Being honest, rather than positive
A local businessman told me today the paper is too negative. “You have a responsibility to be positive about the town,” he said.
I respect the man and he expressed a commonly held view, so I don’t deride it.
As an editor, it has always been my philosophy to choose a good positive story over a good negative story, if I have a choice between them for the front page. (more…)
Walkers wed in Walkerville
This is a cute story from The Australian:
Where else would a pair of walkers get married but in Walkerville? Australia’s walking hero Jared Tallent desperately wanted the silver medal in yesterday’s 50km walk to go with his bronze from the 20km to make it a full set. He gets his “gold” when he marries fiancee and fellow walker Claire Woods next Saturday.
The two walkers will get married in the Adelaide suburb of Walkerville.
Royal jammies go missing
There’s a nice teaser on the front page of the Herald-Sun today. Beside a picture of the Queen is text: “Victoria’s royal request: Hand back our PJs, Ma’am.”
Intrigued, I turned to page seven and found it was somewhat misleading, but in a non-offensive way. The story was a beat-up but funny.
The City of Ballarat presented embroidered silk pyjamas to the Prince of Wales (late Edward VIII) in 1920.
Five female hundred employees of a local garment factory each put a stitch into the royal present.
Edward, who was something of a ladies man, might well have claimed to have slept with 500 sheilas in Ballarat.
A group of the city’s historians want the jammies back to put on public display. They wrote to Buckingham Palace humbly petitioning Her Majesty in that regard.
The bemused Royal Archivist wrote back saying they couldn’t find the sleepwear. She thought Edward might have taken them with him when he abdicated and shot through to France.
“They are no longer in royal custody,” Pamela Clark advised.
Parents should be licensed
The story that 18-month-old twins were found dead, apparently from neglect, in a Brisbane house defies belief. A 28-year-old man and his 30-year-old partner have been charged with failing to provide the necessities of life.
The charges could be upgraded to murder.
An earlier court hearing was told that police found the bodies in a “state of decay” and the toddlers appeared to be malnourished.
It’s too easy for people to have children. It’s harder, in fact, to get a licence to drive a motor car. (more…)
Former Premier exhumed
We arrived in South Australia to hear and read the extraordinary story about Charles Kingston, a colonial Premier and founder of Australia, being exhumed for a paternity test at the request of an Adelaide businessman.
Sounds like something out of Monty Python doesn’t it?
“The Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, approved an application to exhume the body of Charles Cameron Kingston, one of the Fathers of Federation, as part of a paternity case,” the Adelaide Advertiser reports.
The bodies of two other people suspected of being Kingston’s illegitimate offspring also were exhumed. They are Genevieve Grey and AA “Bert” Edwards. (more…)
Don’t wee in the bush
Just browsing the Kalgoorlie Miner web site and gained a reminder about this story.
An 11-year-old boy on a camping trip discovered a skeleton when he went for a pee.
I received a message from the boy’s mother following a similar story we reported a week earlier. That involved a tradesman finding bones while having a wee break in the bush.
Don’t know about you, but I’m not game to seek relief in the bush any more.
Murder mystery
I feel quite drained at the end of this working day. A lot of my time was spent dealing with the investigation into a suspicious death.
A tradesman on a remote job was taking a leak in the bush when he discovered human remains concealed beneath a pile of wood near Menzies in the northern Goldfields.
He came into our office today and provided photos of the grisly find.
Earlier, one of my staff had called me aside to say he suspected whose body it might be. (more…)
