Congratulations to the crew at the Northern Territory News, worthy winners of this week’s coveted Wankley Award.
On Thursday this week, every newspaper in the world (or so it seemed: check out Crikey‘s day-after survey here) filled its front page with images and words dwelling on the inauguration of US president Barack Obama. Not in the Territory.
Why focus on the change in leadership of the free world when you have a court story of a man videoing himself mast-rbating while driving at speed with a esky full of pot? That my friends, is real news. (The guy, by the way got three years for the pot, and had his car, esky and video camera seized.)
So, while they might settle for this in New York:
This is what makes a real front page in Darwin (the Obama stuff took out pages 16 and 17):
What an underscore of our deep north…next door in Queensland its much the same. Now that’s where Abu Hamza could make a real difference preaching to the tuned out.
It’s called “media diversity”. Good on ’em…those boys know their market.
Not wanting to seem sanctimonious, but at least it is a local story AND there is a lead pointer to a 2 page Obama wrap further back. Other Aussie papers slavishly running the same wire copy and pics didn’t really show much independent thought.
At least there wasn’t a croc on the NT’s front page – which makes a change.