The
Daily Telegraph’s new columnist Joe Hildebrand is discovering the challenges of being a scribe for one of Australia’s largest selling papers.

In his August 20 column “Wastes of space in search of a whinge” (available here), Hildebrand describes what a difficult spot columnists find themselves in when they’ve got nothing to rile against:

Sometimes it’s tough being a columnist. Every seven days
you have to be outraged about something. Occasionally a whole week goes
by with me being in a pretty good mood… It can be a real struggle not
to think the world’s a pretty good place full of nice sensible people.

But Joe hasn’t always found it so tough to find something to get
indignant about. Back in his university days at Melbourne Uni in the
late 90s, as co-editor of uni rag Farrago, Hildebrand wrote this about Jeff Kennett in Farrago 5, 1997:

“I hate Jeff [repeat 127 times over]… I hate Jeff, but I’m trying not to let it get in the way of objective journalism.”

And this from Farrago 2, 1997:

“While the hope and presumption may be that everything in
alternative media presents a balanced and anti-tabloid view point, this
can never be the case where the human race is involved… When the media
bends to the dollar it immediately ceases to have a truly independent
voice.”

It would be interesting to know what his current boss, KR Murdoch, thinks of those sentiments.