Noosa Today seems to have been copping a bit of a flogging of late in various community forums.
Of course, in journalism, if everyone loves you all the time you simply aren’t doing your job properly, but as a colleague suggested to me the other day, “People seem to be much meaner than they were.”
That may or may not be true but what is undeniable is the fact that we live in a world in which writing a fury-filled letter to the editor is only one of a multitude of ways to vent, often without any semblance of fact to back the rant.
Social media provides an avenue for instant gratification like no other. It can be used for good in many ways, but also offers a free hit at an enemy, a settling of old scores, trial by innuendo, complete fabrication and sometimes and regrettably, old-fashioned hate-speech.
Mostly, however, its community incarnations are just full of harmless rants by people who could benefit from seeing a shrink, or at least a good editor. Occasionally you might find a well-written rant from a person who knows the issues and makes a good case, and that’s a welcome relief.
So the long threads of detrimental comments that have popped up on platforms such as Residents For Noosa in response to recent articles and letters published (or in some cases not published) in Noosa Today don’t bother me too much, even when I’m personally targeted.
Rod Ritchie, the moderator of that page and an occasional contributor to this masthead, is a fair man who makes every effort to balance the more out-there views of some of his correspondents. Even the fringe single-issue pseudo eco pages, in which the long-winded moderators are anything but moderate, I treat as you would a short, sharp passing of wind in a crowded room – unpleasant but only for a moment.
What is more annoying and slightly disappointing is when a respected community opinion forum like Noosa Matters joins the fray for a low blow with no evidence produced.
As an occasional contributor to the website I have great admiration for the way in which editor Ric Jay has pulled together a blend of quality opinionated content from across the community in little over a year. But novelist and former newspaperman Terry Quinn misses the mark, in my view, with his off the top of the head analysis of the woes of local print journalism.
Quoting HL Mencken’s “journalism is to politician as dog is to lamppost” as an opener, Terry goes on to lament the general decline of the quality of print journalism since the flight to the web, before localising it: “What has all that got to do with Noosa? We used to be served by two free newspapers, one of them a bi-weekly, plus a daily out of Maroochydore. Today, only one remains in print form. I do not wish to criticise the latter unduly, but let’s just say it is not the sort of watchdog that Mencken had in mind.”
Mencken died in 1956, long before the arrival of the internet and the instant experts of social media. For enlightenment on newspapers in the modern world, I prefer philosopher Alain de Botton (born 1969): “To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one’s ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.” I can hear the roar now, even as I write!
But to get back to Terry’s lesson in the failings of local print, he says: “The result is that Noosa Council, once held to account by dogged (excuse the pun) journalists for decades, has enjoyed less scrutiny in recent years. That is problematic at a time when many residents feel we are reaching a crossroads. A turning point when one crazy decision … could mark the beginning of the end of the laid-back, life-affirming Noosa we’ve known and loved.”
Noosa Today is the only shire-wide paper we have, so there is no question about where the blow torch is aimed, but Terry’s case simply doesn’t stand up to the most elementary investigation, which might involve going to Noosaville Library and examining the decades of bound Noosa News, which I’ve done in recent times.
I’ve been a columnist for this paper since it began a dozen years ago, and a senior journalist for it since it returned to print three years ago. It is my informed opinion that this masthead has done more for balanced reporting and investigation of our institutions in its relatively short lifetime than the others have done over half a century.
Which is not to say we always get it right.
The issue that has sparked recent on-line fury is a case in point. We ran a letter from a well-respected citizen gently poking fun at our current council’s priorities, suggesting we should seek to elect “environmentally astute and resident-friendly” councillors next time. The mayor used her regular column about community issues to give the letter writer both barrels in an unnecessarily personal attack, and we doubled down by also running a letter from a leading mayoral supporter saying the same thing. With a flood of letters in the coming fortnight on other matters, the several letters supporting the original and criticising the mayor’s column didn’t get a run. They should have.
But we move on. Sometimes balance takes time.
