It’s an honour to be able to use the first new-look edition of the Donnybrook-Bridgetown-Manjimup Mail to introduce myself to you. I’m Jem Hedley, South West editor for the Mail papers and websites across the region and I’m looking forward to meeting you.
It’s an even greater honour to echo Travis’s announcement above and officially welcome Manjimup to the masthead. The new name is quite a mouthful, but then so is the region as it evolves into a world-class food bowl with some of the best produce on the planet.
You’ll have to forgive me for stealing from the editorial I’ve just written for Collie. I’ll be writing for all five of our mastheads in the South West each week and stealing liberally from myself along the way, but I wanted to mention something that applies everywhere we publish.
The Collie Mail describes itself as a good friend to the Collie River Valley since 1908, and that’s a line I’ve been thinking a lot about.
What are friends for?
There’s an old definition of journalism that says we should afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and that’s a key component of friendship right there.
A good friend listens carefully and kindly but shouldn’t hesitate to gently let you know if you need to pull your socks up. A good friend cares about your welfare and is always ready to help get you out of a jam. A good friend can help you get to the bottom of what ails you and stands by you while it’s fixed.
A good friend keeps an eye on you.
The great thing about regional community news, and this is something that the big metro papers can never really know, is that friendship is a two-way street and you can’t get away with anything out in the country.
We’ll continue to be the best friend we can be but you’d better believe that our friends – you, our readers – aren’t shy about letting us know when we need to pull our socks up, and I hope you continue to keep a sharp eye on us.
That’s what friends are for.
I then went on to mention that Collie is confronted with changes of truly epochal proportions. Not once-in-a-generation challenges but once-in-a-century upheavals that will redefine the town for generations to come.
For agricultural producers especially that epochal challenge may well be climate change, and the South West was recently described to me by a scientist as a global hotspot for climate change, one of the places where the effects will be especially dramatic.
It’s a subject we’ll be looking at closely in the future because the region can’t rest on the laurels of being world-class producers without knowing about and preparing for it.
We’re putting together together an good team to cover the region as a whole, and it will be a pleasure to get to know you and get you the news you want.
What gives me no pleasure at all is having to bid farewell to Nina Smith who leaves the Mail after eight years’ dedicated reporting. Readers throughout the region owe Nina a great debt of gratitude for her work and we wish her the very best.
Even so, I’ve worked with teams before in Tokyo, New York, Washington and Paris but I can honestly say, looking across the region, that I’ve never had such a crack mob of talent at my disposal. They’re young – I skew the average age considerably higher – and we’re a small team, but pound for pound it’s astonishing and I’m in awe of them.
So help them out – talk to journalists more not less: they’re your friends, at least if you haven’t done anything terribly wrong, because another defining characteristic of a journalist is a desire to help.
And don’t forget that the buck stops with me: we’ll make mistakes from time to time I can pretty much promise you, and if there’s a problem with the paper or the websites it’s my fault and I want to hear about it so I can fix it.
I’m jeremy.hedley@fairfaxmedia.com.au or you can call me any time on 04 2926 6775.