Matthew Ricketson

If you have even a passing interest in the state of the Australian media, you may have come across the estimate that between four and five thousand journalism jobs were lost nationally in the past decade. This estimate suggests the scale of an industry-wide crisis in which successive rounds of redundancies became a feature of life in many newsrooms as media organisations turned to cost-cutting in their struggle to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape. The figure, which originated from the journalists’ union, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, also points, albeit more obliquely, to the human impact of such cultural changes and the thousands of distinctive individual experiences that such numbers can elide.

This, of course, is literary Archibald Prize and, just like the art competition that annually sets Sydney’s cognoscenti abuzz, it will provide grist for plenty of arguments. Which of these profiles catches a passably good likeness of its subject? In which are the brush-strokes boldest and most compelling?

All too often, so-called manuals for screenwriters, novelists and poets begin by letting the reader know how unlikely it is that they will ever get published, let alone make a living. Fortunately, journalist and RMIT journalism lecturer Matthew Ricketson avoids this private-club view of the journalism profession. He points out that there are about 370 newspapers, ranging from dailies and suburban weeklies to regional and multicultural newspapers. There are also more than 3000 magazines in the Australian market.