Betoota Advocate: It’s rural, it’s real

The editor of satirical news site The Betoota Advocate on his favourite stories from the ghost town and why city folk can’t get enough.

Betoota Advocate editor at-large Errol Parker, with Clancy Overell. Picture: Nic Walker

Where will we find you after a tough day in the newsroom?

Alcohol has always been a great antidote to the hack. But you get to a point where you probably shouldn’t be spending that much time at the pub because eventually you’re not even finding any more stories. So I guess you’ve really just got to switch off in the evening. Trawling Twitter until 2am can be a good relaxer. There’s nothing like getting on Twitter after a few beers.

Your favourite Betoota stories?

“Two-Star Health Rating On Bacon & Egg Pie Not About To Deter Local Rare Unit From Buying Them” is a favourite article of mine because the subject of the article died earlier this month from exposure (to bacon-and-egg pies) and we here at The Advocate miss his happy-go-lucky disposition around town. In the newsroom we also liked the story “Thrifty Uni Student Explains You Can Get Quite A Bit For 30 Bucks At Self Serve Checkout” because it featured a nice young man who shared his helpful tips on how to steal from a giant, soulless multinational (supermarket). It’s OK to steal from them because they avoid tax and treat our farmers like a dispensable commodity.

Clancy Overell. Picture: Nic Walker

Your “biography” says you worked as a press secretary for Joh Bjelke-Petersen. That sounds pretty unreal.

It was great because I got to see the dark side (of media) as well. Media advisers were quite important to Sir Joh’s government under the corrugated iron curtain that was 1980s Queensland politics. I was often out on the boat with Sir Joh, Russ Hinze, and the police commissioner at the time. And it did teach me a lot, when you’ve got a government whose attitude towards the media is to go out there and feed the chooks. It’s good to know that experience as a journalist, when you’re the chook and you’re being fed.

Why do you think the Betoota Advocate has been so popular?

I think our writing strikes a chord because we always try to cast a wide net. We’re not just writing for a rural audience. It’s a rural format, with rural sensibilities, for a wide range of Australians. And I think that when you look through history, some of the great kinds of media have had something for everyone. I’m not sure if we thought we’d have that scale of reaction when we took the Betoota Advocate online.

Is it really satire?

I guess it’s for want of a better word. Some people have said what I do is just “full-blown writing”. As a journalist you do a bit of storytelling here and there, and that’s what I do. And at the Advocate, we’ve just managed to get it right a lot of the time. There’s a lot of research, a lot of liaising and a lot of travelling around, we work very hard on our stories. We’re not just sitting here like everyday citizens.

Why does the rural sensibility appeal to city folk?

I think there’s an authenticity to regional journalism that’s always appealed to people. You don’t have to be lying on your couch after lunch in the middle of the Maranoa (in southwest Queensland) to watch Landline on a Sunday afternoon. A lot of people watch it right around the country. Someone like Pip Courtney and some of those great rural journalists over the years have really gotten followings outside of the bush. It’s quite accessible, more so than people think.

The Betoota Advocate’s new book, How Good’s Australia, is published by Pan Macmillan.