Aug 27 2019

WHEN you’re overseas for an extended period, people like to ask you if you miss Australia. That’s equally true for fellow Australians and for others who love the place and can’t understand why you left.

The other, more specialised enquiry I get - from people who’ve known me for a while or are familiar with me through work - is: “how has the rugby league media in Sydney changed since your day?”.

That’s right, I’m getting to the point in life where people refer to “my day”. That's cool.

In answer to the first question, I miss family and friends and places often pop up in my dreams but I want to see so many more new cities and countries rather than just go back to Australia right now. I’ve left it a bit late in life but it would be great to live in Berlin or Chicago or even Tokyo.

If you’re the sort of person who’ll make that move once, you’re the sort of person prepared to do it again.

My answer to the second question could go on forever but I can sum up my main point thus: the pundits have become the news.

That might sound a bit hypocritical since I’ve already mentioned myself half a dozen times in this column but if Fox Sports writes a news story entitled “Mascord Says Pundits Have Now Become The News” quoting me from here, we’ll know the world really has gone crazy.

And that’s the sort of story I’m talking about. I am not being critical here, just making an observation. Things are just … different now.

I had a rule where I tried never to quote fellow media people and I was sparing about quoting former players too, unless they had an ongoing role in the game. My thinking was that while people would read these stories, they were essentially meaningless as the people I would be quoting knew no more about what was happening than I did.

If I knew something that the public didn’t, I was expected to write it. If I even said something in the office during an unguarded moment about a rumour I'd heard, I would be under intense pressure to put it in the paper.

These days, journalists work for television and radio networks that have more power and reach than their main jobs in a struggling print media industry. As a result, they say things on radio and television (via outlets which may be owned by the same corporation as their paper) before they say these things in print.

And their bosses don’t care because it might sell a paper or a paywall subscription. If you're The Australian, you love the exposure Brent Read gets on radio and TV and as long as he produces a good yarn every day for you, you don't particularly mind him dropping a few exclusives on those platforms as well.

Also, electronic media outlets have websites and social media channels to populate. The best content pushes people back to their core business - ie: quoting their own pundits. I often wonder if a reporter, after a long shift on radio, ever pressures the social media dude or dude-ette not to run something he or she regretted saying.

... just the way players, coaches and administrators have asked them for the same favour so many times.

I read a story just then about Dean Ritchie saying on TV that David Klemmer and Mitchell Pearce wanted Nathan Brown removed as Newcastle coach.

For most of my career, even if that was true, either or both players would be ringing you up and abusing you ... it's called plausible denial. But these days, players must read and hear so much about themselves in the NRL that it’s doubtful they can keep up let alone give the authors a gobful.

Do reporters and players still even have each others’ phone numbers these days?

I’ll add that in my case there was a certain lack of courage or - being kind to myself - of a gambling mentality in these situations. If someone told me something but wouldn’t be quoted, how did I know they weren’t exploiting me to get a lie into the public arena? I wanted a quote in the third par, thanks very much.

I just didn't have the confidence in myself to make the right call otherwise. I’m a rather poor judge of character, as I admitted several times in my book Touchstones. Sneaky people mystify me completely.

I lack the guts and intuition to do the job today.

But the other reason your news feeds are full of stories quoting Paul Kent off the TV is that the actual players don’t say much anymore. Sure, if they’re paid to go on aforementioned radio or TV shows you might get some gold but can you actually expect to get anything to yourself from one of them at a game or stage-managed media opp?

Things are better now in many ways. Young NRL reporters are more interested in tactics and human interest than we were; I guess that’s the influence of American sportswriting.

Unless something really piqued my interest during a game, I’d ask questions at the post match media conference that might give me something to put in my first paragraph, or I’d ask nothing. I didn't care about defensive patterns or the young debutant on the losing team.

These days they actually ask about the football! God forbid! There is apparently a demand for that kind of thing.

But I am grateful to have worked in an era where if I wanted to know if Kevin McGuinness was joining Manly next year, I’d ring him up, ask him, he’d say 'yes', give me a few quotes and I’d have a nice back page lead that no-one else had.

Then it was off to the pub.

(That actually happened in 2002, by the way).



