While celebrity stories are undoubtedly frivolous and of little import in the world, many, many of the smart, engaged people who subscribe to The Age respond with enthusiasm, writes deputy editor Michael Bachelard | OPINION
is that I get to see the comments of people who are both subscribing and unsubscribing from our masthead, and the more general feedback that appears in various channels from those who read our journalism.
Watching these channels is such an interesting exercise. Our subscribers are smart and engaged people, and you are paying for something from which you rightly demand value for money. Some of you are delighted to be joining , and others are unhappy enough to want to leave. There are story ideas in there, and valid criticisms, and things that we certainly need to improve – among them the delivery problems, for which we sincerely apologise and which we are working on.One complaint, though, caught me off guard: a disgruntled subscriber asked why we bothered with all the culture and lifestyle content; this was not real news, and we should stick to being more serious.
It must be said it’s not a widespread complaint, but I’ve been chewing over it nonetheless. Every day the editors and senior staff ofhold national and local news conferences to discuss what we are doing that day, what our journalists should be working on for the week, the weekend, and the broader, investigative or feature stories that take longer to cook and more effort to produce.
Part of these discussions is always what we call “the mix”. You’ll notice on our website that, in the three slots at the top, there is almost always something that takes you away from the seriousness of the world. As I type this, we have
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