Author note: This is, the first chapter in this little story. If you saw my post last week you’ll see where I gave some background to the serial which takes a hopefully satirical look at Australian federal politics. If you didn’t you can find it here. You don’t need to read it but it may help a bit.

As mentioned this is also appearing on my Patreon page if you’d like to check that out too.

Hope you enjoy, and please let me know your thoughts.

In which Nick Fanning has a rude awakening about the reality of life as regional newspaper reporter

“Living the dream.”

Nick Fanning rolled the words out under his breath on a Tuesday afternoon as he looked around the newsroom of the ‘Beacon’, the regional Victorian newspaper where he worked in a newsroom shared with an editor and four other reporters.

“I suppose I’ll have to enjoy being in such illustrious company while it lasts,” he told himself, knowing the answer was it was lasting for three more days. On Friday the six-member newsroom was going down to five, with the paper’s owners, facing drops in sales, and advertising, deciding the only solution was best way to cut reporting staff, the same solution media proprietors around the world were choosing.

“It’s the internet” they cried. “Don’t blame us it’s Google and Facebook’s fault.” “We can’t provide quality journalism if no one’s going to pay for it,” came the scream from owners around the world. For the papers Nick had worked on in his short career, Calling what he often did as ‘Quality Journalism’, was a stretch, but at leat in the “Beacon”, until Friday, spreading the burden amongst five reporters had made it a little easier.

Not anymore. Joe Simons had joined the paper two years ago, coming from a weekly paper in Tasmania, and hoping to use the experience at the Beacon, which published three editions a week, to improve his chances of getting a job on a daily capital city metro, preferably in Melbourne. Now after two years in the job and aged 25, he was the most senior reporter, and with his $55,000 a year wage, the most highest paid after the editor, who earned a whopping $60,000, a testament to her 20 years of service.

Sadly, for Joe that huge expense meant he was for the chop. On Friday he’d get a pub lunch with the team, a glass of champagne and a $5,000 severance check as thanks. He had every reason to be bitter and twisted, and he’d given the editor and owners every reason to believe that he was. Enough so they’d increased the severance from the original $4,000. The truth was it was a blessing.

The Friday night before Joe and Nick had met up at the local pub. It was the usual Friday night crowd in what was loosely described as the best pub in town. Local tradies and council workers in boot, shorts and hi-viz showing off their latest tattoos. Combined with the local schoolteachers dresssed in the city styles they’d brought with them, competing for the attention of local stock and station agents and fruit grower’s sons, dressed to impress head to toe in RM Williams chick. Chambray shirt, longhorn jeans and craftsman boots. Bit hard to described the style Nick and Joe embraced, but it was somewhere between comfortable hawaiian shirt, quality levi jeans and desert boots. Both of them had long given up competing for a quick hookup, knowing their poor pay meant they didn’t stand a chance against someone hopeing to hook a wealthy farmer or real estate agent.

Nick arrive thinking it’d be a session full of commiseration and sadness. Not quite.

“Mate, bring it on,” had been Joe’s words as they took the first sip of their respective pints.

“What are you talking about?” Nick asked. “Since I’ve been here you haven’t shut up about this being but a pit stop on the road to Melbourne. “It’s all set” you said. “I’ve spoken to the editors down there and they’ve promised I’m in”, was you told me.

“How is being made redundant good news?”

Joe laid it out for him. “I did say that, and I believed it. But it was all bullshit.”

“Yours or theirs?”, asked Nick.

“Both. Bullshit on my part for taking the word of a bunch of fuckwit media executives as fact. Total bullshit on their behalf for telling me, and many others, that we had a future with them. I asked around amongst a few of the guys I went through uni with who are in the same boat as you and me, doing our time in the bush, and looking for a job in the city on a metro. All of us had reached out to the editors of the big papers. All of us got the same response, virtually to a word, “You’re doing some great stuff out there. We’re keeping an eye on you. Keep doing it for a couple more years and we’ll keep a spot for you.””

“Also, it wasn’t just us working in papers,” Joe continued. You know Narelle Johnstone who works on the local commercial TV News?” Nick nodded. “She’s been doing the same with both the ABC and the city commercial channels. They’ve been telling her the same thing. Turns out we’ve all been fed a line of bullshit.”

Nick was a little shocked. Joe’s plans mirrored his own, although he hadn’t begun the sort of networking his soon to be former colleague had been part of.

Joe continued. “Mate it was obvious what’s happening here now was going to happen months ago,” Joe took a sip of beer.

“For the past year some days the Beacon’s so light it looks more like a pamphlet and the newsagents have to put a brick on the pile so it isn’t blown away by the air conditioner. Any time we do a story which has some teeth, Gerry the fuckwit comes in bitching that it’s cost us advertising dollars, and it’s only him because all the salespeople the paper once employed have seen the light and left the building in search of a wage they can survive on.”

Gerry the fuckwit was Gerry Mason, the manager of advertising at the Beacon, and Joe was right. Any controversy which resulted in a complaint from those still happy to buy an ad in an ever-shrinking paper, meant Gerry went on the warpath. Cheryl the editor was the one who mostly dealt with it, but everyone was aware of it. It was also true that in recent months Gerry’s complaint had increased in line with pressure on him to increase sales revenue as his staff moved on looking to greener pastures.

Joe hadn’t finished. “A couple of months back, based on the commitments I’d been given I began reaching out to those who’d made them. The ones I could get on the phone I told I’d done what they were looking for and I was now ready to make the move. I told them I know I’d be starting at the bottom but was happy to do that. “So,” I asked them, “When do you want me down there?””

Nick had a fair idea what was next.

“To a person they all basically said how great it was to hear from me. But right now, this month, things were tight. Still keen to have me on board but give it a month and give them another call. A month later I called, or tried to, they wouldn’t even pickup. You have to hate number identification don’t you?” Joe said before continuing.

“I tried then blocking my number before calling again. No luck there either, and no response to the voicemails I left. Asking around that’s been the response to my mates who’ve done the same.”

“Is it the same for Narelle?” asked Nick.

“Worse,” said Joe. “They’re not even answering her first calls. Especially hard for her as she’s never really loved living her in the bush. She’s actually still paying rent on the room she rented in Carlton when she was a student, so she’s got somewhere to move into when she gets a job down there, and lives with an aunty up here. Looks like she’ll be renting it a bit longer, although the way that mob’s closing its bureaus she may be moving back in to it”

“Let’s be honest mate,” Joe said wrapping up, “The media is fucked. Newspapers, TV, radio, you name it, it’s all fucked. You can’t make a living wage; you can’t do stories which mean anything in case you piss of an advertiser. Even the ABC’s not hiring and is running scared from government’s happy to string them up by the balls and bleed them dry with budget cuts.”

“Come next Friday, I don’t know what’s next for me, but it won’t be journalism. And Nick you should seriously think hard about if it’s your future too.”

On this following Tuesday afternoon, that’s exactly what Nick was doing.

Author note: Here it is, the first chapter in this little story. Hope you enjoy, and please let me know your thoughts.

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Chapter 1 — Straight Faced: One person’s journey through the Australian political sausage factory