Radio Journalism
was the arrival towards the end of the year of the ABC Weekly, the journal of the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Radio journalism is such a recent development in the history of print that a new broad casting journal is necessarily an experiment; and since we are experimenters ourselves we can’t help being interested in the experiments of our neighbours. .§ event of some interest to ourselves But the matter is of wider interest than that. Radio journalism is as much a sociai experiment as broadcasting itself is; and when both the broadcasting and the journalism are conducted by the State every householder is affected even if he pretends not to be interested. The fact is, radio journalism is something that journalists themselves are only beginning to understand. If the test is circulation, there has been one, and only one, resounding success to date- the BBC Radio Times. If the test is influence, there has been no outstanding success at all. Any journalist could name half a dozen radical and two or three reactionary weeklies that achieve more with a 20,000-50,000 circulation than the Radio Times has achieved with its millions: and that would still be true if the Radio Times were privately owned. But no serious radio journal is privately owned. Only the frivolous aspects of broadcasting have been exploited by private enterprise, and the biggest obstacle to the development of other radio magazines is that they are judged, and therefore influenced, by the standards these private ventures have built up. It is significant that the first reaction of the Australian public was astonishment that their new weekly had "no coloured comics, no glamour, and no sex." We still find it interesting also that so many people send us letters asking why we have no "live news" (by which they mean scandals), no "heavenly science" (by which they mean fortunetelling), no "variety" (by which they mean sensations), and no "thought-provoking articles" (by which they mean propaganda or superstition). It would help our readers and help us if they would get it finally into their heads that to ask a Government to produce jazz-journalism is the same thing as asking it to teach the can-can to school-children.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 28, 5 January 1940, Page 12
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367Radio Journalism New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 28, 5 January 1940, Page 12
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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