A friend once told me that, in the late 1970s, he lived in a share house in a Brisbane suburb that was invaded by police on the well-founded suspicion that there were drugs on the premises.
He said they had a bag of an illegal substance, which they threw out the window as the officers broke down the door. The house had an in-sink garbage disposal unit, which the housemates quickly turned on and stuffed with legal vegetable matter.
The cops disassembled the plumbing and took it away for what would be a fruitless forensic investigation. Once they were gone, the housemates collected the bag from the garden.
This may be an appropriated or apocryphal story, but I had reason to remember it recently. And that, in turn, made me think about stories that gain currency even though they may not be true.
Journalists are occasionally guilty of publishing news that is “too good to check” (a phrase, a friend tells me, used by the late Terry Prachett, who had worked as a journalist before he became a best-selling fantasy author). I’ve certainly had one or two newsroom conversations that included the phrase, “If it’s not true, it ought to be.”
Do you have a tall story to tell? I’d love to hear it — either in the comments or by email.
Poor messaging
Posts like this pop up in my X timeline all the time. They are, no doubt, useful but they drive me crazy. The reason for the delay is not “staff availability”; it’s the unavailability of staff that’s to blame. The way they phrase it now is like a big FU to customers: “We’ve got the staff, but the bus is late anyway.” I made this point in a message to Translink a while ago. I got a perfectly pleasant reply, but they didn’t seem to understand what I was on about. Am I a crank?
Mister Brisbane is free to read, but if you appreciate what I’m doing here, and/or
at The Wrinkle and Radio Bert, you can buy me a coffee.
New face for festival
Congratulations to Ebony Bott, who has been appointed artistic director of the Brisbane Festival, replacing Louise Bezzina, who is moving on to run the Brisbane Powerhouse.
Bott comes to the River City via the Sydney Opera House, Adelaide Festival Centre and Arts Centre Melbourne and, according to the media release announcing her appointment, “has earned a reputation for programming that is both emotionally intelligent and commercially astute”.
I am sure she will be taking the time to learn more about Brisbane and the people here before jumping into programming next year’s festival. I wonder if she has heard of Warana and its wonderful, inclusive, community parade. I’ll gladly make myself available to explain why it would be a good thing to bring it back.
Radio faces the inevitable
Update, 8.12am, August 1: Keller and Jones have now confirmed their move to the Drive shift.
The big buzz in the radio world is that Melbourne-based Christian O’Connell’s Breakfast show will be networked to Gold FM in Sydney. Longtime Sydney hosts Amanda Keller and Brendan “Jonsey” Jones are expected to move to the Drive shift.
Mediaweek, which quotes sources including former radio executive and Game Changers podcaster Craig Bruce, reports that, after many months of rumours, the change is on.
Gold owner ARN will be hoping for a better outcome than the networking of the Kyle and Jackie O Show from its other Sydney station, KIIS, into Melbourne, where the station’s audience share has just about halved.
For financial reasons — brought on by a changing advertising market and hastened by executive stupidity — you can expect to see (that is, hear) more nationally networked Breakfast radio shows. In Brisbane, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when and which station first.