibernation. Further instructions to follow. Cobra.
Yo! Join Kook and the Bambino tomorrow morning at 7am on 103.6 Smash FM for your chance to win $10 playing Puzzling Noise.
Voula, if you are watching this, I am so sorry babe. Please do not let the trust we have built up over the last two weeks go to waste just because I screwed another chick. Call me? Stav.
Winning numbers in Tatts’ Everybody Wins Lotto Draw No. 001: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 and 40.
There’s a vampire loose in Las Vegas. No one believes or wants to believe it’s true. The police can’t stop him, people are dying, no one’s safe. How do you kill what’s already dead?
Obscure songs: JC001: Never Again
20 odd years ago, when I was into music videos (and television in general), I used to regularly record (yes, on VHS) a few hours of Rage on a Friday and/or Saturday night, and watch it the next day.
I’d categorise each song as a 1, 2 or 3. 1s I would copy onto another tape for keeping — a kind of Rage mix-tape. 2s I would watch once. 3s I would spin through.
One much-loved but long-forgotten song that I’ve just encountered is JC001′s “Never Again”.
(Once again WordPress is playing up. If it decides again to remove the embedded clip, it’s here.)
Apart from the good anti-racism, pro-mixed-race message (something I can relate to), the fast-paced lyrics made it ripe for parody in our family: “I intend to defend my blender ’til the end!”
The song has been hailed in some circles as “One of the best, most underrated uk hip hop singles ever.”
And it also apparently samples The Specials, so you’ve gotta like that.
JC001′s real name is Jonathan Pandy, and he’s still around apparently, for instance on Twitter. I wonder if he still has the crazy eyes.
Tags: hip hop, music, Rage
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My retro iPod
I just realised my iPod is nearly nine years old. That’s an age in the world of computers and electronics… does that make it a retro item?
It’s a third-generation iPod, back from before they had silly features like apps, movie playback, and colour screens… And yes, it’s still going strong, though admittedly most of its use is at home in its cradle, playing music into the stereo.
And yeah, the ear phones aren’t in such good shape, which is why I’m not using them currently.
Tags: iPod, music
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My late father’s account of the Murdoch-owned “Sydney Mirror” story in 1964 that led to a suicide
In looking through my late father’s papers, I found the following, which he wrote about an incident on Rupert Murdoch’s Sydney Daily Mirror in the mid-1960s.
I found it fascinating in light of the News Of The World controversy that was uncovered during 2011, though of course one should not jump to conclusions about the practices in the 1960s versus more recently, particularly at News’s current Australian newspapers.
I want to make it particularly clear that I’ve never had an issue with reporters I’ve dealt with at the Herald Sun, various local Leader publications, and other News Limited papers (or from other publishers).
(The Daily Mirror merged with the Daily Telegraph in 1990.)
Perhaps more recent debate about Australian media reform is also relevant.
I have not modified the text apart from making minor typographical corrections, adding some paragraph breaks for ease of reading, and inserting an image of the newspaper article (found separately in my dad’s papers) into the text.
I note the same incident is discussed in this recent article by Richard Neville (named below as then editor of Oz — which should not be confused with The Australian, which started later in 1964). Other references can be found by searching Google for the boy’s name.
However, aside from a quick look at these, I have not verified that any of the information in the account below is accurate, such as checking with those named for their side of the story.
Preparatory note
A likely scenario to this incident is: In 1963, Murdoch was eager for Calwell to beat Menzies. In 1964, NSW had a state ALP Govt to which, of the four Sydney dailies, only Murdoch’s Mirror was sympathetic. Elections were due in 1965. It is possible that a Kitchen-Cabinet decision was taken to let him off the hook. He had then only two dailies, worked just up stairs from us, and was in those days accessible in personality.
The boy lived in Zetland, which comes under Sydney Central Police. What still seems striking is the helpless outrage, not only of whole communities, but of an entire police force.
David Bowman has asked had I any hard detail on a parallel incident on Murdoch’s News Of The World (London). News Of The World would have six school sex stories every year, and you cannot check the consequences, the way you can this one, by putting the Sydney Sun and Mirror stories side by side, say in the Mitchell or National Libraries, then checking in Oz that the incident did actually occur, then picking up the name of the boy in the Perth Sunday Times.
Early in 1964, the circulations of Sydney’s two afternoon dailies, the Mirror and the Sun, were running about level. The Mirror was continually angling to win, if only for that day, the race for circulation.
Both papers run first at 9.30am to hit the streets at 11am. The edition sent to press at 11.30am to hit the streets at 1pm is normally not greatly altered during the rest of the day. Therefore a story well prepared the preceding day can knock the rival paper off balance.
This is the story of a Mirror front page and its consequences. I was a D Grade reporter on the Mirror at the time, and played no part in the events I now record.
Charles Stokes, who had a long history on Sydney papers as a Churches correspondent – he was a very up-front Anglican – found this story, and brought it to the editor, the late and unlamented Zell Rabin, who said on the Wednesday, “Give it a beat up!”
We ran it as front page lead on Thursday 12 March 1964 in all editions. The headline was SCHOOL SEX!, the school was named as the J.J.Cahill Memorial High School, Mascot, and we claimed that parents were angry at widespread fornication among the pupils. We stated that already a thirteen year old boy and a fourteen year old girl had been suspended from school: photograph of school and one angry parent, a Mr J.Attard.
The Sun found itself forced to get a few paragraphs together, which they could only do for their final edition (3.30pm for 5pm) so we won the circulation race handily that day. They were accurate. They said only that a parent had read his daughter’s diary, and on this basis, the boy and girl were under temporary suspension, pending investigation, medical examination, etc.
In 1964, fourteen year old girls’ diaries were likely to be vague and imaginative.
All that afternoon, parents were ringing us saying, “What have you done to us? Ours is a good school.” Gerald Stone and I had the two front desks in the newsroom. Three thirteen year old boys appeared, and Stone was deputed to listen to them. When he had sent them off, he murmured to me that it took guts for kids of that age to come into the city, and ride up in Murdoch’s lifts. Later, as I left the building, kids were shouting, “We think your paper stinks!”
That night, the boy hanged himself, and a copy of our front page was found in his pocket.
The next day, Friday, the nits who hope to collect £2 by ringing in a piece of news were ringing all the other papers. Their reaction was a stunned “This might have happened to us.”
On Saturday the nits were ringing us. I was on duty, as was Charles, and the editor came in when he heard the news. Charles was upset for quite some time. He said it was the parents’ fault. They lacked understanding.
Zell went out to beard the bereaved mother. As Charles said, she lacked understanding, having been more concerned for her husband and her’s neighbourhood reputation than for the state of mind of her son. She told Zell that for days young Johnny had been watching the awful violence they have on TV, cowboys, gangsters, etc, then lo and behold, she went and found him hanging from the rotary clothes hoist. Perhaps she and Zell were not looking each other in the eye.
Zell runs a story to that effect in the early editions, before the sports results begin to pour in. No names, no address, and it looks quite a moral little story.
But we also have Sunday papers in other state capitals. At least our Perth paper, the Sunday Times, runs quite a different story that is sent out, by a bungle I should hope. It is also a moral story. It says that a boy in Sydney, aged thirteen, who had been suspended from school for sexual misbehaviour hanged himself as a result. Name and address are supplied.
As it happens, government doctors find the girl was a virgin.
Our crim reporters find it hard to get tips from the police for some time, because they think Zell should be in the dock for manslaughter.
When the inquest comes up, the Sydney Morning Herald pulls itself together, and sends a reporter and photographer. The coroner says, no photos, no reports. Laurie Oakes muttered to me (only a guess) that Murdoch bribed him.
I was telling the story all around town. Geoffrey Lehmann, then a young lawyer, asked me if he could give it to Oz. I said he could give it to whomever he wished, adding sarcastically that Oz editors Richard Neville and Richard Walsh, with their sex-in-the-head obsession with nymphets would fuck it up. Lehmann used to get invites to their exclusive nymphet parties. They did. Eight sentences which their most devoted admirers don’t even remember, and their punchline was – THE GIRL WAS A VIRGIN! Oh big deal fellers!
I handed this story, with the related press clippings to Brian Johns, for the Ethics Committee of the Australian Journalists Association. They took no action. It would be interesting to know if the AJA still had this material. The related Saturday Mirror might be hard to track down, because material is shed as it becomes mainly a sports results paper as the afternoon progresses. (Also check various state editions of Truth, Adelaide News, Sunday Mail?)
I was basically saving up to go to England, where I ended up sitting out the Vietnam War. On my return, I found good-hearted Sydney journalists (say Dick Hall) had forgotten, or pretended to forget the incident. A ready amnesia for an event that caricatured so horribly their occupational rationale?
Charles Stokes also came to London, got on the London Guardian. He was then appointed to a lectureship on journalism at Queensland University, but is now with a NSW Government Dept. (He was picked sight unseen by the then Senior Lecturer-in-Charge, an old Guardian man, but was finally told the University wished he’d go away.)
No one was ever punished for this incident, any more than the London Sun beat-up men are. (Sydney Morning Herald and Age Weekend Magazine 18-3-89 has the story of how Elton John forced Murdoch to pay out £1,000,000.)
When Rabin died in 1967 aged 35, people made an incredible fuss about the Boy Genius of Tabloids – even an obituary in the London Times (not then owned by Murdoch). It was probably written by Murdoch who was then in London, and who as he then was, liked Zell because he’d stand up to him.
Tags: 1960s, Dad, Media
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Not live, from studio 13 at Gordon Street
A little while ago I bought myself the Collected Shaun Micallef — a box set of numerous shows of his, including The Micallef P(r)ogram(me). The kids and I have been watching our way through it.
I remembered that I had gone to a recording of the show, but had no idea which episode it was. The other night it became very obvious that it had been the final episode of season 2 — in a sketch parodying The Price Is Right, there I was, in the audience.
Coincidentally last night we went to a recording of one of Shaun’s current series — Mad As Hell. We arrived about 5pm, and around half-an-hour later were let into a waiting area, then into the studio itself, with recording starting at about 6pm. With stops and starts and gaffs aplenty, it took until about 8pm to record the half-hour show.
It’ll air tonight.
Most unintentionally amusing moment: after numerous warnings to go to the toilet before recording started, the warm-up guy asked if there were any final questions before beginning, only to be faced with one gentleman piping up: “Is there time to urinate?” — he was whisked off to do so.
Best moment you won’t see on-screen: an audience member who is a musician from Morocco (who has just emigrated) being invited onto stage to play a guitar they’d found. He played a North African song which (if I got this right) is about a bloke who pays a dowry for a wife but is dudded by the father (who has dudded many suitors) and ends up alone.
I don’t think there were any shots of the audience filmed for the show, but the warm-up guy took a photo of part of the audience. I’m up the back, a blurry blob in the dark, waving.
Lots of fun… apparently they still need audiences for later in the season.
Tags: ABC, Shaun Micallef, television
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Meteor & asteroid on the news – it’s like Doctor Who when they have the fake news bulletins
Over the past 24 hours, seeing the stories of the asteroid close-call and the meteor falling in Russia, it’s been a bit like those scenes in Doctor Who where they have a news bulletin about the latest alien invasion.
Tags: asteroid, Doctor Who, meteor, news
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No old school tie for me – how about old school cuff links instead?
I’m not a great cuff link wearer, but recently I inadvertently bought a shirt that needs them, and I couldn’t find any at home.
I noticed the school Old Boys association sells them, so (I guess to mark 25 years since I did VCE — gulp) I bought some.
I don’t mind these… they aren’t too obvious when seen from a normal distance. I’m glad I got the plain pewter design though, not the coloured enamel ones… for an old boy design, I think I prefer it to be subtle rather than SHOUTY.
I don’t wear ties anymore. One commenter on a previous post about shirts noted the idea of collecting differing cuff links instead of ties. I’m not sure I’d go down that path, but I would consider getting a few more of different designs.
PS. Any other MHS ’88 people reading, apparently the 25th anniversary dinner is on 31st of May. Hope to see you there!
