The Best Australian Humorous Writing Read online

  Linnell and his editor, Bail, loved the Bulletin. When a portrait of JF Archibald was located on the executive floor at Park Street, Linnell commandeered it for his office; when readers reported that Archibald’s grave at Waverley Cemetery had fallen into disrepair, Bail dedicated herself to its refurbishment. Pound for pound, they marshalled probably the most accomplished journalistic unit in Australia. News editor Tim Blair led a triple life as an acerbic columnist and Australia’s savviest blogger. Business editor Alan Deans was a 30-year veteran of the trade from the Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Business. Features editor Susan Skelly, who had followed Bail from HQ, was a former chief sub at the Australian Women’s Weekly under the legendary Dawn Swain. Together they brought out the most consistently fresh Bulletins since Dale, with a capacity for breaking news that made them compulsory reading in daily newsrooms. Jennifer Byrne prodded Anita Keating into discussing the dissolution of her marriage in April 2004; Tony Abbott acknowledged a lovechild to Julie-Anne Davies in March 2005; Eric Ellis and Preston Smith caught up with fugitive financier Abe Goldberg in November 2005; Paul Toohey owned the Schapelle Corby and Bali Nine stories; the survival of the Beaconsfield miners, Brant Webb and Todd Russell, was recounted in exhaustive detail by Tony Wright. Bail, meanwhile, instigated the Bulletin’s “Summer Reading” issues, which brought together long pieces by well-known writers in an attractive perfect-bound package that lingered on newsstands for a month—a formula that was an instant hit. The office enjoyed an enviable esprit de corps. When staff members weren’t busy making the Bulletin, they were busy talking about it. In the absence of a marketing budget, public-relations man Brian Johnson of Fingerprint Communications arranged scores of radio interviews every week, in which Linnell’s reporters trumpeted their work.

  In the Bulletin’s 125th year, Linnell had the nerve to offer a $1.25-million reward to anyone who found a Tasmanian tiger. But when Packer died at the end of that year, it was the Bulletin itself that went from being merely an endangered species to one under threat of extinction. The staff’s initial response to the passing of their patron was unforgettable. Without complaint, they returned in droves from summer holidays to assemble a comprehensive and colourful tribute issue, wrangled in three days mainly by chief sub-editor Andrew Forbes. They received a suitably grateful email from the ACP group publisher.

  From: Scott, Phil

  Sent: Thursday, 29 December 2005 7:11 PM

  To: ACP Bulletin Mag

  Subject: Thanks

  Right now everyone is knackered. Give it a day or two and you will realise you have been part of publishing history this week. Sure, we’d all prefer to have been down at the beach but if we’d stayed there we’d have pondered on what the Bulletin should have done to commemorate KP’s passing. You should all take great professional and personal pride in the job you’ve turned around in the last 72 hours. I know the family has been touched by what you have done. The fact everyone wanted to be here to turn this around, without a grumble, has been deeply appreciated. It’s a bloody good read and a fitting tribute.

  The edition sold out faster than it could be reprinted, scaling six-figure circulation heights not touched in 15 years. It was one of the Bulletin’s finest hours, and its last certifiably great one. A little more than two years later, Scott would be introducing Lorson as the bearer of bad tidings.

  Linnell had run a vibrant, headline-hunting Bulletin through three years bulging with big news—the Boxing Day tsunami, the War on Terror, a host of juicy government scandals—without making it essential reading; in fact, tightening circulation audits were eating away the means by which the magazine had previously plumped its numbers. It produced often-excellent journalism, but it was journalism of a sort not uncommon in newspapers. For it is a paradox of the profession that where 2000 words can sometimes be too many, 6000 on the same subject may not feel like quite enough. A thorough professional feature quoting all the relevant individuals on a current news story at the lesser length can never be much more than introductory; by contrast, the nutritious long-form journalism of the New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly is often inordinately satisfying. The Bulletin never confronted the implications of this paradox. “There was a real lack of imagination at the top of the company,” says one former executive. “Nobody had the commitment necessary to honestly analyse the Bulletin’s problems. Most of the people were out of newspapers who got stressed about news and had no interest in how it was presented. There was this endless bullshit about getting the exclusive, getting the Walkley, then you’re a legend.” The magazine’s dilemmas, notes Tim Blair, were somehow as intractable as they were obvious: “The Australian Magazine and Good Weekend were coming out on Saturdays. We were coming out five days later, smaller, on poorer stock, with fewer resources. You were always having these conversations about the future direction of the Bulletin … but you could never find a way out.”

  Only once in its last years did the Bulletin kick the jams way out—and then, in decidedly peculiar circumstances. In January 2006, with channels Seven and Nine at each other tooth and claw in the C7 action before the Federal Court, Today Tonight ran crude recapitulations of the One.Tel fiasco on consecutive nights, singling out James Packer. In his famous affidavit that added “bone” to the media vernacular, Nine’s former news and current-affairs chief Mark Llewellyn told of a foam-flecked tirade from John Alexander demanding that collateral damage be inflicted on Seven’s Kerry Stokes. According to Llewellyn, Alexander told him: “Nine has failed to go on the front foot previously with Seven and I am sick of that! … Stokes is a terrible man, and a terrible businessman. Everyone who has come into contact with him knows he is an appalling human being.” With his reluctance to comply, Llewellyn apparently marked his card at Nine.

  Linnell was interested in a piece on Stokes on his own account, and business reporter Nick Tabakoff did not need to be press-ganged. “Nick heard that they were scouting around for someone to do a big story on Stokes,” says a former staff member. “So he went to see Garry and put his hand up, but on condition it did not become a vendetta.” It soon became a source of tension. Challenged by his business editor, Deans, about the provenance of the story, Linnell argued with some force that Stokes was a figure of national signifi-cance about whom relatively little was known. In the event, the industrious Tabakoff worked for three months on a story that swelled to 15,000 words: from all accounts, a sprawling but fair-minded profile full of hitherto-unpublished information. The piece was then canned, ostensibly for legal reasons to do with the C7 action, although also after Alexander had complained it was “too soft”. Bizarrely, a chunk was printed, mangled and manhandled out of context, in an article under the by-line of Tabakoff’s successor, Rebecca Urban, formerly of the Age, in August 2007—a stage by which events at the Bulletin were being dwarfed by events around it.

  For with the death of the patriarch, the Packer empire came into play. The fourth Packer, after RC, Frank and Kerry, is the first without regard for print. His chosen route to the sunny uplands of gaming was the staged sale of majority control in PBL Media, incorporating ACP Magazines, Channel Nine and ninemsn, to the Asian arm of CVC Capital Partners, a 25-year-old Luxembourg-headquartered venture-capital firm. Chaos was breaking out. As part of the grab for talent being dispersed, Linnell was wooed as Nine’s new news and current-affairs chief, only to arrive on the same day that 95 redundancies were announced. Without a boss, meanwhile, the Bulletin looked agonisingly without a future. From time to time over the next six months, a senior publishing executive would breeze into Stockland House and announce that there was no danger of the Bulletin closing, which had the same perversely opposite effect as a football club’s president stressing his confidence in a coach.

  Bail, not only hugely capable but hugely popular, was Linnell’s obvious successor. But her relations with Alexander, now chairman of PBL Media, had chilled, for reasons on which nobody was clear: he would not even return her calls. She decided to pitch herself to PBL Media’s CEO
, Ian Law, formerly CEO of West Australian Newspapers. At a detailed presentation, she explained that the Bulletin needed an injection of style: it should free itself from the news cycle and aim to be an up-market monthly, using the “Summer Reading” issue as a model. With a smaller core staff and more contributors, it would be cheaper to run. With the kind of eyecatching design and premium-quality stock that would entice the luxury-goods advertisers that other magazines were tapping so successfully, it should have a better advertising profile. It was as coherent a plan for the Bulletin’s resuscitation as had been put—and it fell on deaf ears. When the appointment committee of Alexander, Law, Scott and PBL Media director Chris Anderson made their choice, in July 2006, it turned out to be neither Bail, nor Matt Price, nor Bruce Guthrie, nor any of the other rumoured candidates.

  When Scott came into Stockland House to announce that the new editor-in-chief was John Lehmann, there was dead silence. “Nobody could look at Kathy,” says one former executive. “Of course, she never lost her sangfroid. But people were shattered.” Others detected a latent misogyny at work. “It was horrible, just horrible,” says another former staff member. “And so disappointing, because she so deserved to do it. And for women it was a particular blow, because it suggested that a boy was needed to do the job.” When Scott left, Blair jumped up and started googling Lehmann’s name. Who was this guy? He was little the wiser after the exercise. Blair was later irked when they met for a drink by Lehmann’s airy assertions regarding global warming, not so much because of his views as because someone who purported to read the Bulletin closely should have known that Blair was an unapologetic sceptic about anthropogenic climate change.

  As an act of courtesy to Lehmann, so that he had time to settle in, Blair, Deans and Skelly mapped out an issue on the anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan. They also shared their disappointment with Scott, and asked if he could do something to make it worth Bail’s while to stay—a request at which Scott bridled. “It’s my decision,” he insisted of Lehmann. “And I’ll stand or fall on it.” But that wasn’t the story that began spreading. Lehmann, it transpired, had come to Alexander’s attention while a media writer for the Australian. There he had become involved in PBL’s interminable politicking, being leaked an exclusive story about Nine CEO Sam Chisholm’s attempt to oust John Lyons as executive producer of Sunday, an attempt thwarted by Alexander. Shortly before Lehmann departed the Australian, he had come into possession of the fabled Llewellyn affidavit. But where Crikey published the document— deeply embarrassing to Alexander—Lehmann refrained. He left the paper with the curse of his editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, ringing in his ears: “I wouldn’t want to be the last editor of the Bulletin …”

  Fairly or unfairly, Lehmann was burdened with a reputation as a cat’s paw of Alexander and Anderson. Blair became one of the first departures in a steady exodus that soon after included Bail. Into her role as editor slotted the chief sub, Forbes, although into her office moved the publisher, Myers. This was to be the new budget-Bulletin, living within slender means. In fact, the new regime made a positive start, responding with alacrity and special issues to the deaths of Steve Irwin and Peter Brock. Lehmann proved to be an irrepressible enthusiast with a well-developed news sense, honed by covering politics in Queensland and crime in New York. He still rallied a good staff. “There were no slow ants or time-servers at the Bulletin,” notes David Haselhurst. “They ran a very lean ship.” He also showed some cojones. When the Australian ran a powder-puff profile of the Rudds by Mitchell’s wife, Christine Jackman, Lehmann had the temerity to reveal that Rudd was godfather to their first son—quite an act of cheek, given Mitchell’s legendary capacity for enmity. The Bulletin belatedly got its online house in order under Rod Dalton, a former night editor from the Sydney Morning Herald: its “Bullring”, a site dedicated to the election campaign, was informed and irreverent.

  When the news did not provide an obvious direction, however, Lehmann struggled, displaying little aptitude for the Bulletin’s nonnews component. “We need more celebrities,” he would complain. “That was part of my pitch.” So it was that the magazine of Lawson and Paterson published an interminable extract from Geoffrey Cousins’s business bodice-ripper The Butcherbird; then it ran an interview with the author; then it ran a (deftly non-committal) review. So it was that the magazine of May and Low was reduced to Patrick Cook’s weekly cartoon for Oakes’s column, but still published a flatulent column by Alexander’s friend Leo Schofield. Anything more heterodox was a challenge. On one occasion, Skelly planned to take an extract and photographs from Kaavous Clayton’s Abandoned Chairs, a whimsical collection of images of discarded chairs in incongruous settings. Lehmann hated it. “We’re just not on the same page here!” he barked. “I don’t care about chairs!”

  Perhaps it was hard to care about chairs when there was a publisher so apt to stress how many feet there were under desks. Myers acted like a census-taker, obsessed with staff numbers. A hundred years earlier, the Bulletin had 112 employees; with a workforce a quarter the size, Myers now considered it way too large. He even offered himself as a travel writer. Unfortunately, his prose was execrable. There was universal glee when he left, early in the new year. It was short-lived.

  Phil Scott took four scenarios to the PBL Media board: sale or closure; business as usual; a radical slimming; a monthly. There was no taste for further cuts, nor was there a zeal for experimentation that might cost money. The bids solicited were circumspect. News Ltd repeated an earlier flirtation with inserting the Bulletin in the midweek Australian, but pulled back; Lachlan Murdoch probably came closest to putting his hand in his pocket, and might have proceeded had Illyria Holdings not joined the syndicate to take over Consolidated Media Holdings. Yet he would have been caught in the same cleft stick as the Packers. “The problem was that the Bulletin no longer had any editorial raison d’être,” says one bidder. “If you reformatted the best content in the Weekend Australian, Age and Sydney Morning Herald in any given week, you’d end up with something that looked like the Bulletin. As for this revisionist bullshit about Kerry keeping it alive … ”

  “They stuffed the place up,” complained Kerry Packer of the work of his minions at Channel Nine, towards the end of his life. Mistaking money for faith, investment for imagination, he didn’t do a bad job of stuffing up the Bulletin, the billionaire with such an uncanny sense of public taste in television steadily and obdurately losing his touch with print. Journalists with a sentimental attachment to a proprietor prepared to lose money have let him off lightly, partly because of their collusion in his faltering vision. The Bulletin served in concentrated form a news journalism that is now mass-produced—slick but very similar—with which the public is surfeited. Its failure reminds us that what journalists esteem and what readers value are very different things. In the end it took a fucking long time—but it was always going to fucking happen.

  FRANK DEVINE

  It’s a loathe-hate relationship, but at least I own a slice

  In my projected memoirs, Settling Scores: Not a Cricket Book, I will certainly touch on my life as a Telstra shareholder. Taking into account what I could have earned from investing the money for compounding bank interest over 10 years, I can say I’ve lost my shoelace on Telstra shares. My holdings are not, nor have they ever been, large enough to threaten my shirt.

  True enough I could have made a couple of dollars-a-share profit if I had sold them quickly after accepting the first offer to Telstra customers of shares at $3.30. But, like the other 1.6 million individual owners of Telstra shares and the five million or so dabbling in them through superannuation funds and investment trusts, I was consumed by greed.

  This drove me to snap up the second offer of a parcel—well, a thin wad—of Telstra shares at $7.45. Shouting at my computer screen has failed to lift them much above $4.50. There have been dividends, of course, but you don’t buy shares in tranches of 600 for dividends, especially not shares in an outfit you hate.

 
To digress to this matter of hatred, hardly anybody I know is without an ugly memory of Telstra when it was a government-owned monopoly.

  Mine involves getting a telephone connection to a new house. Having recently returned to Sydney after several years abroad, I was surprised to learn this would take at least three weeks. That meant nearly a month in which the supplier earned nothing from a new customer, which seemed corporately profligate. When the Telecom technician eventually came, he departed without installing one of the requested plug-in jacks. He returned a week or two later to finish the job and my first awareness of his arrival came from hearing shouting downstairs.

  Telecom’s emissary was abusing my wife for dobbing him in to his employer for his uncompleted work. His manner was so demented that I stayed home from work for the morning to act as bodyguard and to engage Telecom’s man in intermittent philosophical discourse.