The Best Australian Humorous Writing (23 page)

Only one factor made the
Bulletin
model viable: Packer. His commitment never weakened, and even won him a certain admiration. It made him
un homme sérieux
in the Australian media, as his combustible father had never been. His indulgence, however, was a mixed blessing, for he seemed happier to brazen out losses than to take the chance of succeeding by another means. And in a sense, this rather suited his journalists. Journalists are vain. We will always want to believe that our writing can change the world; that if we break good stories and find the right words, then the market will flock to us as a matter of course. Week in, week out, the
Bulletin
was actually demonstrating that news, in commercial terms, was scarcely worth the trouble of breaking it. When Laurie Oakes divulged Gareth Evans' long-term affair with Cheryl Kernot in July 2002, for example, the
Bulletin
had no way of monopolising the story: such profit as accrued to anyone did so across all news outlets. Yet here was a proprietor who, albeit for reasons less to do with his munificence than with his own distaste for change, apparently subscribed to journalists' belief in the redemptive qualities of their craft. When Packer anointed Garry Linnell as editor-in-chief in December 2002, he issued him resoundingly simple instructions: “Son, just make 'em talk about it.” What journalist would not feel their sap rise, given such a charter? The trouble was that the arrangement would never outlive Packer long. The leading indicator of the
Bulletin
's fortunes in its last years, then, was not its circulation, but Packer's vital signs.

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
Bulletin
s 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
…”