A reflection from a long term reader and contributor to the local papers

I have read and contributed to the NT News and Sunday Territorian newspapers for many decades. I have read these papers since arriving in the NT in 1975. I have contributed letters, comments, feature articles, and opinion pieces since 1990. For five years, I wrote an opinion piece under the heading “Gray Matters“ for the Darwin Palmerston Sun, firstly as a standalone paper and then when it was incorporated into the NT News each Tuesday.

In total, this column was written weekly for five years.

From time to time, I have written to the editor with suggestions about features and what might be included.

Since Matthew Williams was Editor, I have never had a response from any of his replacements as successes in office. I have written to these editors on five occasions and have been ignored.

We pay $3.00 for each weekday paper copy, with a price increase on the weekend. The price we pay for the paper in Darwin is the same as the metropolitan prices for Murdoch papers in the other capital cities. But there are substantial differences.

The local paper is always far shorter than its interstate counterparts.

Unlike the other papers in the Murdoch stable, we do not have a cartoonist. We have not had one since Colin Wicking’s last cartoon on March 31, 2022.

The Letters to the Editor section is much more abbreviated than it used to be and certainly far shorter in terms of column centimetres than Murdoch interstate papers.

In percentage terms, a more significant proportion of the paper is devoted to advertisements, which is the case in interstate publications.

A great deal of the content is lifted from other sources and placed in the Northern Territory Papers, with there being far less of a percentage, it seems, of local stories than in the other Murdoch publications.

The content of our papers was far more varied and richer in past years than is the case these days. A casual perusal of past copies proves this to be the case.

The Northern Territory News and Sunday Territorian have a journalistic staff gaining experience for later transfer to other papers within the stable. It’s not a bad idea because people have to train. However, it becomes pretty evident to long-term territories that those writing stories for our paper do not have the depth and breadth of background on the Territory that many of us have experienced. This means that stories are often written in a way that indicates that the subject is “new” when it is a revisit to the past that is already happening.

I am glad we have a local paper, but rather sad that the elements outlined make it one that does not stand out as other papers within the Murdoch fleet.