Adelaide – Athens of the South’s long, slow decline

There is a high quotient for the irrational in Adelaide, in part whipped up by a parochial and slightly bonkers media. Adelaide's media is worth a book in itself, but I will cite only one example.

Some time ago Tony McGuinness, the former captain of Adelaide's most popular and revered football team, the Crows, allegedly had an affair with the wife of a former member of the Hell's Angels Adelaide chapter.

McGuinness was the co-founder of a well-regarded Adelaide charity called the McGuinness McDermott Foundation, which had raised a large amount of money. It was especially popular amongst the eastern suburbs 'young movers and shakers.'

McGuiness is married (at time of writing) to Channel Nine's weekend newsreader Georgina McGuiness, (who was recently was sacked). She is popular and held in high regard by the media and public alike. They were a celebrity couple.

The cuckolded husband and former Hell's Angel was recently jailed for three years for drug offences. Tony McGuinness has since scarpered.

This story made The Advertiser three times over a two-week period and was reported on Channel Seven and on the ABC over the same frequency. And that was about all. But in Adelaide, a small city, why didn't this story run for weeks, if not months?

You can have bodies in barrels in Snowtown, the murder of six young men by a group of homicidal maniacs and the rape and murder of young women in Truro in the late 70s, but when it comes to 'icons' (fallen or not), the media powers say 'limited coverage, thankyou.'

If that story didn't 'bounce' what other stories lay dead on the editor’s desk because they were guaranteed to offend? What basic assumptions would this reporting traduce?

Adelaide has some fine reporters but parochialism has trashed news sense and the media treats its consumers like idiots.

A conclusion of sorts

The credo of the TV sitcom The Addams Family was Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc – '"we gladly feast on those who subdue us." But in Adelaide the threat is more like an autoimmune disease – complacency and the 'closed shop' mentality will ultimately consume the host.

Like an ageing lady, Adelaide declines slowly. The State Theatre Company will still run shows to half full houses and the same opinion writers will still write their columns about their pet hates.