"Read All About It In The Idler"
26 February 2002
"Read All About It In The Idler"
26 February 2002
Curtains for Peter Sellars: An Interview with Adelaide
Messenger
Editor Des Ryan
Des Ryan, editor of the Adelaide Messenger (Messenger photo)
Peter Sellars recently returned to Adelaide, Australia to direct an opera in the Adelaide Festival. He had resigned as Festival director shortly after the Adelaide City Messenger published a special issue on November 7, 2001. That paper contained a number of critical articles. It also contained a response from the festival's CEO. The front-page headline, illustrated with an unflattering cartoon, read "Festival Disaster."
While the Messenger might not have been the only factor in Sellars' demise -- he had been criticized elsewhere for his television ads featuring Adolf Hitler -- the newspaper's unflinching stance was noteworthy.
Messenger columnist Russell Starke declared "Frankly, I don't believe Sellars should ever have been employed to create and oversee a festival of the international standing and proven qualities of the Adelaide model."
A few days later, Peter Sellars resigned.
The Idler interviewed Messenger editor Des Ryan and chief of staff Megan Lloyd about his newspapers' influence on Adelaide's cultural life.
IDLER: What kind of publications are the Messenger newspapers?
DES RYAN:Messenger Newspapers was started in March 1951 by founder Roger Baynes Snr, as one free paper covering Port Adelaide with 10,000 circulation. Now there are 11 mastheads, all free, with a group circulation of about 500,000 and readership of about 700,000, representing 78 percent of Adelaide's adult population.
Average pagination 60-80 pages. Total Staff: 164 (33 journalists and 11 photographers). Head office Port Adelaide and five branch offices. The papers are traditional community newspapers, covering local government, civic affairs, sport, education and so on.
The City Messenger in which the Sellars material appeared is somewhat different to the others. It is distributed in the Central Business District and at North Adelaide, and at 28,000 circulation and 28-32 pages, it is the smallest paper in the group. It generally adopts a gadfly role regarding city/state governance.
However, none of the Messenger papers is "alternative" except in the sense that we are have no editorial relationship with The Advertiser daily (editor's note: also owned by Rupert Murdoch's company) and run our own independent editorial line.
IDLER: How did you come to edit the Messenger?
RYAN: I started in radio journalism in Melbourne in 1971 (aged 19); radio news director in Adelaide aged 24. Joined Messenger in 1980; editor since 1984.
IDLER: Do you have any other jobs?
RYAN: I also write a weekly column that runs across all our papers which gives me a minor public profile. Also appear regularly on radio to talk about community affairs.
IDLER: How much influence does the proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, have on your paper?
RYAN: The Messenger is 100 percent owned by News Ltd. (editor's note: Murdoch's company). In 1964, Messenger's founder Roger Baynes sold 49 percent of Messenger to The Advertiser which loaned him funds to buy land and buildings and to update printing equipment.
Shortly before he died in 1983, The Advertiser bought the remaining 51 percent holding. When News Ltd made a successful bid for the Herald & Weekly Times Group in 1987, it obtained The Advertiser in the same deal, and Messenger came with the package. In Adelaide, News Ltd owns The Advertiser (the only daily), The Sunday Mail (the only Sunday), and Messenger (the only community newspaper group). The monopoly is a controversial one locally which causes comment/angst among the "chattering classes".
When The 'Tiser changed its format from broadsheet to tabloid in 1997 one would have thought the sky was falling to judge by some reactions. However, the changed format reversed The 'Tiser's long-time circulation decline and, for all the critical talk of lurid 'tabloid journalism', it continues to thrive. Many of the young journalists who start their careers at Messenger transfer to The 'Tiser as their next career move, so I know a lot of them. But we remain fiercely competitive in trying to scoop each other. As for TV, Australia's media
cross-ownership laws prevent the owner of a significant newspaper from
owning a TV station in the same market.
IDLER: What brought you into contact with Peter Sellars?
RYAN: The first time I saw Peter Sellars up close was on April 4, 2001 -
At the Stamford Plaza Hotel, in Adelaide - at an evening gathering of potential Festival of Arts sponsors.
IDLER: Why had you been invited?
RYAN: I was there as the Editor of Messenger, not as a patron. Also there were the Chief of Staff Megan Lloyd, The Advertiser's arts editor and two of The Tiser's arts columnists. The Messenger has never been a Festival sponsor (we tend to sponsor smaller, community-based events).
IDLER: Can you explain the dynamics of Adelaide cultural life?
RYAN: Adelaide is a difficult thing to explain to an outsider... Adelaide is also uncommonly welcoming and courteous towards visitors, a small town welcome underscored by an inferiority complex in the sense that it eagerly wishes outsiders to think well of us.
In Sellars, whatever reservations Adelaide had about him were quickly put to one side. Adelaide did not want to appear inhospitable; Adelaide feared being branded unsophisticated or gauche; Adelaide did not want to be seen as negative; and Adelaide was prepared to give him free rein even beyond reason because the arts were meant to be challenging and controversial.
IDLER: Who was there?
RYAN: Maybe 100 people in suits, and a handful of media executives. It was
explained at the outset this was to be a private briefing, not for reporting, aimed at giving would-be corporate sponsors a feel for Sellars' vision. The audience was seated on either side of a catwalk erected across the middle of the room, along which Sellars strode back and forth -- scuffed walking boots, dungarees, smock shirt, dangling beads and bangles, and his great shock of hair. "Shockheaded Peter."
IDLER: What did he say?
RYAN: His presentation lasted a good half hour: entertaining, theatrical, laughing like a drain and, most remarkable of all, he never blinked
His eyes. A case of alien possession?
IDLER: "Alien possession" seems to indicated a negative first impression...
RYAN: The bullshit detector firmly planted up my nose was screaming. Here are my notes of what he said that evening:
* "The reputation of the Adelaide Festival is top of the line --excellence, very high standards."
* "Adelaide is not driven by the same commercial concerns as Melbourne; Adelaide is not as showy as Sydney. Quality of life is more important here."
* "We are going to turn around from having a festival of imports -- 40 years ago, our culture was imported from London -- to having a festival of exports."
* "Adelaide will stop doing business as usual and do something different for two weeks. It will be an opportunity for spiritual renewal."
* "Diversification of diet is the festival program ... cultural diversity... my record collection is an example of cultural diversity."
* "We are planning a hip-hop symposium, to be critiqued by 17 year-olds."
* "There will be intimate, rich, personal experiences ... occuring exclusively in private homes, with a maximum of 50 people, beautiful food and classical music."
* "Young people will live for four days on the land with Aborigines, a formative experience."
* "Banquet tables will run down the median strip of Port Road, featuring Adelaide's best chefs."
* "The Festival Centre itself will get a makeover, creating for example a Star Trek landing zone for Martians."
* "Seven giant screens will be erected throughout the State - in Victoria Square and in Oak Valley (a remote Aboriginal settlement) -- and each site will have a fire going through the night ... the State will be in contact with itself, highlighting the issue of rural isolation."
* "Only theatre companies with something to say ... we are searching out a new generation of where Australian artists are heading."
* "Taking the festival to hospitals. Health is a cultural thing. Playing music and offering fine food can assist the healing. Artists in rehabilitation projects. Healing gardens. Buy your ticket and go to hospital."
* "Connect 'trance' to sport, and move them to serene, breathtaking places such as in the parks."
* "Adelaide is the genome capital of Australia -- create a visual arts program 'Big Science and You' connecting artists and scientists."
* "Commissioning four feature films."
* "You will see a transformation, it will change Adelaide and will change the world."
IDLER: Are these types of remarks off-putting to a typical Australian?
RYAN: The average Australian does not respond to well to the huggy, touchy-feely, get in touch with your inner self, type of approach, especially not if it comes packaged with an American accent. Not racist, just an instinctive wariness of the pushy snake oil salesman in the weird clothes and promising a cure-all for whatever ails you. Blame Hollywood.
The whole presentation was left hanging in the air, confusing, riddled with "new age" jargon about getting in touch with our spirituality and nothing concrete was produced in terms of real, booked, program content.
IDLER: How did it go over with the other Adelaide listeners?
RYAN: I saw none of the suits reach for their cheque books.
IDLER: And with you?
RYAN: My thoughts at the time were that Sellars was either a genius or a buffoon con-man, leaning heavily towards the latter.
IDLER: How was this different from other Festival previews?
MEGAN LLOYD: They were reported with some fanfare and expectation that the program will be challenging, diverse but ultimately entertaining. There was some concern a year out from Barry Kosky's 1996 Festival that it would be dark, dreary and deathly but was praised in the English magazine The Spectator and was widely enjoyed.
RYAN: At an earlier occasion, the Messenger chief of staff Megan Lloyd had also witnessed a Sellars performance at a gathering of Adelaide's prominent property owners and developers, in a meeting room behind The Adelaide Town Hall.
IDLER: Why did Megan Lloyd question what no one else had?
LLOYD: I am Chief of Staff in editorial at Messenger Newspapers and was The City Messenger reporter for three years including during the period of the 1996 Festival. As COS, I'm invited to every Festival lead-up events, including the one detailed below, and to most major arts events. You could say I'm an arts fan: have attended Festival and Adelaide Fringe events for as long as I can remember; subscribe to our State Theatre company, attend most Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concerts and an a Friend of the Art Gallery of SA.
RYAN: Her notes:
"It was about making Adelaide a better place. Several hundred invited people were there, especially architects, designers, etc, and Sellars came across as quite charismatic and with certainly different views of what the Festival could be about. However, afterwards I found it difficult to make sense of my notes. The way he talked was all over the place - disjointed sentences and terms - which made quoting difficult. It was refined rambling. On that night, Theo Maras (prominent property developer), who was on the panel, got down on one knee and called Sellars 'The Messiah', which I felt was a bit strong."
IDLER: How come Maras fell so hard for Sellars?
LLOYD: Theo Maras is in his mid-50s. Although Maras was deliberately 'hamming it up', Sellars nonetheless had pushed all the right buttons about the city of Adelaide, of which Maras is a strong advocate, particularly when it comes to promoting the city centre and its public spaces. As it has turned out, Sellars tried to dilute much of the Festival to suburban and regional areas and lowered the focus of the city centre.
RYAN: Megan Lloyd also accompanied me to the Stamford Plaza session on
April 4. Her notes again:
"In the five festivals that I have covered I have never known a drinks night to take place where the festival director tries to sell a festival without actually telling anyone about any of the acts that are coming. I still felt it was worth giving him the benefit of the doubt at that stage. However, when it became apparent that the festival was going to be about film and his opera, and after talking to other people in the arts community, my misgivings grew. So I went onto the internet and found The Idler piece. There was everything we feared, summed up beautifully."
IDLER: How did you find The Idler article?
LLOYD: After the fiasco of the program launch, I decided I wanted to find out how Sellars had been reported overseas, particularly the US, and how his handling of the LA Festival was reported. I tried the LA Times website first but found nothing. I then put Sellars name into excite.com - knowing I would get references to the actor as well - and The Idler was about the fourth webmatch. Along the way, Messenger's arts contributor Russell Starke, unable for months to get a definite fix on the Festival program, had begun to mutter darkly about "Boy Wonder" and "Shockheaded Peter".
IDLER: Why was Russell Starke unhappy with Sellars?
RYAN: Starke has a background in arts/public relations, operates a private art gallery and writes an arts gossip column for Messenger. He has always been an arts gadfly, the Australian 'stirrer', with excellent arts sources at the top end of town i.e. sponsors and patrons. It was from this direction, whispered in his ear, that the first mutterings occurred of something going awry with Sellar's festival. Starke passed on the concerns to me and we took it from there. Messenger journalism is based on my ethos that good journalists are people who grow angry in the face of injustice or abuse of power, and try to do something to fix it. Everything we do derives from that approach.
On Sunday, September 23, Starke and I had a meeting at which we agreed he should write a critique of the Sellars' directorship so far. Starke began to question his sources and it became evident the State Government, certain members of the Festival board and others in the arts community were deeply worried about the lack of visible content, poor ticket pre-sales and twitchy sponsors. None of them would go on the record, however, and I told Starke to keep his powder dry until we had something concrete to hang it on.
IDLER: Why wouldn't anyone talk on the record?
RYAN: Hey, this is Adelaide!
Small town, powerful networks and a general reluctance to stick your head above the parapet in case someone kicks it. Also, there is a special problem for journalists in Adelaide. The journalistic adage about requiring confirmation from three sources before running an anonymous story does not hold true here. All it means in Adelaide is those three sources were drinking together last week and overheard the same rumor.
Then the Hitler TV advertisement hit the headlines, and the Festival program turned out to be more illusory than real, and we had our hook.
IDLER: Can you describe Sellars' Hitler TV ads?
RYAN: Australia's largest telecommunications company, Telstra, was the sponsor who pulled out over the Hitler TV advertisement, which is still under wraps in the Festival office. Basically, the ad showed a transposition from Hitler to Picasso, suggesting that Hitler might have turned out differently had he been exposed to the arts. It was widely condemned for being in poor taste. When the ad was dropped, Telstra returned as principal sponsor.
Starke wrote his piece and Angus Crook appeared from cyberspace, and
We published both of them on November 7.
IDLER: Were there any concerns about running an article from an obscure internet publication?
RYAN: Yes and no ... Apart from the defamation implications. the 'net can be unreliable, misleading and just plain wrong. It was a risk but a calculated one in the case of Angus Crook because the piece had a ring of authenticity -- it so closely aligned with what we were already hearing and feeling about Sellars here.
On one level I was concerned about the defamation implications I had been worried about the Angus Crook piece for reasons of defamation. South Australia's defamation laws are tough and the financial risks faced by the media are substantial ($1 million-plus is not unusual). The fact that Angus Crook was a nom de plume complicated matters since I was taking a risk on the work of someone I did not know, and it was uncertain if the author would ever become available as a witness for our defence in defamation. Our lawyer suggested we heavily edit the Crook piece to eliminate the ... stings. But I felt it was important to run it in full, in the public interest and to maintain the integrity of the piece.
IDLER: Can you explain Australian press law for non-Australians?
RYAN: An explanation of Australian defamation law? I should live so long. It is different in each State, there is no 'public figure' defence and truth by itself does not necessarily count in the journalist's favor (public benefit or public interest have to be shown in some cases). Our lawyers get to see maybe 1 per cent of Messenger's material - the risky stuff - but we have a good relationship with them. Their aim is the same as ours, to find a way of publishing, not suppressing. It often comes down to a calculated gamble and we win far more than we lose, thank goodness.
IDLER: What did you do next?
RYAN: Meantime, while I was still considering my options, we sought a comment from Sellars, who was in Paris directing an opera at the time. We could not get past the Festival flak-catchers in Adelaide. Given the potential legal problems, I made the decision then to show the Festival people the Crook and Starke pieces in advance to (a) convince them we were serious, (b) give Sellars a fair and reasonable opportunity to respond, and (c) to mitigate our legal defence in the event of a defamation trial. Over the years I have slowly come around to the view that, in cases where litigation is likely, it is OK to allow the targeted individual to see the copy beforehand.
It does not mean the copy should be changed in any way unless the facts are incorrect. One of the first things the courts here want to know is whether the victim was given a reasonable opportunity to make a right of reply. Having been in the situation on several occasions, being able to say the plaintiff had every opportunity even down to previewing the copy, can help win the day.
The only risk in allowing the Festival people to preview the copy was they and/or Sellars might seek a court injunction to prevent publication. It was an option they considered but then discarded, presumably because the material was so well-founded and substantial. Instead, they submitted a letter for publication which, in my view, damned their man with faint praise. Sellars resigned as Festival director over the weekend of November 10/11.
IDLER: Why would Sellars resign after one critical attack?
RYAN: Presumably he was already under pressure to go. Private meetings had been held between disgruntled board members and the Arts Minister (the State Government is festival guarantor). The unresolved issue is, how did he come to be appointed in the first place and what responsibility will the board members at the time take for his appointment. Clearly the process was flawed but no-one on the board has fallen on his sword over it. We have some more work to do here.
IDLER: Did other media follow up on your stories?
RYAN: The Advertiser did a few grumpy pieces, more in sorrow than in anger, and of course the TV and talkback radio had a field day. In the end, it seemed Sellars had not actually misled. Though he was light on detail, the broad vision was there for all to see. As in the case of the Emperor's New Clothes, the viewer was to blame. Typical Adelaide.
IDLER: What is the moral of the Sellars debacle?
RYAN: Sellars seems to think we are all passengers on his Zen journey of personal discovery, willing or not. It is very irritating and arrogant. I think it was Nietzsche who said, "What does not kill me makes me stronger." Our hope is that the Adelaide Festival comes out of the Sellars experience without too much damage and goes on to better things in future years.
Meantime, there are still many here who would gladly tar and feather him.