If Only the ABC Had a Real Editor-in-Chief

Back in mid-January — the 15th, to be precise — I very nearly took up station at the keyboard to mark a golden anniversary, for it was on that day in 1973 the phone rang in my parents’ Yarraville home and Mum took a message. The note on my pillow said: ‘You’ve been accepted as a cadet journalist on the Sun News-Pictorial. You start next week.”

I had turned 18 three days earlier and, had the phone not rung, I’d have settled for the consolation prize of law at Monash, which would have been a disaster for me and the bar as well. Since then I’ve worked for bad editors and mad editors, for petty tyrants, bullies, backstabbers, overpaid fools and, in just a few instances, editors who inspired. The editor I really want to work for, though, is David Anderson of the ABC. Not much chance of that, obviously, as the national broadcaster doesn’t hire conservatives, but one can still dream of how nice it must be to labour under his relaxed gaze.

Every journo fears the mega-screw-up, the…