Former Daily Mercury editor reflects on time at paper
At the helm from 1980 to 1987, Rod Manning says there are two components to good journalism
Mackay
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THERE are two components to good journalism: accuracy, and immediacy.
It’s a creed the Daily Mercury’s long serving editor Rod Manning firmly believes to this day, and something that held himself and his team in good stead for his entire career.
“I said to the reporters, ‘We confuse the public enough as it is without trying, so we’re not going to try’,” the former editor, who was at the helm from 1980 to 1997, recalled.
“I always opposed running April Fools’ Day jokes,” he said.
But journalism as a profession progressed and changed over the decades into what he said was now considered a “craft”.
A critical aspect of the job, he said, was a news sense – knowing what is and isn’t newsworthy.
“When Sir Isaac Isaacs was confronted with preparing the journalism award many years ago, he said, ‘What can I compare it with? It’s not like the public service, it’s not like school teaching or university work.’”
News sense was not easily taught, Mr Manning said.
FOKKER FRIENDSHIP CRASH
WHEN the TAA Fokker F-27 Friendship plane crashed off Far Beach, killing everyone on board, Rod Manning was the reporter on the ground.
He recalled the rush to meet a print deadline, the need to file an accurate report on the tragedy while recognising the significance of the situation.
June 10, 1960, to this day, remains a vivid memory for Mr Manning whose coverage of that night was recognised with a Walkley Award – the highest honour for Australian journalists.
“The sub-editor had asked me to meet this plane and interview two of its passengers,” he said.
“One of them was a senior tourism official and the other was the American Consular in Brisbane.”
The plane flying from Brisbane to Mackay via Maryborough and Rockhampton was due to land about 8.30pm that Friday.
Mr Manning said he was under pressure to interview the two passengers for the next morning’s Mercury as passengers typically scuttled off after landing.
“I’d been driving around and I knew the plane was running late,” he said.
“I could hear but not see the plane, it was so foggy.
“All I could see was a red port light, so you could judge which way it was going.”
Manning said he soon learned from the Chief of Police the plane was “missing”, now only hours before print deadline.
“If we had missed that story, it was a Friday night … there normally would not have been a Mercury until Monday, which means the Courier Mail might have some late story.
“But the Brisbane Telegraph was an afternoon paper – it and the radio would have beaten us to the story.
“In Mackay … television was a still a fair way off.”
Mr Manning and the Mercury avoided stopping the presses that night.
Read this story online to see more about the Fokker disaster:
– 60 years since Mackay plane crash tragedy
– Names of 29 lost in ‘Abel Tasman’ crash remembered
STOP THE PRESS
“In my days as editor, both in the hot metal days and in the computerised ones … I had the power to stop the presses but I would do that very infrequently because I had to get the co-operation of the composing room,” Manning said.
“Time would be lost.”
He said the paper would sometimes publish a first edition to be “immediately” delivered to the country areas and then publish an updated version for in the city.
“It was a lot of work … to put a paper out six nights a week, full of news and stories.”
“A former production manager, Mr Bud Cash, told me that when he was talking to his own staff, the composing room, the linotypes, he would reprimand them fairly gently about a mistake.
“He would say, ‘If you’re doing a lot of work, you can’t avoid making a mistake, but I would not expect you to make the same mistake again’.
“He said, ‘If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing anything’.”
But Mr Manning would endeavour to make sure his editorial team could prevent mistakes at all costs.
MOST MEMORABLE STORIES
“I think the most memorable (story) was the expansion of the coal industry, the development of Dalrymple Bay,” Mr Manning said.
He said the first indication the Bowen Basin would become what it has, was the night he reported on a Chamber of Commerce meeting.
“The treasurer, Mr Stuart Wallace … turned up and he told us the Americans were exploring the area for coal and he said big things were going to happen.
“Explorers and early settlers had known of the coal deposits and local people had worked hard to get the development. Blair Athol was an earlier development.”
“So I went back, wrote the story and it was page two lead story.
“But I was out at Moranbah when it was only a collection of caravans.”
He said other memorable stories included the opening of the Entertainment Centre, the establishment of the CQUniversity campus and the Conservatorium of Music, the shifting of the railway station from Boddington St to Connors Rd at Paget, and the new Civic Administration Building on Gordon St.
“The reclamation and establishment of East Mackay was a considerable achievement; the shift from bagged to bulk sugar loading, the upgrading of the harbour and marina.”
Mr Manning said he attended, as a boy of four or five years, the opening of Mackay Harbour in 1939 by then Premier William Forgan Smith.
As a cadet journalist, he met Mr Forgan Smith not long before he died in 1953.
More stories:
– How Mackay got behind a plan to build entertainment precinct
– Troubled start for Mackay’s relocated railway network
– CELEBRATION: Port of Mackay turns 80
“I also noted the coming of women in large numbers to journalism as a major step,” he said.
“There are thousands of stories.
“We covered it all as best as we could.”
To read the full version of this story, head online to dailymercury.com.au.
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