Feeling dissatisfied
Having just completed my Saturday morning ritual of reading home-delivered copies of The Age and The Australian, I’m stirred up enough to write about my dissatisfaction with The Age.
I have never felt so let down after reading a newspaper. I really do not believe I received $2.40 in value.
Here is a rundown of what appeared in the news section of both papers.
Page 1
Age: Tax chief tips tough times (lead), Casey Stoner pic/story, Top cop raises hope on Britt (secondary).
Australian: Investors’ $30bn dash for cash (lead), rugby league grand final (pic/story), Cleaning industry’s dirty secrets (secondary).
Comments: The Age’s lead story threw me. It began with three motherhood remarks from the Tax Commissioner before talking about the general economy. The Australian’s approach was more sensible, analysing the investment switch to cash. Neither pic/story appealed to me because I’m not interested in those sports. The Age’s secondary was okay, but the cleaning industry’s “dirty secrets” in The Oz was a better yarn and not something you would expect to find online.
Page 3
Age: A long pic/story about visual artists receiving a five percent royalty payment. How niche can you get? The lead headline was about an Australian citizen fighting extradition to Croatia over war crimes allegations (good story) and there was an interesting secondary about former Governor General Peter Hollingworth saying he should never have taken the job. The arts story took up way too much space.
Australian: A much stronger page. The lead was about photographer Bill Henson effectively stalking schools to find children for nude portraits; Derryn Hinch summonsed to answer contempt charges; Mokbel boy joins mum in prison; and Hunt for suspected croc victim halted.
Page 5
Age: Nice pic/story subject about a judo athlete whose son has a rare genetic condition, poorly written though. The reference to his condition was in the 10th paragraph, everything before it was fluff. The bizarre choice of lead was about Australia not advocating overseas for foreign nationals facing a death penalty.
Australian: Pic/lead on a Tasmanian murder mystery, secondary on the arts royalties stuff.
Page 6 and 7 were okay in both papers. The Australian stayed strong through to the world news, while The Age left me flummoxed with virtually a full page of environmental reports on page nine.
This might be a rant, but the fact is I’m a disappointed punter and I might vote with my wallet.
From an editor’s perspective, I don’t understand the story selections. The page one lead was poorly cobbled together; the page three picture/story should have been subbed better; the page five lead was a non story and page nine was a waste of newsprint.
The Age might be heeding Philip Meyer’s advice I referred to in a previous post and pitching itself to an “elite”.
I suspect the strategy (if that’s what it is) won’t convert casual suburban/country readers into regular subscribers and that won’t help them to maintain dwindling classifieds revenue.
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2 Responses to “Feeling dissatisfied”
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Melbourne does not own and therefore cannot improve the quality of its newspaper because it is owned by Fairfax in Sydney which began asset-stripping the Age newspaper as soon as it took it over. Its best journalists were forced to move to Sydney or leave and it has never recovered.
A simple comparison of the SMH and AGE newspapers will reveal almost NO Melbourne content in the SMH but around 50% Sydney content in The Age.
The Herald/Sun newspaper is on the same slippery path to “SYDNEYCATION”
Its sad to see a city of substance being subsumed by a city of flash and trash.
I haven’t struck a shocker like that issue in the past few weeks.
Maybe it was a case of settling things down under a new editor during a period of industrial unrest.