Anyone reading Wednesday's (March 12) Observer could be forgiven for wondering what 11 of the council hopefuls had done to deserve being named as the also rans.
On page 14 the Observer ran a half page promotion for its sister paper the Chronicle in which, 21 of the 34 mayoral and councillor candidates had their photographs and names boxed and published in large, bold print. Unfortunately the size of the area allocated to the 21 lucky candidates meant the Observer ran out of space.
Fortunately the 11 left did not miss out altogether. In the one remaining box, under the heading "Also running for Mayor" in extremely small print, appeared the names of Bob Chambers and John Neve. The remaining nine were listed in the same box underneath the Mayoral candidates but did not rate a heading. "For Council: Russell Felton, Brendon Banks, Roger Currie, Bob Campbell, Darren Dickson, Les MucKan, Walter Philippi, Ernie Paussa, Barbara Hovard, Troy Sullivan, Allen Hunter."
Not so even-handed reporting? Or just another case of sloppy editing?
It was enough to make me want to vote for them.
3 comments:
The 11 "also rans" were those not prepared to pay the exorbitant advertising rate demanded by the Chronicle for inclusion in its candidate profile advertising feature.
The Chronicle promotion called "A Look at Your Local Candidates'in today's paper was paid advertising. If you didn't want to spend $500 plus you aren't included. Prices for the smallest space (which I selected) started at $583.33 and ranged up to $2048.65 for a 18x7 advert.
The candidates not highlighted obviously chose, or couldn't afford, to pay the cost associated with being included in the 'feature'. Getting the message out is a very costly exercise for all Councillors. Cheers Sue Brooks
Five hundred bucks....you might as well run the President of the USA, and save a bit of money!
No wonder, they would prefer these free websites to disappear off the face of the earth; they are bad for business.
If you want to see it from the poor hapless journalist's point of view, take a look at this opinion piece, over at the ABC.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2186777.htm
[Highlight this link; hit control-c to copy it; and control-v to paste it in the address field at the top of your browser.]
Change is going on everywhere, isn't it? I would like to hear from the candidates, how our region can create a few more economic opportunities within this information revolution.
Post a Comment