In this week’s column, Adelaide stereotypes wear thin, InDaily boosts its team, we recall media coverage of Barlow and Chambers, and a lot more.

Fin Review doesn’t want Adelaide readers

It’s funny how the national business newspaper, the Australian Financial Review, spends lots of money on doing journalism, printing newspapers and sending them to Adelaide – but doesn’t actually want any Adelaide readers.

At least, that’s the impression given by the Fin’s spiky back page columnist Joe Aston.

On Wednesday he reported on Santos chairman Ken Borda deciding to retire after just over 18 months on the job – with Aston “hearing whispers” that he wasn’t getting on with Santos CE David Knox.

“In fairness, Borda has been a director for eight years, and appears to be pulling back on his business commitments,” Aston wrote. “Also, who the hell would want to spend so much time in Adelaide? If it makes the natives want to kill their neighbours, store them in barrels and spend their dole cheques, imagine what the place does to the emotional wellbeing of a regular visitor!”

Hilarious.

Aston didn’t seem worried for his life when he was conspicuously enjoying the corporate hospitality of South Australian companies at Adelaide Oval during the Australia-India Test in December.

No longer Boring

The cheeky local podcast, Another Boring Thursday Night in Adelaide, has rebranded after 80 episodes.

Hosted by Steve Davis and Nigel Dobson-Keeffe, the podcast’s original name was ironic – a stab at those who like to stereotype our city (see above).

But with the city’s transformation in recent years, the name no longer seemed relevant. From this week, it’s simply The Adelaide Show.

Former lord mayor Stephen Yarwood is a guest host this week, and his contribution is revealing.

He says he “moped about the house” for a few weeks after his election loss last year, but is now preparing to unveil a new business as an “urban futurist”.

Yarwood also has a few digs at ABC broadcaster and Sunday Mail columnist Peter Goers, who he noted liked to call him Stephen “Pop-up” Yarwood.

Yarwood suggested an epithet for Goers – and it’s not complimentary.

Listen here.

InDaily adds experience

InDaily is pleased to welcome two new journalists to its team.

Nigel Hopkins, in my view South Australia’s most credible and experienced food writer, will be contributing restaurant reviews and other articles. In his long career, he has reviewed restaurants for The Advertiser, Australian Gourmet Traveller and Qantas magazine. His first review is published today.

Peter Gill, most recently head of media at Flinders University, is now writing business and economics for InDaily. Gill is a former correspondent for the Australian Financial Review and has vast experience in the media.

So insensitive

People are up in arms about photographs showing a senior Indonesian police officer apparently posing with the Bali 9 ringleaders Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan on their flight to Java where they are scheduled to be executed.

This seems a little over-sensitive given that reporters, on hearing of the pair being moved from Bali to the “death island”, immediately chased down Chan’s elderly mother and filmed her grief-stricken face at her home, and then at the airport.

And, of course, there’s also the fact that nearly every news outlet in the country has published the photographs of Chan with the police officer. That’s how offended they are.

It has been interesting to review the coverage in the 1980s of the executions of Australians Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers in Malaysia for drug smuggling. In those pre-internet days, the case still attracted huge volumes of coverage, including graphics explaining exactly how they would be hanged. In the past weeks, Australian media have published similarly detailed descriptions of the Indonesian execution processes.

Has the Bali Nine coverage been too weirdly prurient? That’s a question worth asking. So far, though, no media have mucked up in the fashion that The Advertiser did in December 1985.

With the pair’s lives depending on an appeal in the Malaysian courts, a hasty Advertiser reporter called Barlow’s mother Barbara, who lived in Adelaide, with exactly the wrong information.

As The Age reported it at the time: “Earlier, the Barlows were led to the believe (sic) that the appeal had succeeded when they were telephoned by a reporter from ‘The Adelaide Advertiser’. The editor of the ‘Advertiser’ last night apologised to the Barlows for the mistaken report, which he said was a ‘ghastly mistake’ and based on a briefing from the Melbourne ‘Herald’.”

The pair later hanged, in a move which then Prime Minister Bob Hawke described as “barbaric”.

Civilisation not yet ending

There was a glimmer of hope for the future of humanity this week when the ABC’s current affairs show 7.30 beat not one but two crappy reality TV shows in the ratings.

On Monday and Tuesday night, 7.30 outrated Channel Nine’s tired renovation show The Block and Ten’s excruciating I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here.

However, the reality yawn-fest is far from over with Seven’s cross between Masterchef and Lord of the Flies – My Kitchen Rules – winning the night with more than 1.6 million viewers.

Naughty corner

Today Tonight’s Hendrik Gout – a former editor of InDaily – made a strong early entry into this category, bizarrely attempting to link parliamentary Speaker Michael Atkinson to someone with the same last name, but with no connection whatsoever to the veteran MP. The mistake – for which the program apologised – was made during an otherwise excellent investigation into concerning practices in the family day care business. Defamation writs seem likely to fly.

Another runner-up is the stream of syndicated rubbish being spewed out by The Advertiser’s twitter account. Why would you follow Tiser on twitter to be informed about Lady Ga Ga’s “back seat nip slip” or Seth Rogan’s “stinky office problem (that gives you the munchies)” or “how Chelsea Handler proved her breasts were real”? There was also this tasteful titbit: “My d*** goes all the way to fence”.

However, the clear winner this week is Linda Wayman, who runs Southern Cross Austereo’s two Perth radio stations.

According to marketing website Mumbrella, she told a conference this week that one third of her staff were either on maternity leave or covering a position for someone who was.

“Thirty five per cent of my staff at the moment are on a maternity leave contract or maternity leave and that’s significant. We do have a big jar of condoms at work. I’m not lying, I’m not exaggerating. I do encourage people regularly, to have sex with condoms. That is a big area of focus for me, encouraging people to have sex with condoms.”

Just in time for International Women’s Day.

Top of the class

While the content of this piece is disturbing for the media, the expose of the dodgy culture of the US version of the Daily Mail  shows a great deal of courage and a rare willingness by a journalist to expose bad practices in his own industry. The Mail, which originated in the UK, has established an Australian version of its website which is making inroads. Readers beware.

Media Week is published on Fridays.