Just-departed Listener deputy editor Denis Welch says his biography of Helen Clark will be published in 2009, by which time she may no longer be prime minister. The timing should end any suggestion the work will be an election promotion or another hagiography like Brian Edwards’s adoring Helen: Portrait of A Prime Minister, published in 2001. Penguin has contracted Welch to write the book. It is not officially sanctioned by Clark. Welch says Penguin wants the manuscript delivered “after the next election (whether Labour wins or loses) in order to publish it in 2009. I’ll be giving it my best shot this year.”
Welch’s departure today from the Listener marks the passing of most of the magazine’s old guard. While the wonderful political columnist and essayist Jane Clifton still graces its pages, the resignation of long-time senior writer Gordon Campbell to spin-doctor for the Greens a couple of years ago was a huge loss. Campbell was that rarity in a magazine writer – he regularly broke stories, sometimes big ones, such as the one that forced the departure of Justice Laurie Grieg as inspector-general of intelligence and security when he revealed to Campbell his desire to see Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui “outski on the next plane.” Campbell and Welch were the last torch-bearers of the soft-left liberal journalism the Listener was noted for over the decades, and Welch was not really allowed to display much of his talent for that after making the mistake of standing under the Alliance banner in the 1992 Wellington Central byelection. He says he hopes in future still to contribute “the odd feature” to the Listener.
The Listener, despite being much changed under present editor Pamela Stirling, who has endeavoured to give it a broader appeal without trying to compete with the likes of Woman’s Day, remains a very good current affairs magazine, a rarity with quality writing in a marketplace dominated by celebrity trash. Given the descent into dross of the once groundbreaking Metro and the eviction from North & South of founding editor Robyn Langwell after she refused to follow Metro downmarket, we are lucky to have the Listener even though it is no longer in its prime. This was once a truly stand-out publication, despite having started its long life in 1939 as state-owned, the organ of the old New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation and its various incarnations. I suspect few people reading this blog can recall – or were even alive – when New Zealand had just three magazines worthy of the description: the Listener, the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly and the old Weekly News (which closed in 1971). Of the three, the Listener, begun as a radio programme guide and named after a long-closed British magazine of the same name, was the bold campaigner. It regularly stood up to the governments of the day, its editors such as Monty Holcroft, Ian Cross, Alexander Macleod (who was fired controversially) and Tony Reid becoming household names for promoting quality journalism in an era before the Nicky Watsons, Paul Holmeses and Charlotte Dawsons became household names for promoting themselves. Tom Scott started his career on the Listener, so did Rosemary McLeod.
In its “golden years,” the Listener’s circulation was huge – more than 300,000 copies a week. But like Playboy, most people did not buy it for the articles, despite many of them being very good articles indeed. It was the only publication allowed by law to print the listings for television programmes for the week ahead, something that was a big circulation driver once a second channel began screening in 1975. Yes, there was only one channel before then, and it only started in 1960! And television screened in black and white until 1974! The programme monopoly came under increasing attack from newspapers and was eventually abolished, with the Listener itself being sold to the New Zealand Herald. Circulation rapidly fell under 100,000 and is now around 69,000, still a solid figure in a market with more titles than anyone could even count. Long may it continue.
4 Comments
January 8, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Pity the tome won’t come up prior to election 2008.
This still leaves a gap in the market for one, unless it is forbidden by the Electoral Finance Bill.
I wonder if Denis Welch will be as balanced as either Brian Edwards or Dr Vernon Coleman, who I reported at No Minister the other day has written an interesting book on UK PM Gordon Brown , entitled Gordon is a Moron.
Like I commented, I wonder what such a piece of work on Dear Leader should be called.
January 8, 2008 at 3:38 pm
To be frank, I don’t think there are any remaining New Zealand biographers and even historians who don’t have an agenda in their writings.
Michael Bassett, Paul Goldsmith, Brian Edwards and such like are all, in my humble opinion, not fit to pretend to be neutral historians and biographers. Sure, Basset and Edwards are alright writers but they have been too intimately involved in what they are writing about to really be allowed by the NZ media to masquerade their works as unbiased historiography. (I think National Party member and Citizens and Ratepayers Now councilor Goldsmith’s hagiographies of Banks and Brash are far worse than ‘Helen’, though ‘Helen’ is an irritating volume nonetheless).
With Barry Gustafson, you can’t really be sure these days: his biography of Keith Holyoake which I read last week is excellent, but still quite glowingly revisionistic.
Hell, even Jane Clifton seems to admit sometimes that she does have some forced political bias owing to her husband being National Party back-room-man Murry McCully.
I long for the days of neutral political commentary, whether it be in the Listener, Metro (Bruce Jesson was vicious to the Alliance even while in office under their banner) or in the works of Michael King and Keith Sinclair.
January 8, 2008 at 4:21 pm
In defence of Jane Clifton, I have no idea what her politics are, or even if she supports any party, as there is no party line apparent in any of her writings despite the vigorous nature of them, and she’s never let slip any party leanings in any conversation I’ve had with her over the years. She is a journalistic professional of the finest kind.
The fact her other half is a member of Parliament should be irrelevant to her work.
January 10, 2008 at 11:34 am
You’re too kind to the ailing Listless. One important point shows why: Gordon Campbell’s departure wasn’t a resignation, it was a forced redundancy, and the soft-left politics of which you speak had a lot to do with it. Which is why you now get inane “how to” guides and celebrity pet stories. What next? Recipes from National Party wives?