Editorial
Who wins?
by Pamela Stirling
First, a thank you. The best part of the Listener being named 2005 Magazine of the Year Supreme Winner by the Magazine Publishers Association has been the response from readers. We have been inundated – a wonderful experience – with cards and letters from readers delighted with the success of their magazine.
Twelve months ago, we sat down as a team and worked out, with your feedback, how best to take this magazine forward. Our vision was to honour the past and create the future – as a truly world-class magazine; a magazine that has, as the judges put it, “leadership in the current affairs sector” and one that is “spirited, with a new look, new ideas and depth”.
In our portfolio was the issue last year devoted to “The People’s Historian”, Michael King. We learnt of his death early on a Wednesday: deadline day. Within minutes, the decision was made to hold the presses – no matter the financial penalty – and to work through the night to create our tribute to the man who had written in the magazine under every editor except the first, Oliver Duff. How did we know that? He had only just told us so in a handwritten card containing his “warmest congratulations” on what we were doing. Putting out the Listener, he wrote, is “what many of us still regard as the most important job in journalism in this country”.
As Editor, I am continually struck by the passion, dedication and sheer talent of all those who work on this magazine. My job, and that of others in this seat, has been simply to clear the path for that talent. And then, of course, chase them about their expenses!
This magazine’s success would not have been possible without such superb columnists. Jane Clifton took the award for Current Affairs Columnist and richly deserves the congratulations that she has received this week. For many, politics is so grimly earnest and jargon-filled that it’s hard to follow. Early on, Jane discovered that if you can get a laugh out of political issues, they won’t be so intimidating. In a world of the sound-bite, dumbing down and information overload, Jane’s column, like many others in this magazine, is the ultimate weekly destination for readers who want to feel “in the know”. Indeed, she writes with such a deft touch that she is not just an outstanding columnist, she is now a priceless part of New Zealand’s democratic process.
And what a process. John Tamihere no longer belongs to an organised political party. Yes, he’s still with Labour – just. But when a party’s press releases say that an MP has been told by the leader to take leave, and he still turns up to caucus, it can hardly be called organised.
Britain’s Tory deputy chairman Howard Flight has just been deselected after saying, during a discussion of savings in public expenditure, “The real issue is, having won power, do you then go for it?” Hardly world-shattering, but it was taken as an admission of secretly planned cuts. Flight was speaking at a private meeting. He, like Tamihere, did not expect to be reported. He was, in the words of the Spectator, “stitched up”. But his leader took action.
Clark cannot afford to indulge Tamihere. The supreme irony is that the trash-talk laddism that Tamihere indulges in may court the redneck vote, but those very attitudes were what fuelled the political feminism that still fires Clark’s electoral support. The liberation of women after millennia of oppression is one of the great moral achievements of our age; a result of the ever-growing circle of enlightenment that has also seen great advances on racial issues. Tamihere has done much recently to reconcile Maori and Pakeha over the foreshore. But courting the redneck vote is perilous. Indeed, those guys are the very conservatives who often most object to words like “front-bum” being read by their families.
Maybe Clark should consider testosterone testing – of Tamihere – like the Auckland Blues do with players. But that could end up as wide of the mark as a Carlos Spencer kick at goal. Much better for Tamihere than a legacy of laddism would be for him to front the territory that he has already identified – the need for boys to have a role model for resilience, someone who understands how easy it is to get into trouble, but who knows that you can take care to put things right. It’s not Who Dares Wins. It’s Who Cares Wins.
