Townsville Bulletin business editor Tony Raggatt retires
After nearly 40 years with the Townsville Bulletin, and decades more in the journalism game, business editor Tony Raggatt is putting down his pen.
Townsville
Don't miss out on the headlines from Townsville. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It wasn’t uncommon during a slow day in the newsroom to see the editor park his bum on one corner of Tony Raggatt’s desk and ask, “what’a’ya’got? Page one needs a splash and there’s a big hole on three”.
Raggatt would most likely languidly push his chair back, put his hands behind his head and umm and arr for a few seconds before, perhaps, offering up a story about dodgy business in a local bridge building contract that has pushed a local construction firm to the brink. A close relative of one of the government agencies involved looks to have received inside info and put in a lower bid.
“Good, says the editor. “That’s page one taken care of. What about three?
Raggatt unfolds his hands, brings them around to the front, taps his desk with his fingers, and says, “I was talking to someone in Albanese’s office yesterday and they let it drop that the Burdekin Dam Stage Two was looking good. Apparently Albo wants a big infrastructure project on the table and is prepared to go the whole hog, the whole extra 15 metres higher. I’ll get a bit more from them, but it’ll stack up.”
The editor, smacks the desk. “Bloody ripper,” he says as he smacks Raggatt on the back and heads back into his office.
It’s just another day in the journalistic life of Tony Raggatt, the magician, pulling top yarns out of his hat. Except with Raggatt there was never any ‘magical’ smoke and mirrors. As always the stories would be meticulously balanced and cross-checked. Editors might have sometimes wished he was faster, but if the story was sitting in his computer waiting for him to hit the send button, it only meant he was waiting for verification for one or two details.
He’s worked as a butler at a posh Pommy pub, played cricket with the Fleet Street Strollers and honed his craft at The Australian and The Daily Telegraph newspapers in the early 1980s. Finally, after more than 46 years in journalism, 40 of them with the Townsville Bulletin, this quiet, thoughtful, top-notch journo has hung up the note book and is about to start terrorising the Cleveland Bay barra population.
The Bulletin hasn’t just lost a great reporter, it has lost an encyclopaedic treasure trove of knowledge.
This week we contacted a few of Tony’s former editors, colleagues and sources for their thoughts on a bloke who never shouted down the phone, never threw tantrums in the office or passed on the latest in-house gossip. He just did his job and he did it extremely well.
JASON SCOTT, News Corp Managing Director QLD and News Regional Media: Congratulations Tony on a wonderful career at the Bully.
When a long-term employee rides off into the sunset, it’s only natural to reflect on contribution and legacy.
For some staff it’s more difficult than others.
Yours Tony is easy.
You almost single-handedly catapulted business stories from the back of the book to the front.
And you did it at a time when Townsville needed it most.
When the city transformed from Brownsville to Townsville, from a sleepy outpost to the most dynamic regional city in Australia, the North’s Own Paper had to lead that transition and reflect the aspirations of North Queenslanders.
And thanks to journalists like you Tony, today the Townsville Bulletin is connected to its community in a way most news brands can only dream of.
And while hyperlocal stories are our lifeblood, Tony you showed how regional journalists can break stories of national significance – you have the trophies and the scar tissue as proof.
But perhaps the legacy I like most is that you achieved all of this with grace and humility.
On behalf of everyone at News, congratulations on a stellar career and thank you for your contribution to News.
We wish you a long and enjoyable retirement.
CRAIG HERBERT, current Townsville Bulletin editor: “It’s taken more than 40 years, but Tony has decided the time has come to spend more time chasing fish, smacking golf balls, eradicating ants and hopefully notching up his first novel. He is a true gentleman of our craft who commands respect in our newsroom and in our community and someone of his experience is simply impossible to replace.
Mr Herbert advised young reporters “to casually listen in” as Tony goes about his interviews over the phone for a great insight into how an utterly professional journalist engages and builds rapport with interviewees to guarantee the best possible outcome for any story he tackles.
“I congratulate Tony on a stellar career and thank him for his advice, calmness and enthusiasm in chasing down every last story.”
JOHN AFFLECK, former Bulletin editor: “Tony Raggatt won a deserved award for his work on the Storm Financial collapse, which hurt so many people. This occurred well after my time in Townsville but I was pleased to learn his work had been acknowledged appropriately.
I also thought his piece on surviving Cyclone Althea, using his father’s written account with Tony’s own vivid recollections of how the Raggatt home began to disintegrate around the family as they huddled inside, was a remarkable piece of writing.
Tony’s attention to detail had been a good reason to send him – with the army – to East Timor soon after peacekeeping forces were sent there in 1999 to stop roving bands of militia intent on terrorising and killing in the wake of the tiny nation’s independence vote. With much of the operation being conducted by Townsville-based troops, it was important for the Townsville Bulletin to have a presence there to report on what was happening and indeed, to assist in morale boosting for the soldiers and their families by devoting considerable space in the news columns each day to reports from East Timor and also for soldiers and families to use that news space to send messages of love and assurance.
RORY GIBSON, former TB editor and now NewsCorp columnist:
I first met Tony when we were both cub reporters sitting next to each other in the Townsville Bulletin back in 1979. We’ve been friends ever since and have shared some epic experiences, both privately and as journalists.
What I can say about Tony is he is a man with a capacity to surprise.
He first surprised me in late 1980, when I walked back to the office from the travel agent in Flinders St clutching a one-way ticket to London. I was off for a two-year working holiday to Britain, a plan I hadn’t widely publicised and one Tony certainly didn’t know about.
Tony asked to see the ticket. He stared at it for a moment, looked up at me and said, “Can I come?” Just like that.
And so off we went to take London by storm, aged about 22. I took a sheepskin coat, Tony took an electric guitar he’d built himself. We found ourselves living in a sort of boarding house for young Aussie travellers in Brixton, taking up residence a few weeks before the infamous Brixton riots in 1981.
Tony was the first person I ever saw eat avocado on toast, frequently scouring the Brixton markets for the fruit that would one day prevent a whole generation from buying a house. Thanks to Tony, avo on toast became a staple in that house long before it became a trendy treat for the rest of the world.
He also became a demon darts player at the local pub, and introduced his innocents-abroad housemates to the evils of Pils, a European lager of humungous potency.
Tony was a confident and curious traveller who discovered much about London life before the rest of us had worked out how the Underground worked.
Other than that stint overseas and a brief period working in Sydney, Tony has spent his working life at the Bulletin, and I was so grateful he was there when I returned twice to work in Townsville, first as deputy editor and again later as editor. And not just because he was my friend. I knew that with Tony in the newsroom there was at least one reporter who would not stop until he had the full, balanced story on the page.
I had the honour of speaking at Tony’s 60th birthday a few years ago when I reminisced about his career. I said then what I’ll repeat here … Tony has always been underestimated by those he has been tasked to report on. Because he is quietly spoken and outwardly easygoing, people thought he would be a soft touch. Bad mistake.
He drove Townsville’s former mayor and Labor Party rising star Tony Mooney nuts, because while all other media rolled over under Mooney’s charm offensive and/or threats, Tony kept doggedly pursuing the issue of the day.
As editor I had umpteen representations from Townsville’s heavy hitters urging me to rein Raggatt in because his reporting was “too negative” (their words), or didn’t show the city in a good light, or he wasn’t a team player.
But what they could never do was prove he was wrong in anything he wrote.
Tony has a lovely, languid approach to life, and he can come across as a ditherer, a procrastinator … anyone who has played golf with him can become infuriated as he mulls over club selection.
But it’s not procrastination, it’s precision. He wants to get it right. Near enough is not good enough. It’s what makes him such a good journalist.
I’ve worked in a lot of newspapers in Australia and abroad, but none of them was as much fun as working at the Townsville Bulletin. It was Tony – along with the many other colleagues with similar skills, temperament and ability to laugh – that made it so.
Have a great afterlife mate.
TONY MOONEY, former Townsville Mayor and now chair, Townsville Hospital and Health Service: Tony Raggatt is a true local boy who became a legend in the newsroom at the Bully.
Over the years I’ve respected his approach although admit to many stoushes over the angle of some of his stories. But unlike some other journos he was far more interested in the yarn than the headline.
In my time as Mayor there is no doubt I lost some bark as a result of his reporting of the Council but have to pay tribute to his professionalism and fairness.
There was always one time of the year when “hostilities” were suspended and that was the Mayor’s Christmas drinks. Tony was always front and centre at these functions as we all enjoyed a beer and a laugh at our missteps over the past year.
MICK CARROLL, former TB editor, now editor Sunday Telegraph, Sydney: Tony single-handedly built the business round at the Townsville Bully.
“It never really existed before Tony and in a city like Townsville it was a big hole in our coverage.
The thing about Tony was he was able to break stories and shake things up and still have the business leaders trust him.
Over time he also was a terrific resource for young reporters still working out what this game is all about
CRAIG WARHURST, former TB editor, current editor of the Hobart Mercury: Tony Raggatt has always been a constant of the Townsville Bulletin newsroom. He was a journo that knew everyone in the city and had a memory that could recall the events and timelines of each issue that had ever been printed in the Townsville Bulletin.
As a new editor coming into the Northern Capital in 2020 he was invaluable to me as a conduit to the people and issues of the city especially on the issues of politics, mining and business.
Tony or ‘Raggs’ was no-nonsense and old school. He was no show boater celebrating his exclusives on Twitter or Facebook, he let his stories do the talking. Many times he would have a front-page story hanging around in the back of his notebook that was only revealed late in the day or after chat in a morning meeting.
He was a gentleman with great ethics and will be sorely missed at the Bully and across North Queensland.
MAX TOMLINSON, former Managing Director of the North Queensland Newspaper Company Ltd and former Managing Editor of The Northern Miner newspaper, Charters Towers: I remember meeting Tony for the first time in the late 1970s. I had been appointed managing editor of the paper in 1978; Tony was a raw young cadet journalist. Tony and I forged a positive professional relationship at the Miner which continued and developed during the following five decades. We both witnessed a revolution in the way the public absorbs news, resulting in the steady erosion of the print medium as the dominant source of information. I worked closely with Tony when I was engaged as a consultant by the victims of the collapse of Storm Financial in 2009 and was pleased that Tony’s dogged forensic work on that financial disaster gained him many professional accolades, including a prestigious Clarion Award and a News Award for Business Journalist of the Year. Tony leaves behind an impressive body of professional work as well as a reputation for hard-headed journalism. Young journalists would do well to tread in the deep footprints he will leave behind as he heads for retirement.
ELLIOT HANNAY, former editor, Townsville Bulletin: “To this day I still read and believe anything that has his name on it.”
BOB CHAD, body corporate chairman: “I’ve always found him proactive when it came to problems North Queensland unit owners were having with insurance. He’s got a very good handle on insurance and crosschecks the information I give him. He will be sorely missed.”
Tony, may the fish keep biting and the wheels keep turning for a long time to come.
Originally published as Townsville Bulletin business editor Tony Raggatt retires
WARNING: Bruce blocked, Rollingstone crash
Bruce Hwy traffic is being diverted around Rollingstone after a truck rollover near the Rollingstone Hotel.
Margie Ryder says she will ‘absolutely not’ be politically correct
Margie Ryder’s comedy chops are coming out in full force as she tries to engage with voters on a shoestring budget – including doing political speeches while setting crab pots, and faking a tattoo.