Editorial – Local Again

REGIONAL news media has been rocked by continual cutbacks, the sacking of loyal, local staff and the closure of local offices.

It is the rationalisation of large city based companies whose key priority is to return a profit to their shareholders and keep their flagships in the cities afloat.

When the Scone Advocate was started by Arthur Smith in 1887, his priority was not a return on investment for shareholders, but clearly a simple passion for local news and local people.

My family history in Scone dates back before Arthur started the newspaper and before the place was even called Scone, so it’s fair to say that once again the town has its own local media, which is wholly owned and run by a local.

I was born and bred in Scone and during University holidays spent time working with Rhonda Turner at the Scone Advocate and Mike Pritchard at the local ABC Radio.

They are both inspirational people who helped many young locals like me start a career in media.

After University I lived in Canberra and Sydney working in television news and later public relations as a media adviser.

My husband Michael was originally a country boy from Glen Innes, we met at University in Wagga Wagga and he developed his career with the Federal Police ultimately specialising in counter-terrorism surveillance.

But an opportunity to buy a house in Scone as an investment turned into a tree change.

Each weekend after renovating, we found it harder to return to work in Sydney.

We loved that most things in Scone were a ten minute exercise.

Going to the post office, ducking into the bank or picking up a loaf of bread are ten minute exercises, compared to Sydney where you need to allocate at least half an hour.

There was rock star parking everywhere and if you couldn’t find a parking spot within ten metres of where you wanted to go, you simply did a lap of the main street and one would magically appear.

Initially we planned to move back when our children started school, but we didn’t end up waiting that long and moved here when our first child, Iris, was born.

We joke that there are many of us here now, who are like trout, which swim back upstream to breed!

I didn’t think we’d be raising the seventh generation of our family here, but we feel very lucky that we can.

For the past nine years I’ve run my public relations business from Scone, with regular trips to clients in Sydney and interstate.

For Michael it was a bit more difficult to justify an outpost of the AFP in Scone, so he now works in mining.

This year I am excited to launch scone.com.au, the first of several local online news sites we will develop.

I’m glad that the launch of scone.com.au means there is once again local media owned by a local.

And since Scone is a betting town, we hope local people will back the locally owned, by going to scone.com.au to get their news and placing their advertising with a local company instead of one in Sydney.

It’s nice when things come full circle.

 

 

 

Elizabeth Flaherty
Editor of scone.com.au