Anon and proud of it: The Townsville Bulletin celebrates our first birthday

Well, well, well! Haven’t we bloggers really got up the nose of The Bully? :-)

As a rule, I don’t read editorials – mainly because I know that the only people who do are journos and politicians (editorial cartoons however are a very different matter).

So when reader M pointed me to today's Bulletin editorial, I just had to go out and pay good money for a hard copy !! And what a doozey it is – it’s not available online, but click on the graphic to read it full-size!

The story about the outing of Grog’s Gamut is now getting pretty old given that it happened over 10 days ago (I posted here on 28 Sept.)

For a fantastic summary of the action and reaction got to Craig Thomler's eGov AU blog here. 

Now I might be getting up myself a bit here, but I can’t help but think that rather than finding a bit of passion in a 10-day old story, the Bully are lashing out at this post from yesterday morning where I pointed out data from the Australian Newspaper History Group showing that the Bulletin’s average daily readership (or sales - it is unclear) is just 26,395 and had declined by almost 10% over the first half of the year!!!

Touchy aren’t they?   Not information they would be keen to have out there perhaps? 

Touchy as the the Oz was at the critiques of their work by Grog's Gamut?  I've asked the question before here, but, given that I seem to have drawn their fire publicly, I wonder if they are so touchy they will out me next? - after all, I know they've worked out who I am! 

Of course I could use their own language back at them and say they are the cowards if they don't - knowing the increased readership I'd get and backlash they'd get!!  But I won't.

For the record, my reasons for Island View’s anonymity are simple – I’m a small businessman trying to make a living and pay the rent in a small regional city and, believe me, publically calling the most powerful and most connected media outlet in the town to account wouldn’t be real good for business!

I may well be a coward but I’m certainly not stupid!

PS: today is more-or-less the first anniversary of Blogging Townsville and The Bully's Editorial has been the absolutely best anniversary gift!!  It's given me food for another post which will now float in the blogosphere forever with a Townsville Bulletin tag and showing them for what they really are.

UPDATE:  In the comments below, both Bill and Craig Thomler @ eGov AU point out that Townsville Bulletin Editor, Peter Gleeson, chooses for his Editorials to be published anonymously - just like this blog and yes, just like Grog's Gamut.  See more in Craig's post here on the propensity for the mainstream media to publish material by the widely read (and often either very wise or very funny), Anon.

Craig also managed to find the Bully's editorial online here

Finally, I note that in the hardcopy Saturday Bully this morning, there were no letters and no published txt messages about yesterday's Editorial.  As of this morning, there are no comments on their on-line opinion page.  Doesn't sound much to me like their editorial was representing the "voice of the people" - more like the voice of someone in power who's not used to being challenged, let alone questioned or held to account.