AUSTRALIA: 'The Bulletin' closes after 128 years
Updated
After 128 years in business, the magazine that more than any came to define what it means to be Australian, closed its doors today. The Bulletin was Australia's oldest magazine. It earned respect on the back of some of Australia's most celebrated authors, from Federation-era poets like Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson, to modern authors like Peter Carey. But it's fallen victim to the power of the internet.
Presenter: Tom Iggulden
Speakers: Journalist Laurie Oakes; Labor MP Maxine McKew; Shadow Treasurer Malcolm Turnbull; historian Michael McKernan; former Australian Consolidated Press head Richard Walsh
IGGULDEN: The news was announced by press release this morning, just a day after the Bulletin's latest issue hit news stands. Acknowledging the magazine's long history and recent editiorial successes, the release said despite the best efforts of management the magazine wasn't commerically viable and the time had come to make a tough decision. Canberra press gallery journalist, Laurie Oakes, was a long time contributor to the Bulletin.
OAKES: There's no longer a magazine, nothing like the Bulletin, that will give an Australian perspective on Australian society, events, politics on everything. Newsweek, Time are good magazines but they can't do it. We needed something of our own and we've lost it.
IGGULDEN: Labor MP Maxine McKew deposed the prime minister in his seat of Bennelong at the last election. In her previous career as a journalist she worked under three different editors at the Bulletin.
MCKEW: It's a tough day for journalism.
IGGULDEN: Shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull was another high profile politician who began his professional life as a bulletin journalist.
TURNBULL: Well it will leave a big hole in our history. And you have to be honest and say the Bulletin has struggled for relevance for a long time.
IGGULDEN: The magazine was first published 128 years ago almost to the day. In pre-Federation Australia it was critical in defining Australianness. Michael McKernan is a historian and former deputy director of the Australian War Museum.
MCKERNAN: It quickly earned the title of the bushman's bible. In other words it was talking to Australians in rural Australia about an Australia they were proud of and living in. It gave Australian readers a perspective that possibly they weren't getting in their newspapers which were aping British newspapers.
IGGULDEN: It was also political from the outset, supporting conscription and prime minister Billy Hughes as war shaped the young Australian nation at Gallipoli and the Western Front. But it wasn't just what the Bulletin wrote about - it was who was doing the writing. Over its long history the magazine published virtually every major Australian author. For most of its history, the magazine was controversial. In the 1950S it became radically conservative, sticking with its colonial era sales pitch "Australia for the White Man" on its masthead right up until the early sixties. After a long slump in fortunes, in 1961 Frank Packer bought it to add to his media empire, but it was never a commercial success. The magazines modern zenith came in the early 1990's, when editor David Dale took circulation to more than 100,000. Richard Walsh was his boss at Australian Consolidated Press.
WALSH: He made the magazine something very controversial, far too controversial for Kerry Packer's liking and for once in it's life at that time got the magazine's circulaiton to increase.
IGGULDEN: But David Dale left after one too many disagreements with Mr Packer. The immediacy of the internet and competion from every expanding weekend newspaper editions eventually shrank circulation to below 58,000.
