Louise North
Sure, it was the ‘water cooler’ topic of discussion in newsrooms around the country for days. No-one remembered who won the Gold Walkley but everyone had a good laugh as they watched the online replays of a stumbling, bumbling Milne. ( In case you missed Glenn … ) It received mass coverage in the media for a week or so, but as is the way with our short-term fixations, the industry has since moved on. The analysis, in the end, was shallow. No one has named it up as the gender specific act that it was and/or linked it to an industry which privileges masculinity, both within and without its newsrooms.
Six weeks has passed since Glenn Milne’s now infamous drunken attempt at fisticuffs with the quick-stepping Stephen Mayne at the media industry’s glam televised night of nights, the Walkley Awards.
But have we learnt anything from that migraine tablet/alcohol fuelled ‘incident’?
Sure, it was the ‘water cooler’ topic of discussion in newsrooms around the country for days. No-one remembered who won the Gold Walkley but everyone had a good laugh as they watched the online replays of a stumbling, bumbling Milne. ( In case you missed Glenn … )
It received mass coverage in the media for a week or so, but as is the way with our short-term fixations, the industry has since moved on.
The analysis, in the end, was shallow. No one has named it up as the gender specific act that it was and/or linked it to an industry which privileges masculinity, both within and without its newsrooms.
Generally the reporting of the ‘incident’ went like this: The Crikey.com co-founder, Mayne, had been a knife in the side of many journalists, right? ‘He deserved it’, was the insinuation. Milne was the Sunday Tele’s “Saint of the week’’ (not surprising given that he writes a column for them) because he did something “many others have wanted to do for years”. The industry had gone ‘soft’ of late, said another and the incident was “truly inspiring stuff”. It was just “a bit of biffo between friends’, another said with the only tongue in cheek part, ‘friends’.
To me Milne’s drunken abusive behaviour is a perfect example of a masculinised newsroom culture spilling out into a public forum. This type of ‘incident’ is not an unusual feature of many newsrooms and/or journos’ social gatherings. That is why Milne was never going to be sacked — the central topic of the media discussion.
The industry accepts and privileges a masculine hierarchical dominance in newsrooms, so it can hardly disapprove of such masculine displays, like Milne’s, in public.
The central debate in Australia about our media generally centres on media ownership. The industry and the union have failed to seriously consider the implications (both in terms of content and work culture) of a mainstream news media where the key decision-making roles are dominated by men.
Women have entered the industry in unprecedented numbers in the past 30 years but they are still found en masse in the lower paying, lower status jobs. Women’s increased numerical presence hides the fact that men still call the shots, drive the news agenda and privilege masculine ways of being in newsrooms.
I’m still pondering how an outburst such as Milne’s would have been read by media commentators if he had instead been a high-profile woman such as Michelle Grattan (who incidentally won a Walkley that night. Does anyone remember that?)
Dr Louise North has been a journalist for the past 19 years working on regional, suburban and metropolitan newspapers. She is in the last weeks of her most recent post, as Regional Editor of Messenger Newspapers in Adelaide. She thinks it is about time to speak out about how the industry works. Louise recently completed her doctorate through the University of Tasmania. Her thesis “The Gendered Newsroom: Embodied Subjectivity in the Changing World of Media” received a Dean’s Commendation Award for outstanding research and is being considered for publication. Louise lived in Tasmania and formerly worked for The Mercury for nine years before moving to Adelaide two years ago.
