Coober Pedy News
No. 76 4 March 2005
Editorial
Archived copy
Coober Pedy Regional Times (Incorporated) does it again
Being a fortnightly publication in a small, isolated outback town, any article or material published which is 'against' a person living in the town can cause a lot of trouble to the 'accused' and there's nothing much they can do about it for the whole two weeks except wear it. And in a small isolated town, it can sometimes be pretty difficult to wear.
The Coober Pedy Regional Times (formerly the Coober Pedy Times) has a history going back to 1984 of untrained "journalists" causing trouble by publishing articles etc that are not based on fact but on hearsay, and publishing information without appropriate consultation with authorities, that causes personal hardship. The most extreme effect of this loose cannon publishing has been the bombing of its office a few years ago, and break-ins and vandalism more recently.
The paper has always been run by a voluntary committee, most of which changes frequently, depending on which 'blow-in' gets talked into doing their bit for the 'community'. They hire mostly untrained and inexperienced, well-meaning people who are told that there is a certain amount of extra unpaid work involved, but somehow the committee is always able to convince those they hire that they will be doing everybody a great favour by donating their private time.
The end result of each new worker doing all this unpaid time is frustration and accompanied copious errors of judgement, syntax, grammar, spelling and sometimes just plain incompetence, no matter how good the intention is. This results in appeals for more voluntary workers, and continual appeals to the District Council of Coober Pedy for funds to drag the paper out of impending oblivion. From comments made at Council meetings it is easy to see that the Council is fed up with having to continually bail out the paper.
The continually changing committee has probably never in its 21 year history offered any type of journalistic training, or apprenticeship, or long term security of employment for any of its workers. That the workers change just about every year is ample evidence that the positions offered turn out to be humanly unacceptable.
At present there is a situation of the paper accepting and publishing a full page advertisement directed against the conduct of an individual of the town. The material has not received an iota of attention in the paper previously - no editorial, no letters to the editor, nothing of background information to do with the matter, that has been simmering for months and probably years.
And no right of reply offered to the accused individual.
Then, Whack!
There it is man, a full page ad (just like when the national Drug Authority withdrew those pharmaceutical products) - cop it sweet and see if you can come out of it smiling and saying,
"Isn't it wonderful to have a COMMUNITY newspaper!"