Hi Chris
That's about right. The parochialism of the Australian press still amazes
me, all the same (the same everywhere, but still). Your memory of the
Dransfield banner (can it really be true?) reminds me of that Macdiarmid
poem about newspaper headlines and poetry, which naturally I can't remember,
although it's pretty funny.
Best
A
On 3/2/05 10:47 AM, "Chris Mansell" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> A friend who worked on the foreign desk of a major broadsheet worked out the
> equivalences for appearing on the front page of her paper: something like 1
> Australian = 2 Americans = 5 Brits = ......5 000 Bangladeshis ....= 6 000
> Africans =... Ie if only one Australian died in an international incident
> it was on the front page, but 6000 Africans would have to work hard to make
> it and might end up as a small item on page 24. I'm thinking that there
> would be subdivisions among those categories: eg 1 rich Australian sportsman
> = 15 non-rich Australian sportswoman = any number of Aboriginal children
> etc. Though sometimes there are glitches. When Dransfield died I remember
> one afternoon paper had on their posters POET DIES. I can't have dreamt
> this.
> chris
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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