Kerry Stokes and WAN
I worked for WAN. What do I make of the changes there?
It’s hard to say if Kerry Stokes and his people will be better than the previous board and management, but they couldn’t possibly be worse.
Paul Armstrong continues to be the editor of The West Australian, but presumably not for much longer.
Every editor needs to be accountable for circulation performance. If it’s a bad year, you need some rational reason to explain it.
Armstrong presided over declining circulation in a boom economy with rising population. There is no excuse.
As editor of the Kalgoorlie Miner (Western Australia’s only regional daily newspaper), I was proud that our circulation remained steady during the company’s well documented transition problems toward the establishment of a new press.
I was delighted, of course, to achieve increased circulation once the distribution problems were sorted.
Armstrong can’t claim the same result. Stokes was right to say the editor was “in conflict with everyone”.
It embarrassed and bothered me The West was at war with the previous State Government. No government is perfect, and Carpenter’s regime certainly had its faults, but it wasn’t healthy for Western Australia that the government and the only metropolitan daily newspaper were at war with each other.
I was a heretic in the company for saying that.
My strategy at Kalgoorlie was to distance the Miner as much as possible from The West. It worked.
The previous board and management showed little interest in regional publications. We had some significant technological and distribution issues which were slow to be addressed.
I’m not sure Stokes will be any better in that regard, but I expect him to change the tone of The West.
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6 Responses to “Kerry Stokes and WAN”
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Does anyone seriously think Stokes will be better? As you put it though he couldn’t be worse. You can blame Armstrong for the fact that no-one cares whether Stokes will be good for the paper or not. That’s pretty bad.
And is Editor Armstrong the Mugabe of the newspaper world? How long have we been saying “This horror can’t go on.” and yet he’s still in charge.
Has The West become more balanced and less negative since the election? It’s hard to tell from the website.
Reverted to bland crappiness. They haven’t gone after the govt as they did for Labor, and they’re still buying in incomprehensible gerard henderson columns FFS.
“bland crappiness” … sounds like the Adelaide Advertiser.
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