I flew out of Madrid ten days before that disastrous Spanair takeoff late in August when more than 150 people died. Spain was the last port of call on a 26-day overseas trip that took in Scotland, France, Belgium and Spain. From a newspaper perspective, I saw few publications bigger than tabloid format, and many in a smaller format (generally about 260mm by 185mm)
In Madrid I read the English edition of El Pais (The Country), and stumbled upon an extract from journalist Juan Cruz’s autobiographical work, Muchas veces me pediste que te contara esos anos (You often asked me to tell you about those years).He writes passionately about love, journalism and the obsession he developed in 1976, when Franco died, to work for a new daily. He was 24 and he thought he was in a rut (he laughs at that now). A sample from the extract:
“Here, on this terrace where the cats killed the birds that my mother gave as a present to the little girl, someone told me Madrid was about to get a new daily, and when this image of the past comes back to me, I am more than 30 years older than I was at the time; but back then, at that moment, with the sun going down and the waves crashing in the distance, I see myself gazing towards the horizon, listening to what I am being told, looking at the trees, at the architect’s house, towards the child’s school, towards the boat-filled outline of Santa Cruz whose stale air blows in whiffs of the refinery and the beer hall and carries the loud sounds of the neighbourhood children playing outside. “And at that precise moment when we are leaning our elbows against the railing and listening to the faraway sounds of the boat horns and the car engines and the motorcycles and the children screaming and the trees murmuring, we are about to be surprised by the future, and the future comes in the shape of a few words pronounced by Ramon Chao [who] tells us that a new daily is about to come out in Madrid; it’s called El Pais; they’re getting it ready; Franco is dying or has just died...”
Cruz saw this as the system coming undone and the opportunity for a new beginning and he joined the new daily, modelled on France’s Le Monde. El Pais began on May 4, 1976, and now is the biggest selling paper in Spain. It is read by 2.1 million people each day.
Blackall newspaperseeks financial infusion
While I was in Belgium at the end of July I received an email inviting me to speak at an evening the Blackall Newspaper group planned to hold on August 8 to launch a new era for the Western Queensland fortnightly quarterfold, the Barcoo Independent. The group wanted to establish itself on a solid financial basis for next year and become a weekly.I explained that I would not be back from overseas by then, and so I was invited to write a foreword for the publication to be circulated at the launch. This is what I wrote when I arrived in Madrid, on my 65th birthday, before being taken out to dinner at what is said to be the world’s oldest restaurant, the Botin, and dining on the house specialty, baked suckling pig. We all know there have been dramatic changes in Australian society since Blackall’s first newspaper, the Western Champion, began publication in June 1879. Yet one thing has not changed: a country town without a newspaper lacks a vital organ. From Blackall to Burra, Aramac to Ararat, Winton to Wentworth, newspapers were established in colonial Australia to meet long-felt wants, and to enable a community to talk to itself and to present its needs to government.
Often a newspaper preceded local government. And so the local editor would thump the tub to declare the community’s firm desire to have a locally elected citizenry representing it on a shire or municipal authority.
Today a newspaper is still the means by which a community holds a conversation with itself and stays in touch with the political decisions that affect it and the quality of the representation parliamentarians and councilllors are giving it. It is also the means by which it gets news of sporting and social events, police rounds and the latest on the hatched, matched and dispatched – the births, marriages and deaths.
The advertisements in the local paper, too, are an important source of information on what can be bought and sold within a community. The high level of readership of the news carries over into the advertising, especially for local traders with their roots firmly established in a town.
When the Winton Herald closed in 1952, the editor wrote a poignant editorial in which he said the paper had died because the community had done too little to support it. He said Winton people would live to regret it, and I am sure the people did.The Winton editorial is only one of many editorials I have seen in farewell editions of country newspapers in all States of Australia. Most said much the same thing, generally less eloquently. Blackall has a golden opportunity to learn from history, especially as it has already lost newspapers in 1886, 1983 and 2001.
Don’t let apathy clog the lifeblood of the Blackall community. Bend over backwards to make the Barcoo Independent a vibrant weekly that serves as the voice of the people for Blackall and district for years ahead. The last thing I want to read in the next few months is a poignant farewell editorial in the Barcoo Independent.
